AEO Visibility Diagnostic · for established service businesses
When ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI summarise your category, they name specific businesses. If yours isn't among them, the buyer never reaches your shortlist. Your competitor does.
No sales call. Fifteen minutes to work out together whether this is relevant for your business, or not.
Run personally by Marc Wajsberg · 30+ years in marketing, 13+ years in SEO
Why this matters
A buyer asks ChatGPT or Perplexity which supplier fits a business like theirs. They don't scroll ten pages of results. They trust the answer. If your business isn't named, you don't exist for that person.
AI platforms summarise the question before the buyer clicks. If your competitor sits in that answer and you don't, the buyer forms a view from what the AI puts in front of them. Not being named is not a technical detail. It is a commercial visibility problem that grows every month.
Early Google Ads. Mobile search. Both looked like hype, until the businesses that moved early held the ground for years. AEO is the same window. It is closing faster than the last one.
This is not an SEO discussion. It is a visibility discussion. The question is not how high you rank. It is whether your business sits in the answer your prospect receives before they begin to choose.
Proof · kosher-travel platform
One client, three engines, one of the most common queries in its category. The numbers below come from the platform's own GA4 and from live AI answers anyone can reproduce.
A travel platform that helps people find verified kosher and kosher-friendly hotels worldwide. The diagnostic addressed how AI systems read, trust and cite its content: consistent entity data, answer-ready pages, and source signals across the web. Ninety days later, the platform appears in the answers that ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode return for the query its buyers actually type.
And to separate the work from the general rise in AI usage: on a different client we ran a controlled comparison. The site we worked on doubled its AI-referred traffic over 90 days. An untouched sister site, same owner, same window, stayed flat. The growth follows the work, not the wave.
An honest note: a curated travel resource is a natural source for a "where do I find" query, so part of this is the category working as it should. What the tracked traffic shows is that the citations turn into real visits, consistently, across all three engines. The live answers (not logged in, dated) are shown during the session.
Want to know where your business stands in AI answers?
Book a free 15-minute sessionWhat the diagnostic usually surfaces
These are the four most common findings across diagnostics of established businesses. None require a new website or a large budget. They require the right diagnosis first.
Name, description, address and category differ across directories, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and schema markup. AI platforms treat consistency as a trust signal. When the data doesn't match, citations drop, regardless of how good your content is.
Core service and expertise pages hold the right information but aren't structured so AI can extract direct answers. No question-and-answer structure, no schema. The content exists. The structure that makes it citable does not.
Broad content that covers many topics at equal depth signals nothing to AI platforms. Your presence has to claim the niche you want to be known for, with enough depth to be treated as a source.
Pages that answer the questions buyers ask now ("how do I choose a supplier", "what should I look for") exist, but are 18 to 36 months old. AI platforms favour current content and lower the priority of what's stale.
The Trust Signal Score
The diagnostic produces one number between 0 and 100, on the same published scale. You see where your site stands today, and where the threshold sits at which Google and AI engines begin citing sites as sources. Drag the marker below to see what each position means, and what closing the distance takes.
Drag the marker · most sites land in the high 30s when first measured
The threshold at which AI engines begin citing a site as a source sits closer to 60 than to 90. That is observable across every diagnostic I've run since AI Overviews launched, and it remains the most under-reported fact in search marketing today.
What AEO actually is
Classic SEO aimed for a high place in a list. AEO aims to be the summarised answer. Those are two different commercial positions. The second requires a higher bar of specificity and proof.
| SEO | AEO |
|---|---|
| Goal: rank high in a list | Goal: be named as the answer |
| Success: clicks | Success: citations and shortlist visibility |
| Requires: decent pages | Requires: source-worthy pages and third-party corroboration |
| Zero-click = failure | Zero-click doesn't count against you when your business is the source |
"After 25 years in online marketing, I'll say what most consultants would rather not: many monthly SEO retainers exist because clients can't tell the difference between work and the appearance of work. Every report that leaves this office, I read myself before it reaches you. Written so a business owner with no technical background can hand it to a developer or do the work themselves. If you read the report and it doesn't match what I promise here, you get your money back."Marc David WajsbergFractional CMO · principal, X8 Agency
Investment
Each level begins with the same manual review of 50 trust factors, the same Trust Signal Score on the same scale, and the same review call. What changes is how far we accompany you after the report exists.
This page sells no tier. Which engagement (and whether any) fits your situation is what the free session decides. You don't commit €1,500 on the strength of a web page. That is what the session is for.
"If the report you receive does not match what this page describes (automated rather than manual, technical warnings rather than commercial actions, jargon rather than plain language), write to me within seven days of delivery and you get your money back. You keep the report. In all these years my rule hasn't changed: I don't keep a fee for work a client can't verify. Since the diagnostic launched, the guarantee has been invoked twice. Never refused."Marc David Wajsberg · Fractional CMO, X8 Agency
Not sure which level fits? That's exactly what the session decides.
Plan your free sessionThe real cost
The question is not whether €1,500 is a meaningful investment. It is what it costs you every month that your competitor is named in conversations your prospect is having right now. Conversations you are not part of.
"In April 2003 I was one of the first Belgian advertisers on Google Ads, when most businesses still called it hype. In 2009 I gave keynotes on mobile search while 40 percent of internet use was mobile and 11 percent of websites were ready."
Each time, the businesses that moved early held the advantage for years. The ones that waited found the ground already taken. Credibility and visibility are built through structure, consistency and time. They don't buy themselves back once your competitor already owns them.
Working with Marc is like driving a V12 on kerosene. A virtuoso in digital marketing, far better than most digital natives.Erik Saelens · CEO, Brandhome and Unbox
It's a visibility problem. The diagnostic maps it precisely and decides which correction comes first.
We work out together whether this is relevant for your business. If it isn't, I'll say so and point you to what would help instead. No newsletter, no drip sequence.
Prefer to email first? [email protected]. You'll get a personal reply within 2 business days, or silence when there's clearly no match. That's an honest answer too.
Frequently asked