What is AI visibility, and is it just SEO with a new name?
AI visibility is whether AI tools name your business when customers ask, and whether what they say about it is right. Much of it rests on SEO basics: Google says there are “no additional requirements” to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. What changes is the result: a short list of named businesses, fewer clicks, and facts AI can get wrong.
Key figure
12%
of pages cited by AI tools ranked in Google’s top 10 for the same question. Ahrefs, Jul 2025, 15,000 questions.
The full answer.
The names. GEO (generative engine optimization), AEO (answer engine optimization) and AI search optimization describe the same work.
What stays the same. A site crawlers can reach, clear text, accurate facts, real mentions elsewhere. Google lists crawling allowed “in robots.txt, and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure” among the fundamentals (Q1).
What is different.
- The answer names a few businesses: 2.5 on average in a Google AI Overview, 4.1 in ChatGPT (R16, B).
- People click less: 8% of Google visits with an AI summary ended in a click on a regular result, against 15% without (R08, A).
- A good Google rank helps but does not decide it: page-one rank correlated about 0.65 with ChatGPT naming a brand (R35, B), yet only 12% of pages cited by AI tools ranked in Google’s top 10 for the same question (R19, B).
- Facts go wrong: in a vendor test, 48% to 56% of answers fully matched each business’s Google profile, though some phone mismatches are likely call-tracking numbers (R20, C).
When you hire for it, be wary of: a promise to get you recommended; llms.txt sold as a fix (see question 7); paid or screened reviews; posting on Reddit under fake accounts. Our evidence ledger grades each tactic A to D, including the ones we refuse to sell.
What Still Fox does.
We measure what AI says about a business, fix the site, give you the list for your listings, and report the result, including when nothing changed.
Sources.
Each claim above carries its id and a grade from A to D. The research report holds the full ledger.
- R08 A
Google visits end in a click on a regular result 8% of the time with an AI summary and 15% without; 1% click a link inside the summary.
Pew Research Center, 2025-07-22 In the ledger
- R16 B
Businesses per local AI answer: AI Overview 2.5, AI Mode 3.5, ChatGPT 4.1; 20% to 33% overlap on repeat runs; Google Maps named a tracked business in 66% of searches vs 32% to 38% for AI; 93% of distinct cited domains were business sites.
BrightLocal, Local AI Visibility Study, 2026-09-16 In the ledger
- R19 B
Only 12% of pages cited by AI tools ranked in Google’s top 10 for the same question; 8% for ChatGPT.
Ahrefs, 2025-08-11 In the ledger
- R20 C
55.58% of ChatGPT and 48.05% of Perplexity answers fully matched the business’s Google profile; wrong phone number was the largest error.
Insites, 2026-07-23 In the ledger
- R35 B
Page-one Google rank correlated about 0.65 with how often ChatGPT named a brand.
Seer Interactive, 2025-01-07 In the ledger
- Q1 EC
Google Search Central, AI features and your website
There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.
You don’t need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features.
Ensuring that crawling is allowed in robots.txt, and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure
Checking that your Merchant Center and Business Profile information is up-to-date