When someone asks AI who to call, does your name come up?
Google says its AI features in Search are rooted in its core Search ranking and quality systems, and that a Google Business Profile can help your services show up in AI answers. So the work that gets you found on Google (a useful website, accurate listings, genuine reviews) is the same work that gets you into AI answers. Nobody can guarantee a placement.
This is early positioning in a small, high-quality channel — not a traffic source that pays for itself this quarter.
AI referrals are about 1% of website traffic today: 1.08% across 13,770 domains in Conductor's 2026 benchmark, which also found they will not replace organic search as the main way people discover sites. Meanwhile zero-click behavior keeps rising: SparkToro and Similarweb found 68% of US Google searches ended without a click in January to April 2026. Anyone telling you to abandon Google is selling something.
Visitors who do arrive from AI tend to convert somewhat better, but not by the headline multiples. Siege Media's first-party data across 78 sites found AI-referred visitors convert at a median 1.26 times the traditional rate (1.29 times for consumer and local services). The 4.4 times figure that circulates comes from other benchmarks. The work that moves this channel is mostly the local SEO and review work you already need for the map pack. The new thing is proving it moved.
Sources: Conductor, 2026 AEO / GEO Benchmarks Report (Nov 2025) · SparkToro, In 2026, less than one third of Google searches still send a click · Siege Media, AI traffic conversion rates
Three facts, not a new discipline
Your own site and your listings, not a magic file
Yext analyzed 6.8 million AI citations from location-specific queries across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. First-party websites made up 44% of citations and listings 42%. Reviews and social added 8%. The study spans industries, not trades specifically, but it points the same way as everything else here.
Source: Yext Research, Oct 2025
Mentions track AI visibility better than links do
Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands. Branded web mentions correlated 0.664 with Google AI Overview visibility, against 0.218 for backlinks. It is a correlation, not proof of cause. It still says that being talked about consistently across the web matters more than a link count.
Being cited is the better position
In Seer Interactive's study of 3,119 queries, brands cited in a Google AI Overview earned 35% higher organic click-through (0.70% vs 0.52%) than brands that appeared on the same results without a citation. Seer notes this may partly reflect brand strength rather than the citation itself.
The things every other agency is about to bill you for
- llms.txt as a product. Ahrefs analyzed 137,000 domains and found 97% of existing llms.txt files received no requests at all in May 2026. SE Ranking analyzed about 300,000 domains and found no relationship between having the file and being cited by AI. Google's Gary Illyes has said Google doesn't support it, and John Mueller called it comparable to the keywords meta tag. We will add one for free in twenty minutes. We will never bill for it.
Sources: Ahrefs · SE Ranking · Search Engine Land (Illyes) · Search Engine Journal (Mueller)
- Markdown mirrors of your pages. We have seen no evidence that they buy citations, and they add a second copy of every page to maintain. We will not build them.
- An "AEO package" that is keyword content renamed. If the work is local SEO and reviews, we call it that.
- A guarantee that ChatGPT will recommend you. Model outputs are non-deterministic and citation patterns are volatile. Anyone promising otherwise is lying.
This section is the reason the page works. Everyone else is selling the thing we are telling you is worthless.
Four things, every month
Monthly prompt tracking
One hundred AI answers checked every month: 85 competitive recommendation prompts scored for placement, and 15 brand-direct prompts checked for accuracy. Run across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Grok. How many named you, which competitors appeared, and whether AI gets your facts right.
Listings and entity consistency
Name, address, phone, categories, and hours matched across the sources AI actually cites. That is the same Get Found work — measured against whether the models use it.
Review velocity
Fresh Google Business Profile reviews keep feeding the answers. As of July 2025 there is no separate LSA review system — GBP reviews are what rank you in Local Services and what AI reads.
AI referral attribution in GA4
Visits that arrive without a recognizable referrer land in Direct, so AI traffic is easy to undercount. Google Analytics 4 added an automatic AI Assistant channel on May 13, 2026, but it only classifies visits whose referrer it recognizes. We set up AI-referral tracking at onboarding so you can see what the channel actually sent.
Included in Get Found
AI visibility monitoring is included in Get Found, our website-plus-monthly plan. Get Found is $1,000/month. Setup is $2,500. 6-month minimum, then month to month. Content is +$800/month.
Get your free check
A short report showing how Google and AI assistants describe your business.
Get your free AI visibility reportIf AI already names you and gets the details right, we'll tell you that and leave you alone.
What you get back
- How Google and AI assistants describe you
- Run from a real consumer app view
- No pitch attached to the results
The questions people ask before they try it
If yours isn't here, call and ask.
Same name, phone and logo everywhere. A new website, hosting and first-year domain. Technical setup so Google and AI can read your site. Google Business Profile setup assistance. Listings kept accurate on Bing, Apple, Yelp and trade sites. Review requests after every job, and a reply to every review. A monthly AI visibility check (100 answers, 5 platforms) and report.
Your business name, what you do, and where you serve. We run the check ourselves, so there are no logins to share and nothing to install.
Get Found is $1,000/month. Setup is $2,500. 6-month minimum, then month to month. Content is +$800/month (4 blog posts, 8 social posts).
No, and anyone promising it is lying. Model outputs are non-deterministic and citation patterns shift without notice. We report what changed and what we did. That is the product.
No. 24/7 answering is $597/month, and you can buy it on its own or add it to Get Found.
Find out how AI describes you.
The free check is yours whether or not you ever buy anything.