The Search Behaviour Shift: We're Already Working On It

When Someone Asks AI Who to Hire,
Does Your Name Come Up?

Your customers have stopped scrolling ten blue links. They ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overview a question and get one confident answer with two or three businesses named. If you're not in that answer, you don't exist for that search. We make sure you're the name it gives.

1

Answers most people read before deciding

~60%

Of Google searches now end without a click

Live

Audits running now

Figures reflect the broad zero-click and AI-answer trend. Your exact exposure depends on your industry and search terms.

Why This Matters Now

Search Didn't Die. It Changed Shape.

For twenty years, getting found meant ranking on page one of Google. You optimised, you built links, you climbed the list, and customers scrolled until something caught their eye. That still matters. But a growing share of your customers never see that list anymore.

They open ChatGPT and type "best roofer near me for a flat roof replacement." They ask Perplexity "who does dental implants in Austin and takes payment plans." They Google something and read the AI Overview at the very top without scrolling to the actual results. In each case, the AI gives them an answer: a short, confident recommendation naming a handful of businesses. The customer picks from that shortlist. Everyone who didn't make it might as well not exist.

This isn't a prediction about the future. It's how a large and rising portion of high-intent searches already work. The uncomfortable part for business owners is that being on page one of Google no longer guarantees you're in the AI answer. They're related, but they're not the same thing. An AI model decides who to recommend based on a different set of signals, and most businesses have never optimised for a single one of them.

That's the gap. And right now, in most local and service industries, almost nobody has closed it. The businesses that move first get named while their competitors are still arguing about whether any of this is real.

The Mechanics

Why AI Picks One Business and Skips Another

When a language model answers "who's the best [your service] in [your city]," it isn't running a live search and ranking pages the way Google's classic algorithm does. It's assembling an answer from what it has learned about businesses on the web: how consistently they're described, how well their information lines up across sources, how much trustworthy content exists about them, and how clearly a machine can understand what they do and who they serve.

That means the signals that make you visible to AI overlap with good SEO but aren't identical to it. A few things carry disproportionate weight:

Consistent, Structured Information

If your name, services, service area, and contact details are described the same way everywhere (your site, your Google Business Profile, directories, review platforms), the model builds a clear, confident picture of you. If they conflict, it hedges, and hedging often means leaving you out.

Machine-Readable Content

Structured data (schema markup) tells the machine exactly what you are, what you offer, where, and for whom, in a format it doesn't have to guess at. Most sites either don't have it or have it set up badly. Done right, it's one of the highest-leverage things you can fix.

Entity Authority

AI models favour businesses that are described by sources other than themselves: reviews, mentions, citations, and content that establishes you as a known, trusted entity in your field. This is where reputation and content strategy quietly become AI visibility.

Clarity of Positioning

Vague businesses get skipped. A model recommending "a good option for flat-roof commercial replacements in Denver" needs your site to make unmistakably clear that this is exactly what you do. Fuzzy, everything-for-everyone messaging reads as low-confidence to a machine.

We work across all four. The point isn't to trick a model. It's to make your business the clearest, most credible, most machine-legible answer to the questions your customers are actually asking.

What We Do

What's Included in AI Visibility Management

1. AI Visibility Audit: Where You Stand Today

We start by finding out what AI actually says about you right now. We run the questions your customers would ask ("best [service] in [city]," "who should I hire for [problem]," "[your business name] reviews") across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini, and we record the results. You get a plain-English report showing whether you're mentioned, how you're described, which competitors are being recommended instead of you, and where the gaps are.

This is the baseline. Everything after it is measured against it, so you can see movement rather than take our word for it.

2. Structured Data & Technical Foundation

We implement and validate schema markup across your site (organisation, local business, services, reviews, FAQ, and the specific types that apply to your industry) so machines can read exactly what you do without guessing. We fix inconsistencies in how your business is described, clean up the technical signals that confuse models, and make sure your site is easy for AI crawlers to parse. This is the same discipline as strong technical SEO, pointed at a slightly different target.

