AI Search Visibility Consultant | Cassie Clark
An AI search visibility consultant helps businesses develop and implement generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO) strategies to improve how their brands appear in AI-generated search results. That includes understanding when AI platforms mention or recommend a company, which sources they’re using, and what might be keeping a brand out of the conversation.
But here’s where I think businesses need to be careful: AI search visibility consulting isn’t just about getting more citations in ChatGPT. A company can appear in AI-generated answers and still be misunderstood. It can earn citations without being recommended. And it can have excellent traditional SEO performance without seeing the same success in AI search.
That’s why I don’t believe there’s a universal GEO checklist that works for every business.
I’m Cassie Clark, founder of Cassie Clark Marketing and an AI search visibility consultant. I work with startups and enterprise brands to figure out where they stand in AI search, what’s influencing their visibility, and what they should prioritize to improve it.
That work starts with research and measurement. Before recommending new content, technical changes, or off-site authority building, I want to understand what’s actually happening. Otherwise, we’re making changes without knowing whether they’ll address the problem.
Let’s discuss your AI visibility strategy
What Does an AI Search Visibility Consultant Actually Do?
An AI search visibility consultant develops strategies to help businesses become more visible and accurately represented in AI-powered search experiences, including ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and Perplexity.
The job involves more than optimizing website content for AI engines. A consultant needs to understand how these systems retrieve information, which sources influence their answers, and how those answers change depending on the platform, query, and user context.
For example, let’s say your company consistently appears in Google search results for a commercially valuable keyword. But when someone asks ChatGPT to recommend a provider in your category, your competitors show up instead.
Why?
It could be that your competitors have stronger third-party authority signals. Your website might not clearly communicate the services you offer or the customers you serve. Or the sources an AI platform relies on might describe your business differently than you do. The point is that we don’t know until we investigate.
That’s where AI search visibility consulting comes in. The work typically involves:
- AI visibility audits: Establishing where your brand appears across AI platforms, how frequently it’s recommended, and whether those answers accurately represent your business.
- Competitive visibility analysis: Examining which competitors appear for commercially relevant prompts and investigating what may be contributing to their visibility.
- Citation and source analysis: Identifying the websites, publications, and other sources AI systems use when generating answers about your category.
- GEO/AEO strategy: Developing recommendations across content, technical accessibility, brand authority, and third-party visibility based on the findings.
- Measurement and ongoing testing: Tracking visibility over time and evaluating whether changes are producing meaningful results.
A good AI search consultant should be able to explain not only what they recommend, but why they’re recommending it.
How I Approach AI Search Visibility Consulting
One of the biggest mistakes I see in GEO is treating every visibility problem like a content problem. For example, a company isn’t appearing in ChatGPT, so someone recommends publishing more blog posts. Or adding FAQ schema. Or rewriting every page to answer a question.
Those tactics might help in certain situations. But they aren’t necessarily the answer. My approach starts with understanding the company’s current visibility and the factors that could be influencing it.
1. Establish an AI search visibility baseline
Before developing a strategy, we need to understand where things stand. I examine how AI platforms respond to prompts relevant to your products, services, and customers. That includes whether your brand appears, which competitors are mentioned, and how the platforms describe your business.
I also look at the difference between being mentioned, cited, and recommended. Those aren’t interchangeable outcomes. A brand might be cited as an information source without being presented as a company someone should consider hiring. If we’re measuring both outcomes as though they mean the same thing, we’re missing part of the picture.
2. Investigate what’s influencing the results
Once we understand where your brand stands, we can start looking for explanations. That might involve reviewing your website, analyzing the sources AI platforms retrieve, examining competitor positioning, or identifying inconsistencies in how your business is described across the web.
I’m also interested in what changes between platforms. ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity don’t necessarily rely on the same information or produce the same recommendations. A brand can perform well in one AI engine and struggle in another. That’s why I don’t recommend treating AI search as one channel with one universal set of ranking factors.
3. Develop a GEO/AEO strategy around the findings
Depending on what the research reveals, the recommendations might involve strengthening existing content, developing new resources, improving technical accessibility, clarifying brand positioning, or building authority through third-party publications and partnerships.
Some of that work may sit with your content team. Other recommendations may involve SEO, PR, product marketing, web development, or leadership. AI search visibility doesn’t belong to one department. And the strategy shouldn’t assume that every problem can be solved by publishing another article.
