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AI Search (GEO/AEO) Strategy — 2026-05-29

How the portfolio gets named and cited by AI answer engines (Google AI Overviews + AI Mode, ChatGPT/Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude). This is the companion to seo-traffic-strategy-2026.md: that doc wins the ten blue links; this doc wins the answer above them.

Priority property: WiseAI Agency + verticals (funeral, vet, real-estate, church, restaurant). That is where the highest-value, most-competitive AI-search queries live ("best AI receptionist for funeral homes", "AI answering service for vet clinics Ontario").

Two true things the founder already intuited:

  1. Backlinks still matter — for classic Google ranking, and as a corroboration signal for AI engines.
  2. AI search is increasingly where the journey starts — and it is won by a different mechanism than backlinks.

The reconciliation: in 2026, large language models weight unlinked brand mentions nearly as heavily as linked ones. Being named in the right context (a comparison article, a directory, a Reddit answer) matters more than the dofollow link attached to it. So the guest-post / outreach work in seo-traffic-strategy-2026.md is not wasted on AI search — but its value flips: the prize is the mention inside citable content, not the link. Optimize the placements for "would an LLM quote this sentence about WiseAI?", not just "does it pass PageRank?"

How AI answer engines actually pick who they cite — the 5 levers​

#LeverWhat it meansOur status
1Be in the index the engine readsChatGPT/Copilot → Bing index. Perplexity → own crawl + web. Google AI Overviews/AI Mode → Google index + Gemini grounding. Claude web search → Brave index.✅ Bing URL Submission + IndexNow crons shipped. AI crawlers allowed in robots.ts (* allow /). ⚠️ Confirm Bing Webmaster API keys are actually live (open founder action).
2Extractable, citable answersLLMs quote sentences that directly answer a question: definitional statements, a stat, a comparison table, an FAQ. Prose must be answer-shaped, not brochure-shaped.⚠️ JSON-LD (FAQPage/Organization/Article) present in ~23 files, but page prose on wiseaiagency.com is marketing-shaped, not answer-shaped. Needs work.
3Be in the listicles + review sites the engine shops fromFor "best X for Y" queries the model pulls from roundup articles, G2/Capterra, Product Hunt, AI directories, and Reddit — NOT your homepage. This is the single highest-leverage off-site move.❌ Not yet listed anywhere. Biggest gap and biggest opportunity. See "Get listed" below.
4Entity clarityThe engine must know what WiseAI Agency is as an entity: consistent Organization schema + sameAs, Crunchbase/Wikidata presence, identical name + one-line description everywhere.⚠️ Organization schema exists somewhere in the app; needs a crisp definitional block + sameAs array on wiseaiagency.com. No Crunchbase/Wikidata entity yet.
5MeasurementYou cannot improve what you do not watch. Track whether the brands actually get named, per engine, over time.❌ No citation tracking. Building a claude -p-free scaffold (see below).

Implementation plan by lever​

Lever 1 — Indexes (mostly done; one founder action)​

  • ✅ bing-submit + indexnow crons live in churchwiseai-web.
  • ✅ Env keys set (confirmed 2026-05-29): all 6 per-host keys (BING_API_KEY_CHURCHWISEAI_COM, _PEWSEARCH_COM, _ILLUSTRATETHEWORD_COM, _SERMONWISE_AI, _SHAREWISEAI_COM, _WISEAIAGENCY_COM) present in the churchwiseai-web Vercel project (Production, added May 25).
  • ⚠️ Remaining founder action: confirm each domain is actually VERIFIED as a site at bing.com/webmasters (the key is account-level; Bing only accepts crawl/submission for verified sites). Fastest end-to-end check: trigger /api/cron/bing-submit and read per-property HTTP status (200 = accepted/verified). The submission cron lives ONLY in the churchwiseai-web Vercel project (it submits for churchwiseai.com, pewsearch.com, illustratetheword.com centrally — PewSearch/ITW projects have no cron of their own). Env vars are PER-HOST: BING_API_KEY_CHURCHWISEAI_COM, BING_API_KEY_PEWSEARCH_COM, BING_API_KEY_ILLUSTRATETHEWORD_COM (NOT a single BING_WEBMASTER_API_KEY — that name in seo-traffic-strategy-2026.md is outdated; code in src/lib/bing-webmaster.ts is authoritative). Same key value across all three if the sites share one Bing account. wiseaiagency.com is skipped by the cron (~30 URLs) — for it, just verifying the site in Bing Webmaster so the crawler walks the sitemap is what feeds ChatGPT/Copilot. Until verification is done, AI-search visibility via Bing is throttled.
  • Keep AI crawlers allowed (do not block GPTBot/PerplexityBot/ClaudeBot/OAI-SearchBot/Google-Extended). We want to be read.

