Today, almost every agency offering AI visibility services knows how to use the right terms: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, GEO, measurement and customer questions.

That is why terminology alone makes it increasingly difficult to understand what the service actually includes.

While analysing the AI visibility market in Poland, I also spoke directly with agencies offering these services. I quickly noticed that the question “Which AI systems do you work with?” told me very little. Almost everyone named several systems and spoke about sets of questions and measurements.

I needed a way to understand not what the service is called, but how the agency thinks.

Today, I would ask four questions:

  1. “Our company does not currently have its own website. Where would you suggest we start?”
  2. “Our SEO is already working, but AI recommends competitors more often. What will you do?”
  3. “What will you do about my company’s presence beyond its own website — and why?”
  4. “What criteria will you use to choose external platforms specifically for my company?”

I am not interested in rehearsed “correct answers”. I want to understand whether the provider can explain why each action is being taken and how it is supposed to affect the company’s visibility specifically in AI answers.

If a company has no website, the agency should be able to explain exactly what it is losing

I would start with a simple situation:

“Our company does not currently have its own website. Where would you suggest we start?”

When I spoke with agencies, I was surprised that the absence of a website did not always become an important topic. Sometimes the answer was roughly: if necessary, a website can quickly be built with a website builder.

The website builder is not the problem here.

The question is: what role does the provider assign to the company’s own website within an AI visibility system?

A website is a source controlled by the company itself, where the most important facts can be collected unambiguously:

  • who we are;
  • what exactly we do;
  • who we work for and where;
  • what real experience we have;
  • which facts about the company should be consistent with external sources;
  • which knowledge and materials belong specifically to us.

A website therefore helps to bring the company entity together in one place and provides space for its own content, which AI can use as a source.

3 reasons a good website does not guarantee that ChatGPT will recommend your company

There is also a technical layer. OpenAI states that for content to be discovered and included in ChatGPT Search, a website should not block OAI-SearchBot.

So I would not be concerned by the statement:

“We can build your website with a website builder.”

I would be concerned if the agency did not explain at all what function the company’s own website should perform and what its absence limits.

“A website is necessary” is not enough for me.

I want to hear why.

If SEO is already working, AI visibility should still contain a separate layer of work

I would frame the second question as a specific situation:

“Let us assume that the website is technically sound, performs well in Google, and we are satisfied with the SEO results. Despite this, ChatGPT, Gemini and other AI systems recommend competitors more often. What will you do next?”

I would not ask: “How is GEO different from SEO?”

It is easy to prepare an attractive presentation for that question.

It is much more interesting to see what remains in the action plan when ordinary SEO is no longer the main diagnosis.

If the entire answer again comes down to keywords, technical optimisation, rankings, links and organic traffic, another question arises:

which part of this work is supposed to change the company’s presence specifically in AI answers?

It is also worth avoiding the opposite extreme.

SEO within AI visibility work is completely normal. Google says that fundamental SEO practices remain relevant to its generative search features.

SEO in the offer is therefore not a warning sign in itself.

For me, the problem begins when SEO turns out to be practically the entire service, while AI visibility is mainly added to the package name and reporting format.

I would therefore ask one more question:

“Please name two or three activities you will carry out for my visibility in AI even if they do not improve the website’s Google rankings at all.”

After that question, the working model becomes much clearer.

Work beyond the company’s own website should provide not only links, but also independent context

The third question:

“What will you do about my company’s presence beyond its own website — and why?”

Even an excellent website speaks about a business in the business’s own voice.

A company can say that it has extensive experience, strong expertise and the right services. For greater confidence, however, AI also benefits from a consistent picture of the company in independent sources.

That is why I want to understand not only whether the provider will “do something beyond the website”.

I want to understand the function of those activities.

What types of external sources does this business need?

Where should substantive mentions appear?

What should confirm the company’s specialisation?

How will the company’s own website connect with external profiles and publications?

If all off-site work is described in one sentence:

“We will build backlinks”,

I would ask further questions.

A backlink and a substantive mention of a company are not the same thing.

A link may serve a particular SEO goal.

A substantive mention adds context: the company exists, operates in this category, is associated with a particular service or experience — and that fact appears somewhere other than its own website.

I am therefore not interested in the number of publications alone.

I am more interested in the question:

what new fact or confirmation should each one add?

Platform selection criteria reveal more about an agency than a universal list

The fourth question is one I wish I had known earlier:

“What criteria will you use to choose external platforms specifically for my company?”

Not: “Please give me the full list of websites immediately.”

The list may change.

The criteria reveal how the provider thinks.

If the answer is based mainly on Domain Rating, dofollow links, backlink counts and anchor text, I understand that I am primarily hearing the classic SEO link-building logic.

There is nothing inherently wrong with it.

But in the context of AI visibility, I also want to hear more:

  • whether the platform is related to my industry;
  • whether it publishes active and current content;
  • whether its content can normally be discovered by AI systems;
  • in what context the brand will appear;
  • whether the source is independent of the company itself;
  • whether the publication will add a new fact or confirmation.

Why do I not believe in a single universal set of “the right websites for ChatGPT”?

Even similar AI surfaces may use distinctly different sources.

Ahrefs compared Google AI Mode and AI Overviews answers using US data from September 2025. Its analysis of cited URLs used 540,000 query pairs and found only 13.7% overlap among the cited URLs across the two surfaces. A separate set of 730,000 pairs was used to analyse the similarity of answer content.

The study concerns two specific Google products and one market, so the 13.7% figure cannot be applied to every AI system.

For me, the principle itself is what matters:

a similar answer does not have to be built from the same set of sources.

We saw a similar pattern in KAN’s initial measurement of the Polish market: the same commercial niche produced different sets of the most visible agencies in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI.

That is why the promise:

“We have a list of the right websites for ChatGPT”

would not convince me by itself.

I am more interested in a provider who can explain:

why a particular source is needed for this specific business and what function it should perform.

These four questions do not replace checking results

This approach is intended for a conversation with a provider selling AI visibility.

If I am looking only for an SEO provider or only for a website creator, some of these questions simply will not apply.

Even with AI visibility, good answers do not yet prove that an agency can achieve results.

They reveal something else:

whether the provider has a coherent cause-and-effect model for its work.

I would not reject an agency simply because it:

  • uses SEO;
  • builds links;
  • proposes a website built with a website builder;
  • does not disclose its complete list of platforms before the contract is signed.

All of these can be entirely normal parts of the work.

But if the words GEO, AI visibility, ChatGPT and Gemini were removed from the presentation, it should still be clear to me:

what exactly the agency intends to change and why that should affect the company’s visibility in AI.

Read next

Part 2: how to assess measurements, case studies and guarantees

Sources

  1. OpenAI — Publishers and Developers FAQ
  2. Google Search Central — AI features and your website
  3. Ahrefs — AI Mode vs AI Overviews

Not sure where to start in your company?

At KAN, we begin with a baseline measurement: we check whether and how the company appears in answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI, which competitors the systems recommend instead, and where the largest gap lies.

Only then can we decide what is actually worth changing.

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