Frequently asked
Last Updated: August 6, 2026
Twenty five questions we get asked on almost every call, answered straight. If yours is not here, ask it.
These are the questions northern Michigan owners actually ask, along with the ones people are searching for nationally about AI search. Nothing here is a sales pitch dressed as a question.
Where the honest answer is "nobody can promise that," it says so.
What is actually changing in search
What is answer engine optimization (AEO)?
Answer engine optimization, or AEO, is the work of making a business readable and citable by AI assistants that answer questions directly instead of returning a list of links. Where classic SEO aims at a ranking position, AEO aims at being one of the handful of businesses named inside the answer itself.
In practice it means publishing facts in machine readable form, structured business details, opening hours, service pages, and published answers to real questions, rather than writing prose that reads well but says nothing a machine can extract.
What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?
Generative engine optimization, or GEO, is the practice of getting a business referenced in the responses of generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Claude. It covers the same ground as AEO and the two terms are used almost interchangeably in the industry.
The distinction people draw is one of emphasis. AEO leans toward direct answer boxes and featured snippets. GEO leans toward answers a model writes from scratch. The underlying work, making your business legible to a machine, is identical.
What is the difference between AEO and GEO?
There is no meaningful practical difference. AEO and GEO describe the same objective, being named in an AI generated answer, and any competent approach to one is an approach to the other. AEO is the older term and tends to be used around answer boxes; GEO arrived with generative chat assistants.
Anyone selling them as two separate services with two separate price tags is selling you the same work twice.
What is the difference between AEO and SEO?
SEO tries to win a position on a page of blue links. AEO tries to get the business named inside the answer, where there are no blue links to win. The difference matters because a growing share of searches now end without a click.
They are not alternatives. The structured, current, well organized site that an AI assistant can read is also the site a search engine ranks. AEO is best understood as SEO that assumes the reader is a machine writing an answer rather than a person scanning results.
How does answer engine optimization actually work?
An AI assistant answering a question assembles it from sources it can read and trust. Answer engine optimization works by making a business one of those sources: allowing AI crawlers to fetch the site, publishing business details in structured data, giving each service its own page, answering common questions in plain language, and keeping a visible signal that the site is current.
None of that is a trick. It is the unglamorous work of being legible, which is exactly why most local sites fail at it.
Getting a local business into AI answers
How do I get my business to show up in ChatGPT?
Start by making sure ChatGPT is allowed to read your site at all. Check your robots.txt for a rule blocking GPTBot, then publish your business details, hours, service area, and services in structured data, give each service a real page, and keep the site current so nothing looks abandoned.
Then get listed accurately in the directories that assistants lean on, because a large share of the sources cited in AI answers about local businesses are directories rather than the businesses' own websites.
Why does AI recommend my competitor and not me?
Usually because it can read them and it cannot read you. The most common causes are a robots.txt that blocks AI crawlers, business facts that exist only inside images or scripts, no structured data, and a site with no signal that anything has changed in years.
It is rarely about who is better at the job. It is about who is legible.
Can anyone guarantee my business will appear in an AI answer?
No, and you should walk away from anyone who says otherwise. AI answers are generated fresh, vary between users and sessions, and are not something any vendor controls.
What can be controlled is whether your business is readable, current, and structured well enough to be eligible. That is participation, not placement, and it is the only honest claim in this category.
Do AI assistants read my website, or just directories?
Both, and directories carry more weight than most owners expect. In studies of AI answers about local businesses, directory and aggregator sites make up the large majority of cited sources, while businesses' own websites make up a much smaller share.
That is an argument for doing both: keep your own site readable so you can be cited directly, and keep your directory listings accurate and linked so you appear in the sources assistants reach for first.
Is my robots.txt blocking AI crawlers without me knowing?
Quite possibly. Several hosting platforms and CDNs now add rules blocking GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, Amazonbot and others by default, and most owners were never told. The file is public, so you can check it yourself by visiting your domain followed by /robots.txt.
If those names appear next to a Disallow rule, assistants people actually ask for recommendations have been told to skip your site.
Does schema markup help with AI search?
Yes. Schema markup, also called structured data, is how a business states its type, address, hours, services, and answers in a form a machine reads without guessing. For a local business, LocalBusiness and FAQPage markup are the two that do the most work.
Without it, an assistant is inferring what kind of business you are from prose, and inference is where you get left out.
Does my Google Business Profile matter for AI answers?
