AI SEO is the work of getting your business found, understood and recommended when customers ask an AI assistant instead of scrolling search results. It is not a separate trick: it runs on the same foundation as local SEO, with a few extra checks that decide whether ChatGPT, Google’s AI answers or Perplexity name you or a competitor.
Published November 2, 2026. Updated November 10, 2026, with the new ads in AI answers. Written by Rares Rata, who runs SEO and AI Search at We Lead in Naples. Based on Google’s and OpenAI’s own documentation and on the AI search test we ran for Naples businesses, with every source logged.
AI SEO means making your business easy for AI assistants to find, read, trust and quote. Google says there are no special requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode: the fundamentals of SEO still decide it. In our Naples test, three things decided who got recommended: a complete Google Business Profile put a business on the list, its own website decided how it was described, and when the website said nothing specific, a directory described it instead.
What is AI SEO?
AI SEO is search engine optimization for the answers that AI assistants write. When someone asks ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Copilot or Perplexity “who is the best kitchen remodeler in Naples?”, the assistant does not show ten links. It names a few businesses, describes each one in a sentence and cites the pages it took that from. AI SEO is about being one of those names, and being described accurately.
You will see other labels for the same work: AEO (answer engine optimization), GEO (generative engine optimization) and AI visibility. They describe the same goal from different angles. For a local business, the practical question is the same in every case: when a customer asks an AI who to hire, are you in the answer?
How do AI assistants decide which businesses to mention?
We tested this in our own market. We asked six questions a real buyer would type, across home building, kitchen remodeling, real estate and flooring, on Perplexity and Google AI Mode, and logged all 95 cited sources from the twelve answers. The full method and results are in our Naples AI search test. Three patterns decided the answers.
| What the AI needed | Where it took it from | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Who to put on the list | The Google Business Profile: names, ratings, review counts and addresses appeared inside the answers | An incomplete or unclaimed profile keeps you out of the conversation |
| How to describe each business | The business’s own website, especially concrete facts: years in business, licenses, areas served, a named specialty | Adjectives like “premier” were never quoted. Facts were. |
| A fallback when the website was vague | Directories such as Yelp and Houzz | If your site says little, a directory profile you may not control speaks for you |
The two platforms overlapped far less than we expected, and answers changed between runs. When we checked again on October 14, ChatGPT mentioned We Lead in two of three runs for a marketing question and Google AI Mode did not name us for web design. That is why a single check is an anecdote, and why we repeat every question before drawing a conclusion.
Is AI SEO different from regular SEO?
Less than most pitches suggest. Google’s own documentation on AI features and your website says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, no special optimizations, and no new machine-readable files or markup to create. The SEO fundamentals still apply, starting with letting crawlers reach your pages.
| Classic local SEO | What AI search adds | |
|---|---|---|
| Getting found | Rankings in Google and the map pack | Being named inside an answer, often above every link |
| Access | Googlebot can crawl the site | Each AI platform’s crawler can too. OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot are not shown in ChatGPT search answers. |
| Content | Pages that match what people search | Pages that answer the question in the first sentence, in words an assistant can quote |
| Trust | Reviews, links, a complete profile | The same signals, plus consistent facts everywhere the AI cross-checks you |
| Measuring | Rankings and Search Console | Repeated test questions, logged with the date and the sources cited |
The scale is why it matters now. Industry trackers reported in late October 2026 that AI Overviews appeared on more than 80% of Google searches in their samples, and on 82.5% of US branded searches in SE Ranking’s data, while seoClarity measured a lower share, about 62%, a month earlier. The exact number varies by study; the direction does not.
What does AI SEO include?
For a Naples business, this is the work in the order we do it:
Let the AI crawlers in
Check robots.txt and any firewall or CDN settings, so search crawlers, including OpenAI’s OAI-SearchBot, can read your pages. A blocked crawler is the one problem no content can fix.
Complete the Google Business Profile
Categories, services, hours, photos and a steady flow of reviews. In our test, this is what put businesses on the list. Our guide to why a business does not show up on Google Maps covers the fixes.
Put verifiable facts on your website
When you were founded, what you are licensed for, which areas you serve, what you specialize in, in plain sentences. These are the lines AI answers quote.
Answer questions directly
Pages and FAQs that answer the buyer’s question in the first sentence, with question headings, so an assistant can lift the answer without guessing.
Make the directories match
Claim your Yelp, Houzz or industry profiles and make them say what your website says. If a directory describes you, it should describe you correctly.
Measure with repeated questions
Write down the questions your customers would ask, run each one several times on more than one platform, and log who is named and which sources are cited. Repeat every few months.
Can you pay to appear in AI answers?
You can buy a labeled ad next to the answer, not a place inside it. In November 2026 Google started showing ads in AI Mode on answers to follow-up questions, which it calls multiturn ads. Search Engine Roundtable saw two ads labeled “Sponsored” at the bottom of a follow-up answer, and more on the third and fourth follow-ups. Google told the site: “Ads will be clearly labeled as ‘Sponsored.’” Microsoft does something similar: Bing shows search and shopping ads at the top of Bing AI Mode, formerly Copilot Search.
What the ads do not change is the answer itself. Nothing Google said suggests that paying moves a business into the list the assistant writes, or into the sources it cites. Those still come from the same places as before: your Google Business Profile, your website and what others write about you. For a local business, that splits the decision in two. Ads can put you next to the answer this week. Being named inside the answer is still earned with the work described above, and it is the part a competitor cannot simply outbid.
How do you measure AI visibility?
There is no single dashboard for every assistant yet. Google counts traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode inside the regular Web search report in Search Console, so it does not show up as a separate number there. ChatGPT is the first to report its own numbers: since November 2026, a business that claims its profile sees how often ChatGPT mentioned its website and how many people clicked through. Here is how to claim your business in ChatGPT, from our own setup. The most honest measurement is the one from our test: a fixed set of buyer questions, run on several platforms, repeated, saved with the date. Compare it every quarter, and watch the enquiries that follow, not just the mentions.
AI SEO sits on top of good local SEO in Naples, not instead of it. If you want it done for you, our AI SEO services in Naples start with exactly this check, and they are included in every SEO engagement we run.
Frequently asked questions
Want to know what AI says about your business today? Our free audit runs your buyer questions across AI platforms, alongside your rankings and your Google Business Profile, with a written list of what to fix first. See what our AI visibility work in Naples includes.
About the author. Rares Rata runs SEO and AI Search at We Lead in Naples, FL. The data behind this guide comes from the AI search test we run on our own market, published with the method and the results, including the questions where we were not named.
