ChatGPT. Perplexity. Gemini. AI Overviews.
AEO Services in London
Your customer used to type a question and get ten links. Now they get one answer and two or three business names. Answer Engine Optimisation is the work of making sure one of those names is yours.
This is not an SEO retainer with a new label on it. The signals overlap, but the winning condition is different: a blue link has to be clickable, a citation has to be quotable. I have run AEO alongside local search campaigns since the assistants started sending real enquiries, and that gap is where most businesses are currently losing without knowing it.
Why answer engines name
Some Businesses
An answer engine does not rank you. It decides whether it is confident enough to say your name to somebody who asked for a recommendation. That confidence comes from corroboration: the same facts about you, stated the same way, in enough places the model already trusts.
Which is why AEO rewards businesses that look consistent rather than businesses that look clever. There is no keyword density to tune. There is a question, an answer, and whether your version of that answer is easier to quote than everyone else's.
What AEO services actually consist of:
- Answer-first content: pages that state the answer in the first two sentences and prove it underneath, in a shape a model can lift without rewriting.
- Structured data that agrees with the copy: FAQ, Service, LocalBusiness and Person markup that corroborates what the page says instead of quietly contradicting it.
- Citation surface mapping: finding which directories, trade bodies, publications and community threads each engine actually pulls from in your sector, then earning a place on them.
- Entity foundations: the GEO layer underneath: one resolvable business identity, so a model knows what you are before it decides whether to recommend you.
- Review and reputation corroboration: assistants read review text, not just star counts. What your reviews say about your services is training data for how you get described.
- Assistant visibility tracking: a monthly prompt set run across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews, so you can watch the answer change rather than take my word for it.
Find out what the assistants say about you today, before a competitor fixes theirs.
Discuss AEOChoosing between providers
AEO Agency or Consultant?
Search for an AEO agency in London and you will find a long list of firms that were SEO agencies eighteen months ago. Some have done the work and genuinely understand how citation behaviour differs from ranking behaviour. Plenty added a service page and a price.
One question separates the two, and you can ask it on the first call: show me a prompt where a client of yours is named, and show me what that answer looked like before you started. Anyone doing this properly has the screenshot. Anyone who does not will change the subject to content quality.
If you are weighing up AEO agencies in London against a consultant, the audit will tell you which shape your situation needs. I will say so even when the answer is not me.
Get an AEO AuditThe five stages of an
AEO Campaign
Sequence matters more here than in traditional SEO. Publishing answer-shaped content before the entity underneath it is solid produces pages that nothing will cite.
- 1
Visibility Baseline
I build a prompt set from how your customers actually ask, usually thirty to fifty questions, and run it across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews. You get a record of who is currently named, what is said about them, and where you appear if you appear at all.
- 2
Entity & Corroboration
Before content, the foundations. One consistent name, address and number everywhere a crawler checks, a schema graph linked by @id rather than four disconnected blocks, and every contradiction between your site, your listings and your profiles resolved.
- 3
Answer-Shaped Content
The questions from stage one become pages and sections that answer them directly, in the opening lines, with the specifics that make an answer worth quoting: prices, timeframes, conditions, exclusions. Vague copy is unquotable copy.
- 4
Citation Surfaces
Each engine has a different source diet. I map which publications, directories, trade bodies and forums yours actually draws from, then work on getting you present and accurately described on them.
- 5
Re-Test & Compound
The same prompt set, re-run monthly, engine by engine. You watch the answers move. Where an engine still names a competitor, that becomes next month's brief rather than a mystery.
What you actually get
Included
AI visibility baseline report
Thirty to fifty real prompts run across four engines, with who gets named and why.
Entity and schema build
A linked graph where your Person, Organisation, Service and Place nodes resolve to one business.
Answer-shaped content programme
Pages and sections written to be quoted, not to hit a word count.
Citation surface plan
The sources each engine pulls from in your sector, and a route onto them.