3. Entity & Citation Consistency

We audit how your business appears across the web (Google Business Profile, directories, review sites, industry listings) and bring the important details into alignment. Conflicting names, addresses, phone numbers, and service descriptions actively hurt your AI visibility. Consistent, complete, verified information across sources builds the confident picture that gets you named in answers.

4. Content Built to Be Cited

AI models pull from content that clearly and credibly answers real questions. We identify the questions your customers ask AI about your service and your industry, and build content that answers them directly, factually, and in a structure machines can extract from. This isn't keyword-stuffed filler. It's genuinely useful content designed to become the source an AI quotes when someone asks.

5. Tracking & Reporting

You can't improve what you can't see. We re-run your AI visibility checks on a schedule and report the change: are you being mentioned more often, described more accurately, recommended ahead of competitors you weren't beating before? We report in plain English (where you started, where you are now, and what we're working on next), not a dashboard full of metrics that don't connect to your business.

Straight Talk

What We Know, and What We Don't

We'll be as straight with you about AI visibility as we are about everything else, because this field is new and anyone claiming total certainty is selling you something.

What We Know

Search behaviour is genuinely shifting toward AI answers, a large share of searches already end without a click, and most businesses in most industries have done nothing to optimise for how AI models describe and recommend them. The signals that improve AI visibility are real, testable, and mostly things we can measurably influence. The businesses that move now do so while competition is thin.

What We Don't Know

Exactly how each model will weight these signals six or twelve months from now, or how the platforms will evolve. This is a moving target. What we do is track what AI actually says about you, make the improvements the evidence supports, measure the change, and adjust. That's a defensible, honest process, not a guarantee that we can make any model say any specific thing on demand.

The risk of moving now is that best practices are still forming. The risk of waiting is watching competitors get named as "the business to call" in the exact answers your customers are reading, while you're invisible in a channel you didn't know you were losing. We'll tell you plainly whether it's worth it for your situation.

Best Fit

Who AI Visibility Works Best For, Right Now

Strong Fit

  • Local service businesses people ask AI to recommend: home services, health, legal, trades, professional services
  • Businesses in competitive markets where being named first is a real advantage
  • Companies already investing in SEO who want to protect that investment as search shifts
  • Higher-consideration purchases where customers research before they call
  • Businesses with a genuinely strong offer that just aren't being surfaced yet

Worth Discussing First

  • Brand-new businesses with almost no web presence to build on yet
  • Extremely niche B2B where very few people are asking AI about your category
  • Businesses unwilling to fix underlying inconsistencies in how they present online
  • Anyone expecting an overnight switch: this compounds over weeks and months, not days

The honest version: if your customers are the type to ask ChatGPT or Google's AI for a recommendation (and increasingly, they are), this matters. If you already rank well on Google, this protects and extends that. If you don't, this is a chance to compete in a channel where your competitors haven't shown up yet. We'll tell you which of those you are on the first call.

Run It Alongside Your Other Channels

AI Visibility Management: From $750/Month

Includes the initial AI visibility audit, structured data and technical implementation, entity and citation consistency work, content built to be cited, and scheduled tracking and reporting. Scope scales to the size of your site and how competitive your market is.

What Our Clients Say

Verified reviews from Google Business Profile and Upwork

"I was looking for an ads manager. I got an ads genius and a growth consultant. This guy had endless outstanding ideas for how we could grow our brand and audience. Hiring Bren was one of the best decisions we made."

Brand Growth Client

via Upwork
"Bren is my go-to guy for conversion tracking, data analytics and GTM set up. I've had some pretty complicated issues with my client's tracking, and he has always managed to solve the problem and set it up for success. Very skilled in all areas of digital marketing, CRO, PPC, etc."

Megan K.

Digital Marketing Agency Owner

via Google
"Brendan's been working on my project for the last three years. He is an incredible value — self-motivated, honest, and very hard working. He is so good that I've recommended him to two other people who use him regularly. I could not rate him higher."

