About Us

Helping Bay Area Businesses
Get Recommended by AI

Bay Area AEO is an answer engine optimization agency serving the North Bay, South Bay, East Bay and Peninsula. We help local businesses show up, accurately and often, when customers ask AI for recommendations.

Try the AI Demo Book a Call

Get a Free AI Visibility Check

See what ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI say about your business, and who they recommend instead.

Prefer to talk? Book a 30-minute call on our calendar.

Try It Yourself

See How AI Picks Who to Recommend

Pick a question, choose an AI, then switch on the signals we build. Watch what happens to your business in the answer.

1 Ask a question

2 Pick an AI

Your business: Not mentioned

Can you recommend a dentist in San Mateo who's good with anxious patients and takes Delta Dental?

3 Switch on AEO signals

Consistent listingsYour name, hours and address match on Google, Bing, Apple Maps and Yelp.Specific reviewsCustomers describe what you do best, in their own words.Answer-ready websiteClear pages that answer the exact questions people ask AI.Structured dataSchema markup tells AI your services, service area and hours.Trusted mentionsLocal press, guides and directories mention you by name.

AI confidence in your business6%

Invisible

A simulated example to show how AI assistants weigh information when choosing businesses. Real answers vary by platform and change over time.

Why We Exist

Search Changed.
Most Businesses Haven't.

For twenty years, getting found online meant ranking on page one of Google. Now a growing share of customers skip the list entirely. They ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google's AI Overviews a question and get a short answer with two or three names in it.

The businesses in those answers aren't always the biggest or the best. They're the ones AI understands: consistent listings, clear websites, specific reviews and mentions in sources AI trusts. Most local businesses have never been told any of this.

Bay Area AEO exists to close that gap for Bay Area businesses, starting with an honest look at what AI says about you today.

Measure what AI actually says

We don't report vanity rankings. We show you the real answers AI gives to your customers' questions, before and after.

Accuracy beats volume

AI rewards clear, consistent, truthful information. We never use fake reviews, spam or tactics that could backfire.

Plain English, always

AI search is new and full of jargon. We explain what we're doing, why it matters and what it's changing.

One Discipline, Many Names

AEO, GEO, AIO,
AI SEO & LLM SEO.

The industry hasn't settled on a single name yet. Whatever you call it, the goal is the same: when someone asks an AI assistant for a business like yours, your name should be in the answer, described accurately, with a reason to choose you.

We call it AEO, short for answer engine optimization. Here's how the other terms line up.

How We Work

AEO — Answer Engine OptimizationThe term we use. Making your business the answer when people ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Google's AI Overviews or a voice assistant.
GEO — Generative Engine OptimizationThe same work, named for the generative AI engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) that write answers instead of listing links.
AIO — AI OptimizationA broader label for making your business easy for AI systems to understand, trust and recommend.
AI SEO — Artificial Intelligence Search Engine OptimizationSEO adapted for AI-powered search, including Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode.
LLM SEO — Large Language Model Search Engine OptimizationOptimizing for the large language models behind AI assistants and the sources they learn from and cite.