Review text strategy
Guidance so reviews describe your actual services, because assistants read the words.
FAQ and structured data
Question markup that matches the visible copy exactly.
Monthly prompt re-testing
The same set, the same engines, tracked over time.
Competitor citation analysis
Who the engines currently trust in your market, and what they have that you do not.
Coverage across the capital
AEO Across London
Answer engines weigh location heavily on anything with local intent, so the entity work stays geographic even when the content is not. These are the areas I work in most, though AEO travels further than Map Pack work does.
Central London
- City of London
- Westminster
- Holborn
- Soho
- Marylebone
- Mayfair
East London
- Shoreditch
- Canary Wharf
- Hackney
- Tower Hamlets
- Stratford
- Bethnal Green
North & West
- Camden
- Islington
- Hampstead
- Kensington
- Chelsea
- Hammersmith
South London
- Southwark
- Lambeth
- Clapham
- Wandsworth
- Greenwich
- Croydon
Because AEO is won on corroboration rather than proximity, it is the one service here that works as well for a UK-wide business as for a London one.
Straight answers
Questions,
Answered
What is AEO?
AEO stands for Answer Engine Optimisation. It is the work of getting your business named and cited inside the answers produced by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews, rather than only ranked in a list of links. Traditional SEO competes for a position. AEO competes to be the source the answer is built from.
What is the difference between AEO and SEO?
SEO earns you a position in a list that a person then chooses from. AEO earns you a mention inside an answer that has already done the choosing. The overlap is real, since good technical foundations serve both, but the output differs: SEO is measured in rankings and clicks, AEO is measured in whether your name appears when somebody asks for a recommendation. Increasingly you need both, because the same customer uses both.
How much do AEO services cost in London?
London AEO agencies tend to price this between about £1,000 and £3,500 a month, frequently as an add-on to an existing SEO retainer. Working with a consultant removes the account layer, so more of the budget reaches the work. I will give you a figure after the baseline audit, because scope depends entirely on how solid your entity already is, and some businesses need far less than they expect.
Can you guarantee ChatGPT will recommend my business?
No, and anybody who does is either new to this or not being straight with you. These systems are probabilistic and they change without notice. What I can do is measure where you stand today, fix the reasons you are not being cited, and show you the same prompts producing different answers three months later. That is the honest version of the offer.
Does AEO replace local SEO?
No. For a local business the Map Pack still produces more enquiries than the assistants do today, and Google Business Profile signals feed both. AEO is the layer you add so you are not overtaken as behaviour shifts. If your budget only covers one, fix the local SEO first, and I will tell you so.
How do you measure AEO when there are no clicks?
With a fixed prompt set rather than an analytics dashboard. I record which businesses each engine names for your key questions, how you are described when you do appear, and how that changes month to month. Search Console will not show you this, which is exactly why most businesses have no idea they are already being quoted, or already being left out.
Is AEO worth it for a small local business?
It depends how considered your service is. If people research before they buy, which covers clinics, law firms and removals companies, then yes, because that research increasingly happens inside an assistant. If you sell an emergency service somebody rings in a panic, the Map Pack matters far more and AEO can wait.
Do you offer AEO outside London?
Yes. AEO is the least geographic service I offer, because corroboration does not depend on proximity the way Map Pack rankings do. I am based at 9 New Change in the City, and I run this work for businesses across the whole of the UK.
The rest of what I do
Other Services
Shahed Parvej, Local SEO, AEO & GEO Consultant. 9 New Change, London EC4M 9AG. Serving London and the whole of the UK.
Based in the City of London
Find Me on the Map
I work with businesses across the whole of the UK, but the office is real and it is in EC4, a short walk from St Paul's.
If you would rather talk in person than over a call, say so and we will sort a time.
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Tell me what your business does and where it needs to be found. I'll send back a prioritised fix list within 24 hours. It's free, and yours to keep whether we work together or not.
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