You've probably been pitched "AI search optimization" as a separate service. It isn't one, and Google has said so directly. In its official guidance on optimizing for generative AI features, Google states that AI Overviews and AI Mode run on the same core ranking systems as ordinary search, that there are no additional requirements to appear in them, and that several tactics being sold as AI-specific are unnecessary. The work that earns you a place in an AI answer is the same work that earns you a ranking.
What has changed is what happens after the search. Pew Research Center found that when an AI summary appears, users clicked a traditional result in 8% of searches compared with 15% when no summary appeared, and clicked a source cited inside the summary only 1% of the time. Meanwhile BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey found the share of consumers using AI tools to discover local businesses rose from 6% to 45% in a single year, while Google's share of local discovery fell from 83% to 71%.
Read together, those tell you something specific: fewer clicks per search, and more of the decision happening before anyone reaches your website. Being described accurately by these systems is now part of being found at all. It's just not a separate discipline with separate tactics.
The first four earn rankings. The last two are what make the difference in AI answers, and almost nobody is doing them.
Page titles, headings, descriptions and internal structure, so both a search engine and an assistant can tell what each page is for. Unglamorous, and where most sites are broken.
For a practice or firm this often matters more than the website itself. We connect it, complete it properly, and make sure your name, address, hours and services match your site exactly.
One page listing everything ranks for nothing. Separate pages for separate services match how people actually search, and give each one a chance to be found on its own.
Load time is a ranking factor and a conversion factor at once. Someone on a phone in a waiting room won't wait five seconds, and Google knows that.
Plenty of sites block AI crawlers without the owner knowing, through robots.txt or a security service switched on by default. The crawlers behind ChatGPT and Perplexity are separate from Google's, so a site that ranks fine can still be invisible to them. We check, and we make it a decision instead of an accident.
When your hours differ between your site, your Google profile and three old directory listings, a search engine shows the options and lets the visitor sort it out. An assistant has to pick one answer, or skip you. We find the mismatches and get them corrected.
BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US consumers found that 97% read reviews when evaluating a local business, and that the share who always read them climbed from 29% to 41% in a single year. The average consumer now checks around six different platforms before choosing. We don't manage or solicit reviews, and we'd be wary of anyone who offers to. What we do is make sure the ones you've earned are visible on your site, that your Google Business Profile is complete and accurate, and that nothing in your setup is quietly keeping them from being found.
Early changes show up in a few weeks. Meaningful movement usually takes three to six months, and it compounds from there.
Ongoing work on an existing site or one we built. Search results build over time, so this is a monthly engagement rather than a project.
Local search work for a single-location practice or firm, in the area you actually serve.
Three-month minimum. Search results take time and we'd rather say so up front.
Most existing sites need groundwork before ongoing optimization does anything: missing page titles and descriptions, slow-loading images, pages competing with each other for the same term, structure that search engines and AI assistants can't parse cleanly. That's a one-time foundation pass, typically starting at $750, quoted once we've looked at what's actually there. If we built your site, it's already structured this way and there's no foundation fee.
Type what they'd type, then ask an assistant the same question. If you're missing from one, wrong in the other, or absent from both, that's what we fix.
Protecting the digital front door of your business from websites that convert, monitoring that catches problems before your customers do and managed IT services that you can actually count on.
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