AEO Visibility Diagnostic · for owner-led businesses whose customers think carefully before they buy
ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI name specific businesses when they answer. If yours isn't among them, your business may never reach the buyer's shortlist. The businesses they do name get the first look.
No sales call. Fifteen minutes to work out together whether this is relevant for your business, or not. If it is, the diagnostic is a separate decision — this session doesn't commit you to it.
Run personally by Marc Wajsberg · 30+ years in marketing, 13+ years in SEO
Why this matters
A customer asks ChatGPT or Perplexity which business to choose for what they need. They don't scroll ten pages of results. Many simply trust the answer. If your business isn't named, it isn't in the running for that person.
AI platforms summarise the question before the customer clicks. If your competitor sits in that answer and you don't, the customer 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 as more customers ask AI first.
Early Google Ads. Mobile search. Both looked like hype, until the businesses that moved early held the ground for years. AEO is the same kind of window.
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 customer receives before they begin to choose.
Proof · two client cases
Two clients. The numbers come from each site's own GA4, filtered to referrals from identified AI assistants, and from live AI answers anyone can reproduce.
A travel platform that helps people find verified kosher and kosher-friendly hotels worldwide. The work addressed how AI systems read, trust and cite its content: consistent entity data, answer-ready pages, and source signals across the web. The platform now appears in the answers that ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Mode return for the query its customers actually type.
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, and AI-assistant use grew across the board over the same year. What the numbers do show is that the citations turn into real visits, across all three engines. The live answers (not logged in, dated) are shown during the session.
A second case, with a built-in comparison. After we rebuilt a Belgian real estate site, its organic search traffic rose 36% year on year. A second site in the same group, which received no SEO or AEO work, fell 20% over the same period. The rebuilt site also went from zero ChatGPT referrals to 128 sessions a month, 12% of all its traffic.
What this shows, and what it doesn't: a rebuild changes many things at once, so this is what a rebuild did, not the effect of one isolated AEO fix. The untouched site is much smaller, which is why the comparison uses percentages rather than raw counts.
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. When the details don't match, AI systems have a harder time being sure they're describing the same business, and less reason to name it with confidence, however good your content is.
Core service and expertise pages hold the right information, but the answers are buried in long copy. The clearer and more structured your answers — the direct answer up front, question-and-answer sections, schema that states what you do — the easier they are for AI assistants to find, understand and quote. None of this is a formal requirement for being cited. It improves your odds.
Broad content that covers many topics at equal depth gives AI platforms little to go on. 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 customers ask now ("how do I choose", "what should I look for") exist, but haven't been meaningfully updated in 18 to 36 months. Freshness is one of the signals answer engines weigh, most of all for commercial questions where prices, offers and details change.
The Trust Signal Score
The diagnostic produces one number between 0 and 100, on X8's own assessment scale — a framework for identifying priorities, not a score published or verified by any AI platform. Each level describes what the audit finds, not what any platform will do. You see where your site stands today and what closing the distance to the next tier typically takes. Drag the marker below to see what each position means.
Drag the marker · most sites land in the high 30s when first measured
Citations tend to appear more often once a site moves from Emerging into Established. That pattern is consistent across the diagnostics I've run since AI Overviews launched. It's a working framework for sequencing your fixes, not a guaranteed cutoff any platform publishes or commits to.
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 WajsbergSenior Marketing Strategist · 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 €1,900 on the strength of a web page. That is what the session is for.
Prices exclude VAT. Reverse charge applies where legally applicable. Delivered within ten business days of order confirmation, receipt of the 30% initial payment and the agreed access, whichever comes last. Levels 01 and 02: 30% on order confirmation, balance on delivery, payable within 30 days. Level 03: €3,600 (30%) on order confirmation, then three monthly instalments of €2,800 during the 90-day support period; the ten-day delivery applies to the diagnostic report, and the support period runs separately.
"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 · Senior Marketing Strategist, 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 €1,900 is a meaningful investment. It is what it costs you every month that your competitor is named in conversations your customers are 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. If it isn't a fit, I'll say so and point you elsewhere.
Frequently asked