AI Search Optimization · Spokane, WA
When someone asks ChatGPT who to hire, be the answer.
AI search optimization — AEO, GEO, answer engine optimization, pick your acronym — is the work of getting your business recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google’s AI answers. Spokane Biz Doctors does that work for Spokane businesses, and measures it the same way we measure everything: in citations you can count, not vibes.
Your customers already ask AI assistants who to trust — “best bookkeeper in Spokane,” “who should remodel my kitchen,” “which realtor knows the north side.” The assistant answers with two or three names. Either yours is one of them, or a competitor’s is.
How it works
There is no submit button. There are five inputs.
An answer engine doesn’t rank ten links — it picks the sources it trusts and quotes them. Getting picked is not a trick; it’s a condition your business either meets or doesn’t. We work all five inputs, because any one of them alone is a wheel without a cart.
Entity authority
The engines have to know who you are: one consistent name, address, phone, and description everywhere your business appears — your site, Google, LinkedIn, the directories that matter. Contradictions read as risk, and risk doesn't get recommended.
Third-party corroboration
AI assistants trust what others say about you more than what you say about yourself. Reviews, local press, professional listings, real citations — the independent record that makes your own claims safe to repeat.
Structured data
Schema markup that tells machines, unambiguously, what you do, where, for whom, and at what price. Humans never see it. Every engine reads it.
Both indexes, current
Google's index feeds Gemini and AI Overviews; Bing's feeds ChatGPT and Copilot. Most local sites are stale in one and missing from the other. We fix both and keep them fed.
Content worth quoting
Pages that answer real questions directly, with specifics a machine can lift and attribute. Generic service-page prose gets skipped; direct answers get cited. It is a different writing discipline, and it's the one we practice on this very page.
Then: measurement
We track whether the assistants actually cite you — across the commercially valuable prompts for your niche — so the work answers to a number, monthly, like everything else we ship.
Measured, not promised
8,270 AI citations. Seven weeks. New domain.
True Northwest Group launched a brand-new site with us on July 8, 2026. By August 26, 2026, it held an average Google position of 9.8, had earned 963 clicks — and was being cited 8,270 times a month in Google’s AI answers, up 38% in two weeks. Every number is from Search Console, with the as-of date attached.
Read the full case study →“Amazing what little time it took for us to climb to number one in out niche on chat GPT and Google search. They know SEO!”
The treatment
Diagnosis first. Then the dose you choose.
Like everything on our treatment ladder, AI visibility starts by measuring where you actually stand: whether Google and Bing have your current site, what the assistants say about your business today, and where your profile and citations contradict each other. Then we fix in order of leverage — and you can see the packages and prices without booking a call.
Straight answers
The questions owners actually ask.
- Can you guarantee my business shows up in ChatGPT?
- No — and nobody honest can. There is no submission form and no switch an agency can flip. AI assistants recommend businesses the way a careful referral works: they check what the open web says about you, whether independent sources corroborate it, and whether your information is structured enough to trust. What we guarantee is the work that moves those inputs, and measurement that shows whether it's working.
- What actually makes an AI assistant recommend a business?
- Entity authority (the engines know who you are and what you do), third-party corroboration (reviews, citations, press, directories that agree with your own site), structured data that machines can read, real local signals like an accurate Google Business Profile, and content that answers questions directly enough to be quoted. It is several disciplines working together, not one trick.
- How is this different from regular SEO?
- Traditional SEO earns you a ranking; AI search earns you a citation. An answer engine doesn't show ten links — it picks the few sources it trusts and quotes them. The overlap between top Google results and AI-cited sources is surprisingly small, so a business can rank respectably and still be invisible in AI answers. The work overlaps; the target does not.
- Why does Bing matter if my customers use Google?
- ChatGPT's live web search runs on Bing's index. A site that Google indexes but Bing doesn't effectively does not exist to the world's most-used AI assistant. Making sure both indexes have your current site is step zero of AI visibility — it's one of the first things we check in a diagnosis, and one of the most common problems we find.
- How long does it take to see results?
- Index and profile fixes show up in days to weeks. Citations in AI answers build over one to three months as the engines re-crawl and re-weigh sources. Our fastest measured client result: a brand-new domain earning thousands of citations in Google's AI answers within seven weeks of launch. Slower is normal; forever means the diagnosis was wrong.
- What does it cost?
- The SEO & AI Visibility package is $247 as a one-time implementation. Broader engagements — the full diagnostic, done-for-you execution, or always-on management — are priced on the treatment ladder on our homepage, so you choose the dose after the diagnosis, not before.
Spokane Biz Doctors is a Spokane, WA marketing and AI-visibility practice — (323) 600-4763 · help@spokanebizdoctors.com. Serving Spokane, Spokane Valley, Liberty Lake, and Coeur d’Alene.