Questions to ask a GEO or AEO consultant, and how I answer them.

Ask ChatGPT how to hire a GEO or AEO consultant and it will hand you a list of screening questions. It's a good list. The questions are designed to separate people who understand how AI systems choose businesses from marketers who added "AI optimization" to their title last spring.

I think anyone selling this work should answer those questions in public, before the first call. So here are the five that come up most, and exactly how I'd answer each one, with links to the evidence so you don't have to take my word for it.

1. "How do you measure our AI visibility baseline?"

What a buyer should listen for: a concrete, repeatable method, not "we'll monitor it."

My answer: Two layers. First, a technical baseline: my S.C.A.L.E. software reads your site the way AI crawlers do and scores it on five dimensions (visibility, clarity, structure, authority and momentum) using 30 named checks. Second, the part that matters more: a fixed set of real customer questions, the ones your buyers actually type, asked directly to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. We record who gets named, how you're described and which sources are cited. Then we ask the same questions every month.

One honest caveat I put in writing: this is a sample, not a census. Nobody outside the AI companies can see every question people ask. AI answers also vary between runs, so each question is asked more than once and the pattern is reported, not a single lucky screenshot. Anyone who shows you a precise "share of model" percentage without explaining how it was sampled is selling you a number, not a measurement.

2. "What's your strategy for our third-party footprint, not just our website?"

What a buyer should listen for: a plan for the rest of the web. AI models learn heavily from what others say about you.

My answer: This is the "L" in my framework: Leverage. Your website is where you make claims; the rest of the web is where those claims get confirmed. The work starts with a citation map: for your key customer questions, which sources do the AI systems actually cite, where do your competitors appear, and where are you missing or described inconsistently? Then, in priority order:

• your Google Business Profile, Apple Maps and Bing listings, made complete and identical;
• the directories and review platforms that matter in your industry (for a lawyer that's different from a restaurant);
• professional bodies, associations and chambers of commerce;
• earned mentions: local press, partners, suppliers, podcasts, expert quotes.

What I won't do: fake reviews, paid posts disguised as opinions, or planting comments on Reddit. AI systems are increasingly good at spotting manufactured consensus, and it can quietly get a business dropped from answers entirely. Authority has to be earned to last.

3. "How do you make our content 'retrievable' for AI?"

What a buyer should listen for: specific formatting and structured data, explained in plain language.

My answer: AI assistants that search the web pull short passages from pages and stitch them into an answer. So each important page needs to be easy to lift from:

• Answer-first writing. A heading phrased as the customer's question, followed by a direct two-to-four-sentence answer, then the detail.
• Structured data. JSON-LD schema using the most specific type for your business (Dentist, LegalService, Restaurant rather than a generic business), with your name, address, phone, service area and official profiles, plus FAQ markup that matches the visible text exactly.
• Consistent facts. The same business description everywhere, so the AI is never choosing between two versions of you.
• Technical access. AI crawlers allowed in, the main text present in the HTML rather than drawn later by scripts, and pages that load fast.

I'll also tell you what doesn't help as much as people claim. I publish an llms.txt file myself, and my own data says AI crawlers rarely read it. It's cheap to add, but it is not a strategy.

4. "AI got our business wrong, or left us out. How would you fix it?"

What a buyer should listen for: a diagnostic process that traces the problem to its source.

My answer: A wrong or missing answer almost always has a cause you can find:

1. Reproduce it. Ask the same question several times, in each AI system, and record exactly what's said and which sources are cited.
2. Trace the sources. When an AI states something wrong about you, it usually got it from somewhere: an old directory listing, an outdated article, a competitor's comparison page, or two of your own pages that disagree.
3. Find the contradictions. I run what I call an entity contradiction audit: every place your name, address, services, people and claims appear, checked against each other.
4. Fix the sources, not just your site. Correct the listings, update or replace the outdated pages, and publish one clear, authoritative page of facts. Mine is siamakconsulting.com/llm-info, written specifically for AI systems to read.
5. Re-test monthly. AI answers change slowly. Some fixes show up in weeks; others take months as models and search indexes refresh. I report honestly which is which.

5. "How do you protect our Google traffic while optimizing for AI?"

What a buyer should listen for: SEO treated as the foundation, not a competitor.

My answer: They aren't in tension. Roughly 80% of the work is shared: a fast, crawlable site, clear structure, genuinely useful content and consistent facts help Google and AI equally. Google's AI Overviews are built on Google's own index, so if you lose your Google foundation, you lose AI visibility too. I explain the overlap and the differences in SEO vs LLMO.

The rule I follow: never make a page worse for a human to please a machine. No keyword stuffing, no hundreds of thin AI-written pages, no text that reads like it was written for a bot. Clear writing for people is exactly what AI systems quote.

The scorecard, and the evidence you can check

ChatGPT also suggested a weighted scorecard for comparing consultants. It's a fair one. Here it is, with where to find my evidence for each line. Score me the same way you'd score anyone else.

Score each criterion from 1 to 5, multiply by the weight and add them up. Anyone scoring below 3 on transparency should be off your list, however good the rest sounds.

One more question worth asking every consultant

"What would you tell me not to spend money on?" Someone who has done this work has a ready answer. Mine: if your marketing budget is under about $1,000 a month, hire nobody. Fix the basics yourself first, with the free tools, and come back when there's something worth amplifying.

Common questions

How should a GEO consultant measure our AI visibility baseline?
With a repeatable method: a technical scan of how AI crawlers read your site, plus a fixed set of real customer questions asked directly to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, recording who is named and which sources are cited, and repeating them monthly.

Why does a GEO strategy need to cover third-party sites, not just our website?
AI models learn heavily from what others say about a business: directories, review platforms, associations and press. Your website makes the claims; the rest of the web confirms them. A plan that only rewrites your own pages misses most of what AI uses.

How do you make website content retrievable for AI assistants?
Write answer-first sections under question headings, add specific JSON-LD schema and FAQ markup that matches the visible text, keep business facts identical everywhere, and make sure AI crawlers can access fast pages whose main text is in the HTML.

What questions should I ask a GEO consultant?
Ask how they measure your AI visibility baseline, how they improve your presence on third-party sources beyond your website, how they make your content machine-readable, how they would diagnose an AI answer that gets your business wrong, and how they protect your Google traffic. Finally, ask what they cannot promise; no honest consultant guarantees a place in an AI answer.

How do you measure visibility in ChatGPT and other AI assistants?
By asking a fixed set of real customer questions directly to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, recording who is named and which sources are cited, and repeating the same questions every month. Because answers vary between runs, each question is asked more than once. It is a sample, not a complete count, and should be reported that way.

Can a GEO consultant guarantee my business will be recommended by AI?
No. There is no way to buy or guarantee a place in an AI-generated answer. A consultant can make your business easier for AI systems to identify, verify and quote, and measure whether that changes what the AI says, but any guarantee is a warning sign.

Does GEO replace SEO?
No. Most of the foundation is shared, and Google's AI Overviews are built on Google's own index. A good GEO consultant treats SEO as the base and never makes a page worse for people in order to please an AI system.

What should I do if ChatGPT says something wrong about my business?
Ask the same question several times to see exactly what it says and which sources it cites, then trace the wrong information to its source, such as an outdated directory listing or a page that contradicts your own site. Correct those sources, publish one clear page of accurate facts about your business, and re-check monthly.

Sources

• Google Search Central, AI features and your website.
• Google Search Central, Introduction to structured data.
• GEO & AEO consulting and Information for AI systems, Siamak Kalhor Consulting.