Yes. A complete, accurate Google Business Profile is one of the strongest signals about a local business, and its details flow into map results, local packs, and AI answers alike. Hours, category, service area, and phone number should match your website exactly.
Mismatched details between your profile and your site are worse than missing ones, because they give a machine a reason to distrust both.
The frozen website problem
How often should I update my website?
Often enough that nothing on it is wrong, which for most local service businesses means whenever something changes rather than on a schedule. Hours, services, pricing, staff, and seasonal availability are the things that go stale and cost you.
There is no magic frequency that pleases an algorithm. What matters is that a machine reading your site today can tell it describes the business as it operates today.
My website looks fine. Why would AI skip it?
Because looking fine and being readable are different problems. A site can be well designed and still hide every useful fact inside an image, build its headings with JavaScript, carry no structured data, and show no evidence of having changed since it launched.
Design is what your customer sees. Structure is what decides whether you get mentioned.
My nephew updates our site. Why would I change that?
Because the problem is usually not the quality of the work, it is the delay. An update that waits three weeks for someone with a day job is an update your customers and every AI assistant see as the old information for three weeks.
If your current arrangement gets changes live the same day and keeps the structured data current, it is working. If it does not, that is the gap.
What IntuaSite is and how it works
What is IntuaSite?
IntuaSite is a done for you website service for local service businesses, built so the owner can keep it current just by talking. You say what changed, IntuaSite writes it onto a private copy of your site, you look it over, and you publish it.
Every site is built from day one with the structure that search engines and AI assistants read, and a monthly check reports what has changed.
How do I update my website by talking?
You describe the change in plain language, the same way you would tell an employee. IntuaSite writes that change onto a private copy of your site, shows you the result, and waits. When you approve it, it publishes.
Talk, Approve, Publish. There is no portal to learn, no ticket to file, and no waiting for a call back.
What happens to my live site while I am deciding?
Nothing. Every change is written to a private copy first. Your live site is untouched until you tap publish, and every previous version stays recoverable.
This is the core safety contract of the product and it is not configurable, because the entire value of speaking an update disappears if you cannot trust what happens next.
What if the AI writes something wrong?
You see it before anyone else does, because nothing publishes without your approval. The draft sits on a private copy of the site until you read it and say yes.
Beyond that, protected content, pricing, guarantees, legal terms, and disclaimers, triggers an explicit confirmation before anything moves. And no fact about your business goes on the site without being verified with you in writing first.
Do I own my website?
Yes. You own your content, your domain, and your business information. IntuaSite builds, hosts, and maintains the site while you are a subscriber.
If you leave, you keep your content and your domain. The specific handover terms are set out in your service agreement.
Money and commitment
How much does a website cost for a small business?
Across the market, a custom small business website typically runs from a few thousand dollars for a simple brochure site to well into five figures for a larger build, usually as a one time project fee with ongoing changes billed separately or not offered at all.
IntuaSite works differently: a setup fee set by your scope of work, then a monthly or yearly subscription that covers hosting, security, backups, unlimited spoken updates, and the monthly findability check. The plans and current rates are on the home page.
How much does AEO or GEO cost?
Sold as a standalone service by an agency, answer engine optimization is commonly priced as a monthly retainer in the same range as ongoing SEO, often several hundred to several thousand dollars a month depending on scope and market.
IntuaSite does not price it separately. The structure AI assistants read is built into every site from day one, and the monthly findability check is included at every plan level, because a site that is not readable was never finished.
What happens if I want to leave?
You cancel, and you keep your content and your domain. There is no long term contract holding you in place.
What ends is the service: the spoken updates, the monthly check, the hosting, and the maintenance. The specific transfer terms are in your service agreement, which you see before any work begins.
Working with us in northern Michigan
Do you only work with businesses in northern Michigan?
No, but it is where we are and where we do most of our work. IntuaSite is based in Traverse City and serves the Grand Traverse and Petoskey regions along with the rest of northern and northwest Michigan.
The work itself is not geographically limited. Being local simply means you can get a person on the phone who knows the market you sell into.
What areas do you serve?
IntuaSite serves northern and northwest Michigan from Traverse City, including the Grand Traverse area and the greater Petoskey area.
That covers Traverse City, Acme, Williamsburg, Kingsley, Interlochen, Suttons Bay, Leland, Northport, Elk Rapids, Bellaire, Kalkaska, Frankfort, Beulah, Empire, Glen Arbor, Manistee and Cadillac, along with Petoskey, Harbor Springs, Charlevoix, Boyne City, East Jordan, Alanson, Pellston and Gaylord.
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