What is AEO, and why should a tradesperson care?
Answer Engine Optimisation is the work of getting your business named and recommended inside AI-generated answers. Not ranked in a list of links — named, in the answer itself, as the business to call.
Homeowners stopped scrolling. They started asking.
For twenty years, finding a tradesperson meant typing something into Google and working down a page of ten blue links. Every agency in the country learned to compete for those ten places.
That's not how a growing number of jobs start any more. A homeowner opens ChatGPT and types “we need a full rewire in a 1930s semi in Bolton, who should we call and what should it cost?” — and gets back a short answer with two or three businesses named and a reason for each.
There is no page two. There are no ten links. There are three names, and either you're one of them or you don't exist for that customer.
The behaviour skews towards the jobs worth winning. Someone with a dripping tap still searches Google. Someone planning a rewire, a new boiler or an extension asks an assistant to compare the options first — because it's a bigger decision and they want it explained.
The five answer engines we optimise for
Each one builds its answers differently, so being named by one doesn't mean being named by the rest.
- ChatGPTThe default for most people now
- PerplexityAnswers with cited sources
- Google AI OverviewsAbove the blue links
- GeminiBuilt into Android and Search
- ClaudeWidely used for research
You weren't recommended. Now you're first.
Same question, same assistant, same town — asked before we started and again three months in.
“Who's the best electrician near me for a full rewire?”
You aren't mentioned at all
“Who's the best electrician near me for a full rewire?”
You're the first name in the answer▌
Illustrative example of the change AEO produces. Your free audit shows you the real version — the actual answers each assistant gives for your trade in your area right now.
Five levers, pulled together
None of these is a secret and none of them is magic. They work because almost no trades business in the UK is doing them yet.
Schema / JSON-LD
Machine-readable markup describing your services, service areas, credentials, opening hours, reviews and prices. It's how a model knows you're a NICEIC-registered electrician covering Bolton rather than just a page of words.
AI-ready FAQ content
Content written the way people actually ask — "how much does a full rewire cost?", not "our rewiring services". Answer-first, specific, and structured so a model can lift a clean paragraph straight out of it.
Trusted citations
Consistent listings across the directories, review platforms and local sources these models were trained on and still cite. Consistency matters more than volume: one wrong phone number across four sites does real damage.
llms.txt
A plain-text file at the root of your site — the AI-era robots.txt — giving language models a clean summary of who you are, what you do and where you work. It costs nothing and almost no UK trades website has one.
Monthly visibility tracking
We ask each assistant the questions your customers ask, every month, and record whether you're named, where you rank in the answer and who's beating you. Without this you're guessing, and so is everyone selling you AEO.
See where you stand today
We'll run all five checks against your business and send you a 5-page report showing exactly what each assistant says when someone asks for your trade in your area.
Get the free auditAEO, answered properly
AEO is the practice of getting your business named and recommended inside AI-generated answers — the ones ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google's AI Overviews give when someone asks who to hire. Traditional SEO competes for a position in a list of links. AEO competes to be the answer itself.
Find out if the AI is recommending you
Get a free AEO audit: we'll scan how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews answer when someone asks for your trade in your area — and send you the report.