AI Visibility Lab studies how businesses show up in AI search.
We’re an open research property testing how traditional SEO and AI-search visibility (GEO) relate — and publishing plain-English guides, a worked audit, and the results of a live two-site experiment so small businesses can actually act on it.
They retrieve crawlable, well-structured pages, then cite the ones that answer the question directly1 — which is why strong SEO foundations still decide AI visibility2.
Most “rank in ChatGPT” advice skips the part that makes it work.
Advice about AI visibility usually treats GEO as a brand-new discipline. In practice, the pages AI engines cite are overwhelmingly the ones that were already discoverable, crawlable and useful. Skip the foundations and there’s nothing for an answer engine to find. The Lab exists to test that relationship and write down what actually moves the needle — for owners, not agencies.
- 4
AI answer engines we track: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI and Gemini.
- 2
live sites we run to test the SEO-to-AI relationship in public.
- 0
products sold — listings and audits are signals we explain, not services we pitch.
GEO is an extension of SEO, not a replacement
The path from a query to an AI citation runs straight through traditional search. Each stage depends on the one before it — the thesis the Lab is built to test.
The page can be found and read.
Headings, schema, direct answers.
Retrieved and quoted in answers.
We name this progression the Crawl-Read-Cite Ladder, score where a site sits on it with the Citevane Index, unpack the full chain in the SEO vs GEO experiment and show how engines actually choose local businesses in how AI recommends local businesses.
The three guides owners read first
Why ChatGPT isn't recommending your business
The reasons AI assistants leave a local business out of their answers — and what to change first.
Read · 6 minTest your AI-search visibility
A step-by-step way to check whether ChatGPT and other engines can find and recommend you.
Read · 7 minHow AI recommends local businesses
The retrieval-and-citation mechanics behind a local recommendation, in plain English.
Read · 7 minThe Lab’s pillar pages
AI visibility for local businesses
The hub that ties the local guides together and explains the signals — Google Business Profile, Foursquare and structured data — AI engines read about you.
Open the hubAn AI visibility audit, worked end to end
A real, step-by-step audit example: what we checked, what we found, and the fixes ranked by likely impact on AI visibility.
See the exampleSEO vs GEO: the live experiment
Does AI visibility depend on traditional search? Our hypothesis, the two-site method we’re running to test it, and how an AI-visibility check differs from an SEO audit.
Read the thesisWe’re testing the thesis in public, on two live sites.
This site is the strong implementation. A second, deliberately more generic site targets the same long-tail queries. We track how each performs across traditional and AI search — and publish what we find. There are no results yet: we’re sharing the method now and the findings as the data arrives.
What we’re measuring
- Indexation & organic rankings on shared queries
- Citations across AI answer engines
- Whether stronger SEO tracks stronger AI visibility
Frequently asked questions
What is AI Visibility Lab?
Is AI search visibility different from SEO?
Is the Lab's advice based on its own testing?
See how discoverable your site is to AI search
Walk through the Lab’s method for checking crawlability, structure and citation-readiness — the same way we test the sites in the experiment. In plain English, no account required.
Prefer a worked example first? See an AI visibility audit, end to end.