4. Measure what changes
AI-generated answers are variable. You can run the same prompt more than once and receive different recommendations. That makes measurement more complicated than checking whether your company appears in one ChatGPT response.
I use repeated observations and defined prompt sets to evaluate visibility patterns over time. Depending on the engagement, that can include citation presence, recommendation frequency, AI share of voice, and changes in how a brand is represented. The goal is to identify meaningful patterns without treating every fluctuation as evidence that a strategy worked—or failed.
My FSA Framework: Freshness, Structure, and Authority
My GEO work is informed by the FSA Framework, which I developed through ongoing AI search experiments. FSA stands for Freshness, Structure, and Authority. These are three areas I investigate when evaluating how content and brands are represented in AI search.
- Freshness: Is the information about your business current? Are AI systems retrieving outdated descriptions, old product information, or content that no longer reflects what you offer?
- Structure: Can AI systems clearly identify what your business does, who it serves, and the information that matters? Is your content organized in a way that supports accurate interpretation and extraction?
- Authority: What evidence exists beyond your own website to support your claims? Are credible third-party sources reinforcing your expertise, positioning, and relevance within your category?
These aren’t three magic ranking factors, and improving them doesn’t guarantee a citation or recommendation. But they’re a framework for investigating potential visibility gaps and deciding where further testing or optimization makes sense.
Research Is a Major Part of My GEO Strategy
AI search changes too quickly for me to base client recommendations entirely on conventional SEO advice or whatever tactic happens to be circulating on LinkedIn. That’s why I conduct original research and experiments alongside my consulting work.
One example is The Personalization Gap, a research project conducted in collaboration with friction AI. We analyzed 8,609 successful AI search observations across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity to investigate how information about the user can influence brand recommendations.
The findings showed that personalization can meaningfully change which brands appear in AI-generated answers, although the effects vary by platform. That’s important for businesses investing in AI visibility measurement. If user context can influence the brands being recommended, a single response from a fresh session may not tell you what your actual customers are seeing.
I’ve also investigated how content freshness affects retrieval, how AI platforms use third-party sources, and the differences between appearing as a citation and being recommended as a brand. This research informs how I approach client work. It also reinforces something I say often: we need to understand what we’re measuring before we start optimizing for it.
AI Search Visibility Consulting Services
Every consulting engagement I take on begins with an AI search visibility audit. Why? Because I can’t responsibly recommend a GEO/AEO strategy without first understanding how your brand is performing, where the gaps are, and what might be contributing to them.
From there, the scope of our work depends on what the audit reveals and the level of support your team needs.
Step 1: AI Search Visibility Audit
The audit establishes a baseline for how your brand appears across relevant AI search platforms, including ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity. Depending on the scope, I examine brand mentions and recommendations, competitor visibility, citations and sources, and how AI systems represent your company. I also investigate potential gaps in your content, positioning, and authority signals to understand what may be influencing those results.
The audit gives us a starting point for making informed decisions about your GEO/AEO strategy.
Step 2: GEO/AEO Strategy Development
Once we understand the findings, I develop a strategy around the opportunities we’ve identified. That might involve strengthening existing content, improving how your brand is represented across the web, developing third-party authority, or establishing a more reliable measurement framework.
The recommendations depend on your business, your competitors, and what the audit tells us. I’m not going to recommend publishing 50 new blog posts if the research suggests your biggest problem is how AI systems understand your company.
Step 3: Fractional Content Strategy and Leadership
For companies that need ongoing support, I can help guide implementation through a fractional consulting engagement. That includes setting priorities, working with internal teams, evaluating progress, and adjusting the strategy as we learn more. Because AI search visibility often involves content, SEO, PR, brand, and other functions, this work may require coordination across several departments.
Not every client needs ongoing fractional leadership. Some have the internal resources to execute the strategy themselves. Others need a strategic partner to help oversee the work.
Either way, the audit comes first.
Start With an AI Search Visibility Audit
Do You Need a ChatGPT Visibility Consultant or a Broader GEO Strategist?
If your primary concern is how your business appears in ChatGPT, searching for a ChatGPT visibility consultant makes sense. But I’d encourage you to think about the larger picture before limiting your strategy to one platform. Your customers may be using ChatGPT to compare providers, Google AI Overviews to research a topic, and Perplexity to investigate a specific product. The same brand won’t necessarily have the same visibility across all three. And those platforms continue to evolve.
