Appearance
Where you show up, and how
Which of the five answers name your company, where you appear, and in what terms. Being listed last as an alternative is different from being the recommendation, and it calls for a different fix.
Complimentary brief · U.S. mid-market
When a buyer asks AI about your market, does your company make the answer?
The ASK Index tests five questions your prospects are likely to ask. We record which companies appear, which sources shape those answers, and what your content needs to say more clearly.
What changed
Nothing moved in your rankings. Your pipeline moved anyway.
For twenty years, the job was to be findable. A buyer typed a phrase, scanned a page of links, and picked one. You could see that phrase and measure your position against it. Most reporting habits still sit on that chain.
That path still exists. It is no longer the only one, and for a growing share of buyers it is not the first one.
Now a buyer describes a situation in a full sentence and reads a paragraph back. That paragraph names three companies and gives a reason for each, assembled from sources the buyer may never open. Then they move on without seeing a results page or typing a keyword you track.
Your position report still looks fine. It is measuring a different path.
Somewhere in that paragraph, a company gets recommended. Your current reporting may never show you whose name was in it.
The deliverable
Five findings on five questions your buyers already ask.
We run the questions by hand across the AI answer systems your buyers use, then write up what we saw.
Substitution
Who takes the slot instead
The companies filling the space you want, plus the reason each answer gives for naming them. That reason shows what the system has concluded about your category and what you can change.
Sources
What the answer was built from
The pages, reviews, directories, forums, and articles each system draws on. This is usually the most actionable finding in the brief, and often the most surprising.
Gaps
The three we would close first
Three gaps standing between your company and the answer, ranked by effort and likely impact. A focused sequence is more useful than a backlog of forty possible fixes.
The call
Twenty minutes with the person who ran it
A working conversation with the strategist who tested your questions. You get the reasoning behind each finding, including the places where the evidence is uncertain.
How it works
You give us three things. We do the rest.
Five business days from a complete submission to a written brief, followed by a working call.
You submit the inputs
Your website, one competitor you lose to, and one question buyers ask. Write it in their words. Category language can skew the whole set.
We build the other four
Your question anchors the set. We derive four more from your market, competitor positioning, and the way buyers describe the problem. Then we run all five by hand.
You get the brief and the call
The written findings arrive first so you can read them before we talk. The call is for the questions the document creates.
Fit
This is a narrow offer on purpose.
Each brief takes real hours from a strategist, so we would rather be direct about who gets value from one.
Built for
- U.S. companies above $10M in revenue
- Considered purchases with a real evaluation cycle
- Marketing leaders who own pipeline, not only traffic
- Teams already investing in search and content
Not built for
- Pre-revenue companies and early-stage startups
- Local services competing primarily on proximity
- Anyone seeking an automated score for a slide deck
- Teams that only want another monthly number
Before you ask
Reasonable questions.
What the brief covers, how it is run, and what happens afterward.
Is this generative engine optimization, answer engine optimization, or AI SEO?+
Those names point at roughly the same problem, and the acronyms will change again. We prefer a question you can answer with evidence: does the answer name you, and if not, what does it name instead? If you found this page looking for an AEO, GEO, or AI SEO consultant, you are in the right place. We would simply rather describe the work than name it.
Which AI systems do you test?+
The answer surfaces buyers use, currently ChatGPT, Google’s AI results, Perplexity, and Gemini. Your brief lists the systems tested and where they disagree. That disagreement is often where the useful work begins.
Is any part of this automated?+
A person runs the queries and a person writes the findings. Automated tools can report that you were not mentioned. Explaining why takes someone who read the answer, and the why is the point of the brief.
Why is it complimentary?+
Five questions are enough to be useful and focused enough for us to deliver well. If the findings point toward work larger than a document can solve, we will say so once on the call and then leave the decision with you.
What happens on the call?+
We walk through the findings, answer your questions, and give you our suggested first move. Taking the brief and acting on it yourself is a perfectly good outcome.
How much information do you need?+
Six fields, none of them invasive. We need a real website and a real buyer question because the brief is not useful without both. We do not need your traffic data, CRM, or access to internal systems.
Request your brief
Five questions your buyers are already asking.
Six fields, and we will come back within five business days with your findings and a time for the call.
- Turnaround
- Five business days from a complete submission.
- Reviewed by
- A working search and content strategist.
- What it costs
- Nothing. There is no invoice you did not agree to.