Services
Getting named by the engines that answer instead of listing
Generative engine optimisation is the work of making a site quotable by the systems that answer a question rather than return a list of links: AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Gemini. It shapes pages so a machine can lift a claim, a figure or a quotation and attribute it to you. It is not sold on its own: it sits inside the search retainers, from USD 1,200 a month.
- What it is
- Shaping a site so the answering engines can quote it and name you
- Who it is for
- Sites already found in search whose enquiries have thinned
- Where it starts
- No separate fee. Inside the search retainers, from USD 1,200 a month
- Turnaround
- A written reply usually inside a day, the first log entry in week one
What it is
Generative engine optimisation is the work of making a site quotable by the systems that answer a question instead of returning a list of links: Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini, and the assistants now built into browsers. The trade shortens it to GEO, and this is the only page here that uses the term at all.
The mechanism is unglamorous. An engine that answers assembles that answer out of passages it can lift whole, so it favours a sentence stating a fact plainly, a figure carrying a date and a source, a quotation attributed to a named person, and a page laid out so a machine can tell the question from the answer. The work is writing pages until those passages exist.
Two things follow. It cannot be bolted onto a site the engines cannot read: if the text arrives only after a script has run, there is nothing to lift. And it is editorial work more than technical work, which is why it is sold inside a retainer that already writes rather than as a fix with an invoice of its own.
Who it is for
It suits organisations already found in search that have watched the enquiries thin while the rankings held steady. That pattern usually means the question is being answered above the results rather than in them. Museums, foundations, hotels and wineries, authors, architects and small businesses selling across borders all sit inside it, because their buyers ask in words rather than typing a keyword.
It also suits the reader who came to find out what the phrase means before deciding whether to pay anybody for it. That is a large share of the people searching this term, so the answer here is free. If reading it convinces you the work is inside your own team's reach, that is a good outcome.
What it costs
There is no price for this on its own, because there is no version of it that stands apart from the search work. It sits inside the retainers below, the same rungs published on the search page and on the hub. The last column says which rung actually carries it.
| Rung | Price | Does it carry the answer-engine work |
|---|---|---|
| Audit | USD 900, one-off (about AED 3,300) | A one-off visibility check across the named engines. It says where you stand, and it is credited against the first retainer month. |
| Starter retainer | USD 1,200 a month (about AED 4,400) | No. Technical fixes, two posts, citation and listing work, a monthly Search Console read. Three months minimum. |
| Growth retainer | USD 2,400 a month (about AED 8,800) | Yes. Four illustrated posts, link and mention work, the content shaping this page describes, a quarterly call. |
| Authority retainer | USD 4,500 a month (about AED 16,550) | Yes, and more of it: eight posts, digital PR, a structured data programme across the site, conversion work, a monthly call. |
USD is the anchor on every page, quote and invoice. The figure in parentheses is the same price in dirhams at the pegged rate of 3.6725 to the dollar, given as one local equivalent rather than a currency list, and correct as of 5 September 2026. Prices exclude any VAT, sales tax or withholding your own country applies to imported services.
How it differs from search work
The overlap is real: crawlability, speed, clean markup and a site genuinely about something serve both, and a page that fails those fails everywhere. The divergence starts once the page has been read, in what each system rewards.
A controlled experiment recorded in research note 10 changed one variable at a time across a fixed set of pages and measured visibility inside the engines tested. Adding quotations moved it by plus 43.5 percent, statistics by 34.2 percent, citations by 28.5 percent. Keyword stuffing, which a decade of search advice still quietly encourages, moved it minus 7.8 percent.
Those are other people's pages, and this page does not claim them as a client result. What they are good for is direction: the habits that make a page quotable turn out to be the habits that make it honest. Attribute the claim, date the figure, name the source, and stop repeating the phrase you would like to rank for.
How it is measured
Analytics reports this badly, and pretending otherwise is where most of the trade goes wrong. A person who reads an answer, closes the assistant and types your name arrives as direct traffic, so the assistant that sent them never appears in the report.
So the measurement is a log rather than a chart. A fixed set of questions, the ones your buyers actually ask, put to named engines on a dated schedule, with what each said recorded and who it named. Run monthly it shows movement; run for a year it shows whether the movement held. The studio publishes its own in the journal, so you can read the method before buying it.