Lever 2 — llms.txt + answer-extractable content​

  • llms.txt: a curated, host-aware map telling LLMs what each property is, its key pages, and its one-line pitch. Served per-host (the domains are middleware-rewritten into one Next app, so this is a host-branching route src/app/llms.txt/route.ts, mirroring robots.ts). Low effort, increasingly respected by Anthropic/Perplexity.
  • Answer-shaped prose on the key wiseaiagency.com pages: open each with a one-sentence definition ("An AI front desk is …"), include a concrete stat, a comparison/list, and a 3-question FAQ block (we already emit FAQPage schema — make the visible prose match).

Lever 3 — Entity clarity​

  • Organization schema on wiseaiagency.com with: name, description (the canonical one-liner), url, logo, areaServed (SW Ontario + Canada), and sameAs (LinkedIn company page, Crunchbase, any press).
  • Founder actions: create/claim a Crunchbase entry and a Wikidata item for WiseAI Agency — these are disproportionately trusted by LLMs as ground-truth about what an entity is.

Lever 4 — Get listed (highest-leverage off-site; this is what AI quotes)​

Destinations AI engines repeatedly cite for "best/which tool" and "agency for X" queries. Prioritized for WiseAI Agency + verticals.

Software / AI directories (cited constantly by ChatGPT + Perplexity):

  • Product Hunt — a launch (the "voice + chatbot AI front desk for local service businesses" angle)
  • G2 — categories: Conversational AI, AI Agents, Virtual Receptionist / Answering Service
  • Capterra + GetApp + Software Advice (Gartner network — one submission, three listings)
  • There's An AI For That (theresanaiforthat.com) — highest-traffic AI directory
  • Futurepedia · Futuretools.io · Toolify.ai — major AI-tool directories
  • AI agency directories: Clutch, DesignRush, The Manifest ("AI development / AI agencies")

Entity / trust graph:

  • Crunchbase, Wikidata, LinkedIn company page (also serve as sameAs for Lever 3)

Local (SW Ontario — for "AI agency near me / Ontario" queries + Maps):

  • Google Business Profile (critical — also feeds AI local results) + Bing Places
  • London Chamber of Commerce, Woodstock District Chamber, Tillsonburg/Oxford business directories
  • Ontario / Canadian business directories (already partly covered in the guest-post list)

Vertical roundups + review surfaces (where buyers + LLMs look per vertical):

  • Funeral: Connecting Directors, ASD blog, funeral-software roundups, NFDA member directory
  • Vet: I Love Veterinary, vet-software roundups (Capterra "Veterinary"), dvm360
  • Real estate: GeekEstate, real-estate-tech roundups, proptech directories
  • Church: ChurchTechToday directory, MinistryTech, Capterra "Church Management"

Reddit + community (heavily cited by AI for "real" opinions):

  • Authentic participation (not spam) in r/smallbusiness, r/funeraldirectors, r/veterinary, r/realtors, r/AI_Agents. Answer real questions; mention WiseAI only where genuinely relevant. LLMs quote Reddit threads as "what real users say."

Guest-post / listicle placements: see PLAN_wiseaiagency_guest_post_targets_2026-05-29.md — re-framed here as citation surfaces: prioritize pieces that take a "best AI receptionist for [vertical]" comparison shape, because that is the shape AI engines quote.

Lever 5 — Citation tracking​

  • A weekly job that prompts the major engines with ~20 target questions (per vertical: "best AI answering service for funeral homes", "AI receptionist for vet clinics", "AI front desk Ontario", etc.) and logs whether WiseAI / ChurchWiseAI / FuneralWiseAI / VetWiseAI gets named, linked, or absent.
  • Cost-honest design: measuring other engines (ChatGPT/Perplexity/Gemini) needs their APIs, which cost money and need keys the founder may not have — this is NOT a claude -p job (claude -p measures Claude, not the competitor engines). v1 ships as a pluggable scaffold: a defined question set + a "manual paste" mode + an optional Perplexity-API mode (cheap, ~$0.005/query) gated behind an env key. Founder decides whether to wire a paid engine key. No silent API spend.

