Optimising's AI Philosophy

Australian businesses are now being found in places that didn't exist three years ago. AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot. Some of it sends traffic. Most of it doesn't, and that's the part most agencies aren't being straight with you about.

We measure this on real Australian accounts every month, and we run our own research rather than borrowing overseas benchmarks. Everything that follows is based on that data.

Clients used to ask us whether SEO was dead. Now they ask whether they need a separate GEO agency, and how they'd know if any of it is working.

We don’t sell AI visibility as a bolt-on line item, and we’d be sceptical of anyone who does.

The signals that get you cited by an AI engine are mostly the signals that got you ranked in the first place. That means established best practices, such as clear, structured content and the technical foundations that let machines read your site.

Third-party sources that talk about you matter too, because those citations build real brand authority. That’s why you can’t buy your way into an answer engine with a dashboard subscription. Like SEO, GEO takes consistent work, both on your site and beyond it.

On its own, an AI visibility score can easily become a vanity metric. We'll say that even though AI visibility is part of what we deliver.

Most AI-influenced buying leaves no trace in your analytics. Someone reads a cited sentence about you inside a chat response, forms an opinion, and arrives via a branded search or direct visit three days later. A share of voice score doesn't tell you whether that happened, and it certainly doesn't tell you whether it made you any money.

Here’s how we report on it. 

• We track visibility across AI surfaces so you can see whether you're present, absent, or losing ground to a competitor.
• We pair that with the signals that indicate commercial impact, including branded search demand, direct and dark traffic patterns, assisted conversions, and what your sales team is hearing.
• We tell you which numbers are directional and which are reliable. Some of this data is rough, and pretending otherwise wouldn't help you make good decisions.

There are plenty of off-the-shelf solutions claiming to measure AI visibility: we build our own tooling. We track brand visibility across AI surfaces on client accounts using Ahrefs Brand Radar, and we've automated the reporting layer around it so our team can spend more of its time on strategy.

• You get one strategy covering Google and AI engines, in one retainer, with one team accountable for it.
• Your reporting tells you what's working, what's still uncertain and what we're doing about it.
• You'll know what we're testing and why. We'd rather help you understand this shift instead of sugarcoating truths you need to know.

• We already work as the SEO and GEO layer inside other agencies' engagements, including white-label and co-delivery with web and development partners.
• We publish our research and our methodology, so you can check our reasoning before you put us in front of your client.
• We're practical about hype. When something isn't working yet, we'll say so.

In a sea of AI search “hacks” and companies peddling their GEO secret sauce, we’re going against the grain and standing by one simple truth: the best SEOs (or GEOs) are defined by their ability to adapt.

At Optimising, we’ve stayed ahead of the curve since 2008. We’re defined by the way we learn, listen, test and iterate: and this is what has always set us apart.

AI is fundamentally changing search and will continue to for a while yet. The businesses that make decisions based on evidence will come out ahead: if you’re looking for a GEO strategy that lifts visibility where it matters, Optimising can help.