SEO · GEO · Local AI
Get named when your customers ask an AI.
Ranking on Google and being named inside an AI answer are two different jobs. Most agencies are only doing the first. Found First works ranking, citation, and recommendation as one system — and proves the problem exists before asking you to pay for the fix.
Chicago · St. Louis · Kansas City
“Who’s the best {your category} in {your city}?”
01
A competitor
02
Another competitor
03
A directory listing
04
Someone three suburbs over
—
Your business
Four names came back. Yours was not one of them. Nobody clicked anything. The decision was already made.
Where we test
- ChatGPT
- Claude
- Gemini
Every Snapshot runs the same ten buying questions through each of these, live and logged out, and reports where you were named and where you were not. They do not agree with each other — that disagreement is most of what the report is for. Found First has no relationship with, or influence over, any of these companies.
The problem, in numbers
The results page you optimized for is being read by fewer people every quarter.
9 in 10
of the local businesses we tested were not named in the answer for their own category and city.
Source: Found First testing, ~40 businesses, 2026
88%
of the pages AI assistants cite do not rank in Google’s top ten for the same query. Ranking is not the qualifier it used to be.
Source: Ahrefs, AI Search Overlap Study, 2025 — 15,000 prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity.
68%
of US Google searches now end without a click to anywhere. When the result is a sentence instead of a list, being sixth means being absent.
Source: SparkToro, Zero-Click Search Study, 2026 — Similarweb clickstream, US desktop and mobile web, January–April 2026.
Ranked. Cited. Chosen.
Three layers, worked as one program.
They run on different signals and most firms only sell the first one. Doing them separately is how a business ends up ranking well and getting recommended never.
01 — Ranked
Classic search, done properly.
Technical foundations, information architecture, keyword and topic cluster mapping, on-page work, content production, and earned authority. No bought links, no private networks. This is still where most high-intent traffic comes from, and it is still the substrate the models read.
02 — Cited
Getting quoted inside the answer.
Generative engine optimization: entity and knowledge graph buildout, structured data that machines can actually parse, answer-shaped content built around the questions buyers really ask, and citation campaigns on the sources the models pull from. We measure your share of AI answers as a number and report it monthly.
03 — Chosen
Being the name that gets recommended.
Local search and reputation: Google Business Profile, listing and citation consistency across the directories that feed the graph, rank grid coverage by neighborhood, and a review program that generates real reviews from real customers. Consistency across platforms is not a branding preference — it is a citation signal.
How we work
Six commitments, in writing.
01
Every price is published.
Retainers, projects, hourly rates — all of it is on the site. You will never sit through a discovery call to learn a number.
02
Proof before payment.
The AI Visibility Snapshot is free and requires no call. If it shows you are already being recommended, keep your money.
03
You own everything.
Accounts, profiles, content, files, data. During the engagement and after it. There is no hostage layer.
04
No guarantees, ever.
Nobody controls these systems. What we commit to is a measured baseline, a defined scope, and monthly reporting on the leading indicators — citations, entity coverage, rank grid movement, and share of AI answers.
05
Nothing bought, nothing faked.
We do not buy links, run private blog networks, or generate reviews. The short-term lift is not worth the long-term liability, and the models are getting better at spotting both.
06
Pass-through at cost.
Ad spend, software, stock, print, directory fees. Billed at what they cost, never marked up.
Try it yourself
Open ChatGPT and ask it who the best business in your category and city is. Whatever comes back is your real market position.
It takes sixty seconds and it is the entire pitch. If your name is in the answer, you are in better shape than most. If it isn’t, that is the gap — and your Google ranking will not close it on its own.
Start with evidence
See where you stand before you spend a dollar.
Ten real buying questions for your category and city, run through ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. You get the transcript and the scorecard. Free, and no call required.
- The exact questions, and the exact answers that came back.
- Who got named instead of you, and how often.
- The two or three fixable reasons the models are missing you.
Prefer to say it out loud? Call 314.313.1398, or read what the Snapshot covers first.
Request yours