Priority sequencing​

This week (free, fast, low-risk):

  1. Ship host-aware llms.txt route (wiseaiagency.com + verticals first, then all properties).
  2. Add the definitional block + sameAs Organization schema on wiseaiagency.com.
  3. Confirm Bing Webmaster API keys are live (founder action).
  4. Stand up the citation-tracking scaffold + the 20-question set (baseline measurement).

This month (the real AI-search lever): 5. Get listed: Product Hunt launch, G2, Capterra/Gartner network, There's An AI For That, Crunchbase, Google Business Profile. 6. Publish the flagship guest-post articles (drafts in knowledge/drafts/guest-posts-2026-05-29/) — written answer-extractable so AI can quote them. 7. Reddit/community presence per vertical.

Ongoing: 8. Weekly citation tracking; expand "get listed" to vertical directories; convert wins into new target questions.

What we are NOT doing​

  • Not blocking AI crawlers (we want to be read).
  • Not mass-producing thin AI content to chase volume (see Arvow assessment 2026-05-29 — skipped). Answer-extractable quality beats volume for GEO.
  • Not paying for an AI-visibility SaaS (Profound/Peec at $500/mo) before the free scaffold proves the need.
  • Not buying directory links from link farms (see seo-traffic-strategy-2026.md §2).

Implementation status (2026-05-29)​

Built on branch feat/geo-ai-search in churchwiseai-web (2 commits off origin/main, NOT yet pushed — awaiting founder OK + PR):

  • ✅ Lever 2 — host-aware src/app/llms.txt/route.ts (per-host llms.txt for wiseaiagency / funeral / vet / church / sermonwise / sharewise). Verified: eslint + tsc clean, dev server HTTP 200, host-aware bodies confirmed.
  • ✅ Lever 3 — site-wide Organization JSON-LD in wiseaiagency/layout.tsx (name, description, areaServed, knowsAbout, founder). sameAs omitted until verified LinkedIn/Crunchbase/Wikidata exist.
  • ✅ Lever 5 — scripts/seo/ai-citation-tracker.mjs scaffold (manual worksheet = zero cost default; Perplexity mode gated behind key + --confirm). Verified: writes worksheet + 80-row baseline JSONL.
  • Pre-push note: a new route.ts exists (llms.txt); if scripts/check-api-drift.sh globs all route.ts, confirm it ignores non-/api/ routes at PR time.

Lead-magnet + service package (customer-facing, drafts): knowledge/drafts/geo-lead-magnet-2026-05-29/ — guide, AI-visibility scorecard, and combined "Local Visibility (Local SEO + GEO)" monthly-service outline.

Open founder actions​

  • Bing env keys: ✅ all 6 present in churchwiseai-web (added May 25). funeralwiseai.com + veterinarywiseai.com are ✅ already VERIFIED in Bing Webmaster (founder confirmed 2026-05-29), so Bing's natural crawl of their sitemaps (exist per robots.ts) already indexes them → feeds ChatGPT/Copilot. No action needed for AI-search visibility. NOTE: the bing-submit cron code only processes 3 hosts (churchwiseai/pewsearch/ITW); it does NOT submit for funeral/vet/wiseaiagency/sermonwise/sharewise. Adding BING_API_KEY_FUNERALWISEAI_COM / _VETERINARYWISEAI_COM env vars alone would do nothing without also adding those hosts to the cron — and active submission is low-value for small, already-verified sites. Same key value (account-level) if ever wired.
  • Confirm each domain shows VERIFIED at bing.com/webmasters; fastest end-to-end test is triggering /api/cron/bing-submit and reading per-property HTTP status (200 = accepted).
  • Decide whether to fund a Perplexity (or other engine) API key for automated citation tracking, or run it manual-paste.
  • Claim/create Crunchbase + Wikidata entries for WiseAI Agency.
  • Approve guest-post article drafts before any send (no-send-without-blessing).