Answer engine optimisation
When someone asks an AI for an electrician, be the answer it gives
A growing share of people no longer type “electrician near me” and scroll. They ask ChatGPT, Google's AI, Perplexity or Copilot who to trust and how much it should cost, and they get a short answer with two or three names in it. AEO is the work that puts your name in that answer: the profile, the pages, the markup and the mentions an engine reads before it recommends anyone.
Where the answers come from now
- ChatGPT
- Google AI Overviews
- Google AI Mode
- Gemini
- Perplexity
- Microsoft Copilot
- Claude
The questions
What people ask an AI before they ring an electrician
These are real shapes of question, not keywords. An engine answers them with names and reasons, and the reasons come from what it can find about you.
- “Who is a good electrician in Wrexham for a full rewire?”
- “How much should an EICR cost for a three-bed house?”
- “Do I need a new consumer unit to install an EV charger?”
- “Electrician near me that does emergency call-outs tonight”
- “Is it worth getting an NICEIC registered electrician?”
- “Best electrician for a commercial fit-out in Chester”
The sources
What an engine reads before it names you
Every AI answer is assembled from an index. ChatGPT and Copilot lean on Bing; Google's AI and Gemini lean on Google. So the foundations are the ones ordinary SEO built, and AEO is about being quotable inside them.
- Your Google Business Profile
- Categories, services, hours, photos, and above all the reviews and what they say. The engines read it through Google and Bing and treat it as the record of who you are.
- Your own pages
- One job per page, the town named, the question answered in the first paragraph, the price logic explained. Engines quote pages that answer; they skip pages that advertise.
- Registers and directories they trust
- NICEIC and NAPIT registers, Checkatrade, Which? Trusted Traders, the local press, the council's approved lists. Being on them, with the same name and phone everywhere, is how an engine decides you are real.
- Structured data
- Electrician, LocalBusiness, Service and FAQ markup that tells a machine what the page already tells a person. Cheap to add, and most electrician sites have none.
- What people say about you elsewhere
- Reddit threads, Facebook groups, forum answers. An engine weighs a stranger's recommendation more than your own copy, which is why the review routine matters twice.
SEO and AEO
Same foundations, a different finish line
Google gives ten results and a map. An answer engine gives one paragraph. The work overlaps by about two thirds; the rest is writing to be quoted and being cited where the engines look.
| Search (SEO) | Answer engines (AEO) | |
|---|---|---|
| What it targets | Ten blue links and the map pack | One spoken answer with two or three names in it |
| What wins | Relevance, reviews, links, proximity | Clarity, consistency, being cited by sources the engine already trusts |
| What we measure | Clicks, impressions, position | Which prompts name you, which sources it cites, referrals from chatgpt.com and the rest |
| Timescale | Weeks for the profile, months for pages | Similar; the engines refresh from the same indexes |
Each month
What the AEO work contains
Included in every tier. It is not a separate retainer, because most of it is the same work done with the engines in mind.
This site scores 100 on the AI-readiness check in Quence, our free audit tool. Yours can be checked in a minute.
- A prompt list for your trade and your towns: the thirty questions people actually type into an AI before they phone an electrician
- Answer-first pages and FAQs written to be quoted: the first sentence answers, the rest explains
- A schema graph on every page (Electrician, Service, FAQ, breadcrumbs) and an llms.txt file so the crawlers know where to look
- AI crawlers allowed in robots.txt and never blocked by the firewall, checked monthly, because a default setting can switch it off
- Citations on the registers and directories the engines quote, with your name, address and phone identical everywhere
- Reviews asked for in words the engines pick up: the job, the town, the outcome
- Monthly check: we ask each engine your prompts, record who is named, and put it in the report next to the Search Console numbers
Honest expectations
What this will and will not do for an electrician
It will get you into the sources the engines read, and named for the prompts where you deserve to be. It will not replace the map pack this year: for most electricians the map still sends the emergency and the socket, and the AI sends the person researching a rewire or an EV charger. The point is to be present in both, because the second one is growing and the work is shared. Pricing is on the pricing page; the audit tells you where you stand today.
Questions electricians ask us
Do electricians really get customers from ChatGPT?
Some, and more each quarter. For a trade it is still a small share of enquiries next to the map pack, but the person asking an AI which electrician to trust is usually about to book. The work that gets you named also lifts the ordinary rankings, so nothing is wasted if the AI share stays small.
Is AEO different from GEO?
Same job, two names. Answer engine optimisation and generative engine optimisation both mean being the source an AI quotes. We use AEO because the buyer is asking a question and wants an answer with a name in it.
Can you guarantee ChatGPT recommends me?
No, and be wary of anyone who does. The engines decide, and they change. What we can do is put you in the sources they read, write the pages they quote, and show you every month which prompts name you.
Do I need a new website for this?
Not usually. Most of the work is the profile, the citations and a handful of pages written properly. A site that cannot be crawled or has one page for everything will need fixing first, and we say so in the audit.
How do you measure it?
Three ways. The monthly prompt check, run by a person, recorded prompt by prompt. Referral traffic from the engines in Analytics. And the AI-readiness score in Quence, our free audit tool, which reads your site the way a crawler does.
Is it extra?
No. AEO is inside every tier, because the pages, the schema and the citations are the same work done properly. What changes between tiers is how many towns and how much new content.
Find out whether an AI would name you today
Send us your business name and your town. We ask the engines the questions your customers ask, and tell you who they name and why, with the quote.