A broader GEO/AEO strategy looks at the AI search engines that matter to your audience and determines where your company should focus its efforts. That doesn’t mean every business needs to optimize for every AI platform. It means the decision should be based on your customers and business goals, not simply which platform is getting the most attention.
Who I Work With
I work with startups, scaling companies, and enterprise brands that want to take a more strategic approach to AI search visibility. Typically, that means working with founders, marketing leaders, content teams, and other stakeholders who recognize that AI-powered discovery is changing how customers research companies.
You might be a good fit for AI search consulting if:
- Your company performs well in traditional search but isn’t appearing consistently in relevant AI-generated answers.
- Competitors are being recommended in ChatGPT or other AI platforms, and you don’t understand why.
- Your team has started experimenting with GEO/AEO tactics but doesn’t have a clear measurement framework or strategy.
- You need an independent assessment before investing in new content, tools, or agency services.
- You’re trying to connect AI search visibility with a larger brand, content, or go-to-market strategy.
I don’t believe every company needs to launch a massive GEO initiative immediately. But I do believe businesses should understand how AI systems are representing them before deciding how much to invest.
What to Look for When Hiring an AI Search Visibility Consultant
If you’re comparing AI visibility consultants, I’d pay attention to how they approach diagnosis, measurement, and strategy.
- Do they investigate your existing visibility before recommending changes? Be cautious of anyone who can prescribe an entire GEO strategy without first understanding your business, competitors, and current performance.
- Can they explain what they’re measuring? Citation counts, brand mentions, recommendations, and AI share of voice can tell you different things. A consultant should be able to explain which metrics matter for your goals and what those metrics can—and can’t—prove.
- Are their recommendations specific to your business? There are useful GEO principles, but a strategy for an enterprise software company shouldn’t automatically look like one for a local service provider.
- Do they understand the relationship between GEO, SEO, content, and brand authority? AI search doesn’t exist separately from the rest of your marketing. A useful strategy should account for the assets, channels, and teams you already have.
- Can they distinguish research findings from assumptions? This matters to me because AI search is still evolving. There are things we can observe, things we can test, and things we don’t yet know. A consultant should be comfortable explaining the difference.
Frequently Asked Questions About AI Search Visibility Consulting
What is an AI search visibility consultant?
An AI search visibility consultant is a specialist who helps businesses assess and improve their presence in AI-generated search results. They develop GEO/AEO strategies that may involve visibility audits, content optimization, brand authority, citation analysis, and ongoing measurement.
What’s the difference between an AI search consultant and an SEO consultant?
An SEO consultant typically focuses on improving a website’s performance in traditional search results. An AI search consultant examines how AI systems retrieve, interpret, cite, and recommend information about a brand. The disciplines overlap, but success in traditional SEO doesn’t automatically translate into strong AI search visibility.
Is GEO the same as AEO?
GEO, or generative engine optimization, focuses on improving visibility in AI-generated answers. AEO, or answer engine optimization, generally focuses on making information accessible and useful for systems that provide direct answers. The terms overlap considerably, and both are commonly used when discussing AI search visibility strategies.
Can an AI visibility consultant guarantee that ChatGPT will recommend my company?
No. AI-generated answers vary based on the prompt, platform, available sources, and other contextual factors. A consultant can investigate your visibility, identify potential barriers, develop an optimization strategy, and measure changes over time. But guaranteeing a specific recommendation would be misleading.
How do you measure AI search visibility?
Measurement can include how frequently a brand is mentioned or recommended, how often its content is cited, its share of voice relative to competitors, and whether AI-generated descriptions of the business are accurate. Because AI answers can vary between runs, measurement should use repeated observations rather than relying on a single screenshot.
Should I start with an AI visibility audit?
If you don’t have a reliable understanding of where your brand currently appears in AI search, an audit is often a useful starting point. It can help identify whether the primary opportunities involve content, brand representation, third-party authority, or something else before your team commits resources to a larger strategy.
Work With an AI Search Visibility Consultant
If you’re trying to understand why competitors are showing up in AI search and your company isn’t, or you’re ready to develop a GEO/AEO strategy grounded in evidence, I’d be happy to talk. I work with companies at different stages of AI search adoption, from initial visibility assessments to enterprise strategy and ongoing fractional leadership.
We can start by discussing what you’re seeing, what you’ve already tried, and what you want to accomplish. From there, we can determine whether an AI search visibility audit, a focused strategy engagement, or longer-term consulting support makes the most sense.