3-Year Retainer Client

via Upwork
"Bren taught me everything I know about Google Ads. I have been working with him for over 5 years. He is a digital marketing expert. I still work with him to this day!"

Eric S.

5+ Year Client

via Google
"This project was a clinic. A demonstration of deep consulting skills, blazing fast execution and brilliant mastery of the technology. One competing offer estimated 5 hours of labour. Brendan needed one hour. If you have GTM and Google Analytics requirements, just go see Brendan."

Verified Client

GTM & GA4 Project

via Upwork
"Great work with conversion implementation in Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. Extra Large Marketing made things simple, asked the right questions and implemented. It's amazing how much simpler they've made conversion implementation."

Jason K.

Agency Director

via Google
"Hands down the most knowledgeable AdWords expert I have ever had the pleasure of working with. We will be working with Bren for as long as he can stand us! He is an invaluable member of our team."

Long-term Ads Client

via Upwork
"He's easily understood the goals of our business and helped reach them by adding solid tracking to our website. Both his work and his communication are professional, effective and efficient. An absolute joy to work with."

Verified Client

Conversion Tracking Project

via Google
"Brendan 100% understands setting up dashboards in Data Studio. We now have two great dashboards which I can maintain myself — I can see the lifetime value, the upsells and throughsells. Recommend."

Agency Owner

Looker Studio Dashboards

via Upwork
"I have used ELM for over a year and cannot recommend them more highly. They are honest and very judicious from a money perspective. Over half the good ideas come from them — they're constantly looking at ways to help me and expand the reach of the business."

Ripduman S.

1+ Year Client

via Google

Frequently Asked Questions

What is AI visibility, exactly?

It's how likely your business is to be named, described accurately, and recommended when someone asks an AI tool (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI Overviews, Gemini) a question your business is the answer to. Traditional SEO is about ranking on a page of results. AI visibility is about being in the single answer the AI gives back. They overlap, but they're not the same, and most businesses have optimised for one and ignored the other.

Is this the same as SEO?

It shares a lot of the foundation: technical health, structured data, quality content, consistent business information. But it targets a different outcome. Good SEO helps your AI visibility, and vice versa, which is why we often run them together. But you can rank well on Google and still be left out of AI answers, because models weigh signals differently. We optimise for both.

How do you measure whether it's working?

We record what AI tools actually say about you before we start: whether you're mentioned, how you're described, who's recommended instead of you. Then we re-check on a schedule. The report shows movement against that baseline in plain English. You're not asked to take improvement on faith; you can see it in the answers themselves.

How long does it take to see results?

This compounds rather than switches on. Some things, like fixing structured data and correcting inconsistent business information, can shift how you're described relatively quickly. Building genuine entity authority and content that gets cited is a matter of weeks and months. We'll set honest expectations for your specific situation on the audit call.

Do I need to already be doing SEO?

No, but it helps. If you already have a healthy site and good rankings, we're building on a strong base and can move faster. If you don't, AI visibility is still worth pursuing on its own. In many markets it's an easier channel to win right now because so few competitors are working on it.

Why should I do this now instead of waiting?

Because the businesses being named in AI answers today are building a presence and a track record their competitors will have to overcome later. The behaviour shift is already underway: customers are asking AI who to hire right now. Waiting doesn't make the change slower; it just means you join once your competitors have a head start and the space is more crowded. We're honest that best practices are still forming, but the cost of being early here is low and the cost of being invisible is real.

Find Out What AI Says About You

We'll run the questions your customers are asking, show you exactly how AI describes your business today (and how it describes the competitors it recommends instead), and tell you plainly whether this is worth your time. No obligation.

Book a Free AI Visibility Audit
Brendan Andrew Chase

Service lead

Brendan Andrew Chase

Digital marketing specialist with 12+ years across paid search, SEO, and conversion tracking. Now building AI visibility systems that get businesses named in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI answers. Founder of Extra Large Marketing Digital, based in Rio de Janeiro.