When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity where to go in your city, your competitors show up. You don't. FreedAEO audits your AI search visibility and shows you exactly what to fix.
Say you’re looking for a romantic restaurant for date night in NYC, and you decide to ask AI for a recommendation:
AI
ChatGPT
“Best romantic restaurant for date night in the West Village NYC”
Here are some highly regarded romantic dining spots in NYC’s West Village:
1
Bellcourt
French bistro - West Village - 4.7★
2
Casa Madera
Italian - West Village - 4.8★
3
The Ember Room
American - West Village - 4.6★
⚠️
Carver's Bistro - West Village, est. 2014, 4.9★ on Google, a local favorite - does not appear in any AI Search results.
Their online presence is invisible to AI, so potential customers are being sent to their competitors instead. The same thing may be happening to your business.
What is AEO?
The new search your SEO doesn’t cover
SEO gets you onto Google. AEO - Answer Engine Optimization - gets you into AI responses. When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini for a recommendation, those tools don’t run a Google search. They pull from their own training data and real-time web reads.
If your website isn’t structured in a way AI can read and cite, you don’t exist to it. A competitor with half your reviews and a fraction of your history can show up in every response - because they have the right signals in place.
AEO is the gap between the business you’ve built and the business AI describes. We close it.
58%
of consumers now use AI tools for local business discovery
3x
faster growth in AI search volume vs. traditional search in 2025
<20%
of independent businesses we’ve audited follow AEO best practices
How it works
Your audit, start to finish
Three steps. One deliverable. A clear path forward - no technical background required on your end.
1
We run the queries
We simulate the searches your potential customers are actually typing into AI tools - and record exactly what comes back. Your business, your competitors, who shows up and who doesn’t.
2
We build your audit
A detailed report covering your AI visibility score, a competitor comparison, a full signal audit of your digital presence, and six ranked recommendations specific to your business.
3
We walk you through it
A 30-minute call with a real person. We explain what the findings mean, answer your questions, and leave you with a clear, prioritized action list. No jargon, no pressure.
Want to see what an audit looks like?
We’ve published a full sample audit for a real business in Charlotte. Everything that’s included - the score, the queries, the recommendations, the revenue estimate.
SEO optimizes your presence for search engines like Google. AEO - Answer Engine Optimization - optimizes your presence for AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. When someone asks an AI for a recommendation, it isn’t running a Google search. It draws from structured data, citations, and digital signals that are entirely separate from your Google ranking. You can have excellent SEO and still be completely invisible to AI.
Any local business where customers might ask an AI tool for a recommendation before visiting. Barbershops, fitness studios, dental offices, law firms, restaurants, boutique hotels, med spas, real estate agents, breweries - if someone in your city could plausibly type “best [your category] in [your city]” into ChatGPT, this audit is for you.
Quite possibly. Google reviews and a well-designed website are SEO signals - they help you rank on Google. AEO signals are different: schema markup, AI-facing files, structured FAQ content, and the way your site describes your business to an AI reader. In every market we’ve audited, many of the businesses with the best Google reviews are often invisible in AI search. The two don’t transfer automatically.
We run six search queries through leading AI tools - the same searches your prospective customer would actually type. We record which businesses appear, in what position, and whether your business is mentioned. Results reflect patterns observed across sources and may vary by session and model version, which is why we run multiple queries across multiple tools.
Typically 3-5 business days from payment. We’ll confirm a time for your 30-minute walkthrough call at the same time, so your walkthrough session and your report are ready together.
It’s up to you! The audit and walkthrough are our core offering. After the call, you’ll have a clear, prioritized action list and enough context to move forward however works best for you - whether that’s handling it yourself or exploring additional support from us. We’re happy to discuss what makes sense for your situation.
No - and that’s one of the most important things to understand about AEO. When a human visits your website, they see your design, your photos, your atmosphere. When an AI tool reads your website, it sees structured text, labels, and metadata. If your site isn’t built with AI-readable signals in place - things like schema markup, structured descriptions, and AI-facing files embedded in your site - the AI either can’t understand what your business is, or fills in the gaps with guesswork. That’s why two businesses can have identical-looking websites, and one shows up in AI recommendations while the other doesn’t.
Some signals are picked up by AI tools within days of being published - particularly structural changes like schema markup and AI-facing files. Others, like citation building and press mentions, compound over weeks and months. Most businesses see meaningful movement in AI query results within 30-60 days of addressing the top three recommendations.
We audit businesses across the US - AI is changing how consumers find businesses everywhere, so geography isn’t a constraint. We’ve audited businesses in every region - and the methodology applies equally well in any market.
A strong score is worth protecting. AI search is evolving quickly, and businesses that are visible today can lose ground fast if competitors close the gap. The audit identifies both your vulnerabilities and the opportunities to build a more durable position - so you’re not just showing up now, but staying there as the landscape shifts.