How it runs
- The question set is written first. Ten to thirty questions in your buyers' words, agreed with you, because a log kept against the wrong questions measures nothing.
- A baseline is taken. Each question goes to the named engines and the answers are recorded with the date, before anything changes.
- The site is made liftable. Crawlability, speed, markup, and structured data that agrees with the visible text. This half is shared with search work and usually takes the first month.
- The pages are shaped. Defining sentences, dated figures, attributed quotations, headings written as the questions themselves, sources named on the page.
- The mentions are worked. Listings, directories and third-party pages made to state the same facts in the same words, because an engine reconciles what it finds.
- The log is repeated on schedule, and you get it as it is, including the months where nothing moved.
What it has proved
Not much yet, and this is the section where saying so matters. There is no client Search Console export behind this page, because what is being sold happens outside the property Search Console reports on. The exports on the hub belong to the search work that produced them.
One figure exists, and its provenance is the weak kind: by the owner's own count of his bookings, roughly one booking in twelve now arrives through an AI assistant rather than a search results page. That is an account of a diary, not a measured export, and it is written here the way it was recorded rather than dressed up as data.
What stands in for outcome proof is method. The log above is dated, repeatable and published, so you can read how this studio measures before paying for it. There are no testimonials on this site and no star rating in its markup, because it has neither.
Who it is not for
If what you want is a guaranteed mention in a named assistant by a named date, this is the wrong studio. Nobody can honestly give that guarantee, and the people offering it are selling a coincidence in advance.
It is also wrong for a site with nothing particular to say. This work makes a claim easier to quote, which helps only if the claim is true, specific and yours. Where the pages are generic, the honest sequence is to fix the writing first and come back to the engines afterwards.
Questions
Is this just search engine optimisation with a new name?
Partly, and the overlap is worth naming first. A page an engine cannot crawl is invisible to both, so the technical half is shared. What differs is what gets rewarded once the page has been read. A controlled experiment recorded in research note 10 moved visibility inside the engines tested by plus 43.5 percent for adding quotations, 34.2 percent for statistics and 28.5 percent for citations, while keyword stuffing moved it minus 7.8 percent. Those figures come from that experiment, not from a client of this studio.
Can you guarantee a citation?
No. Nobody can, and a studio that says otherwise is selling a number it does not control. The engines rerank constantly, they differ from each other, and two people asking the same question in one week can be given different sources. What is guaranteed is the work and the record: the pages get shaped, and the log says what the named engines actually said, whether or not it flatters the work.
Can you get an assistant like ChatGPT to recommend my business?
Not by asking it to. An assistant names a business when the material around it makes that business the easiest thing to name: a plain claim on your own site, the same facts stated consistently across listings, and third parties mentioning you in the words a buyer uses. That is the work, and it is slower than an advert.
How do I appear in the AI Overviews that Google shows?
By being liftable from a page that is already eligible to rank, which is why this is not sold apart from the search retainer. In practice: one clear defining sentence near the top, facts stated with their dates, headings written as the questions people ask, and structured data that agrees with the visible text.
Which rung of the retainer carries this work?
The Growth retainer at USD 2,400 a month and the Authority retainer at USD 4,500 a month both include it, and the Audit at USD 900 carries a one-off visibility check. The Starter retainer at USD 1,200 a month does not, on purpose: at that budget the basics buy more than shaping would.
How would I know whether it worked?
From the log rather than a dashboard. Analytics reports assistant traffic thinly, because a person who reads an answer and then types your name arrives looking like direct traffic. So the measurement is a fixed set of questions put to named engines on a dated schedule, with what each said recorded. You can check it yourself.
Sources
- The booking figure is the owner's own account of his bookings, recorded in ShepherdUX research note 07, section 2.1, and explicitly not a Search Console export.
- Visibility effects of quotations, statistics, citations and keyword stuffing: the controlled experiment recorded in ShepherdUX research note 10, September 2026.
- Retainer rungs and pricing benchmarks, ShepherdUX research note 18, section 6.3, September 2026, drawn from published agency and freelance rate surveys.
- United Arab Emirates dirham pegged at 3.6725 to the United States dollar, Central Bank of the UAE, rate as of 5 September 2026.