Acceptance of Circumstances, AEO, AI Search, Being Found on Google, ChatGPT, GEO, keeping up with trends, local search, organic SEO, partnerships, Search Engine Optimization, staying current, website

Why One Or More Business Directory Listings Could Be Your Ticket To AEO Success, i.e., Being Mentioned or Cited In AI Search Engines

While the focus of this blog post is on getting a Better Business Bureau (BBB) listing, because it’s an organization that most consumers and business owners, and AI search engines, like ChatGPT trust as far as being a neutral/objective party that has vetted the organization in-question before posting information about it, other business directory listings can also support your organization being cited or mentioned in AI search results as well. Read why business directory listings send signals to search engines that your organization is trustworthy!

How You’ll Benefit From A Better Business Bureau Listing

I have spoken with or e-mailed many of my clients about the value of getting accredited by the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and having a paid vs. free listing to get the backlink from their website to the client’s website which is very valuable related to SEO and being found on AI search engines these days. That’s because AI search engines are looking for signs of your organization’s credibility/trustworthiness before they feel comfortable mentioning your name or serving up your website in “prompts” entered by relevant searchers into their tool. A listing on the Better Business Bureau will serve you well from a-being-found-in-AI-search-engines standpoint if you have a paid listing vs. free one. 

You can learn more about the above here: https://www.bbb.org/all/business/business-tips/why-bbb-accreditation-may-help-you-be-more-visible-in-ai-search/?utm_source=chatgpt.com.

BBB Accreditation and Plans:

I recently had a lengthy conversation with one of the accreditation experts at one of the BBB offices serving MA and here’s what getting accredited with BBB, in general, would buy you (but important to check out the various plans that I linked to below to see what each provides):

  • A listing/profile on their site with e-mail, website, and contact information; plus, you could include photos, videos, licensing, logo and more
  • A link from their site back to your site as part of that listing (backlink)
  • Some free legal services
  • Ability to participate in their request-a-quote program where consumers request quotes from BBB-accredited businesses
  • An app that you can use to request customers/clients to write a BBB review for you
  • You can participate in cable advertising program, but would have to pay for that
  • A physical certificate will be mailed to you that you can place at your office/physical location to display you are a BBB member
  • A seal to add to your website indicating you are a BBB member will be provided

There are a variety of plans available, but to really reap extensive, diverse benefits, it would be ideal to pursue the BBB+ plan since you could have a more extensive/larger presence on their website: https://bbb-membership-plans.222-0021.org/, but starter plan would still provide great benefits and far as trust establishment goes. It’s just with the BBB+ plan you get more marketing opportunities — more tools, more resources, more opportunities for your Profile to be shown. 

this show the back of the head of a dark-haired man with a gray dress shirt on pointing to something on his computer tablet which has content open on it.

What Other Business Directories Should You Join?

  • Other Certification Directories (Beyond BBB): think ones that demonstrate what skills your organization is certified in.
  • State or City/Town Business Directories: If there is a business directory for the state(s) in which your business operates, such as the there is for Massachusetts businesses like ours in the form of the Massachusetts Business Network, you should consider joining those. If the city or town where you operate also maintains an online listing of the businesses operating there, you should take the necessary steps to get listed online.
  • Civic or Local Directories: examples include Rotary or Chamber of Commerce directories, or yellowpages.com or Yelp listings where individuals are searching to identify an organization who offers the products and services you do.
  • Industry/Professional Association Directories: examples include CPA Association, Relator Association, and BAR Association directories; for example, our organization belongs to SmarketingConnect – a marketing professionals networking group. Such professional directories could also include industry directories like Angi, Etsy, Fiverr, or Houzz.
  • Vendor/Partner/Supplier/Franchise Directories: these are relevant if your organization is a seller, representative or distributor of another organization’s products or services, or you have some kind of partnership with them, such as you use or support their technology.

And of course, some directories can fall into one of more of the above categories!

Learn about other ways you can support your organization being found in AI search engines.

Acceptance of Circumstances, advertising agency, AEO, AI Search, ChatGPT, ChatGPT Ads, GEO, Google Ads, keeping up with trends, keywords, landing page, landing pages, lead generation, local search, OpenAI Ads, paid search, pull marketing, sales, Search Engine Optimization, SEM, SEO, Setting Marketing Budget, staying current, Understanding Your Environment, website

Our Journey With LLM Advertising: How To Optimize and Set Up ChatGPT Ads

We never like to recommend, or try to implement, a new form of online advertising, until we’ve tried/tested it with our own business. That way we can understand the pros and cons of running advertising on a new advertising vehicle, plus all the “inputs” we’ll need to provide to the tool to launch the campaign. That makes it easy to know what questions we need to ask of our clients related to a new ad campaign launch on a vehicle that is new to them, or what we need their approval on.

We waited to try this new vehicle until they offered pay-per-click (PPC) vs. just pay-per-impression (CPM) advertising because, quite frankly, most of clients are small-to-mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and nonprofits and they have far smaller marketing/advertising budgets than large firms and need their ads to really work for them and generate leads and sales vs. just awareness-generation!

This gray image that runs horizontally is a print screen of Results Communications & Research's ad running on ChatGPT and It is truncated but says "Looking For Expert Advice For Bein..Learn How We Help Organizations Appear in AI and Traditional Search..." and contain a small powder blue image that says "SEO."
Results Communications & Research’s ChatGPT Ad

As of the original publish date of this blog post, It’s been about 1.5 weeks since we rolled out ads for our own business, Results Communications & Research, on the ChatGPT LLM-powered (large-language-model-powered) answer engine/AI search platform. We’ve documented below — and will continue to document — our 2026 journey with this new form of online advertising. So, be sure to check back!

  • Days 1 & 2 (June 11 and June 12) – set up our ad and associated targeting for our campaign at ads.openai.com (ChatGPT is owned by OpenAI) — it was not a large lift at all! Needed to determine and document in OpenAI’s ad tool how much we were initially wanting to spend for a click (we initially put this at $3.50) and our daily budget ($25), plus in what geographies (Providence RI and Boston MA) we wanted the ads to appear. And, also provide context hints (OpenAI instructions explained this exercise this way: “describe the conversations, topics, or keywords where your products or services may be relevant; these hints guide matching, but aren’t exact-match targeting rules.” We also documented the images and content we wanted to use in our ads. We are testing two ads — one with longer and one with shorter headlines — but to keep something consistent, so we’d feel comfortable drawing conclusions about our headlines, we used the same image in both ads. We also had to share with the ad platform what page of our website we wanted ad clickers to land on (we created a brand new page on our WordPress website for such purposes — which is an online advertising best practice).
  • Day 2 (June 12) – launched our campaign by activating it in our OpenAI Ads dashboard.
  • Day 5 or 6 (June 15 or 16) – of course, being the digital marketing and analytics geeks that we are, we checked our advertising dashboard at openai.com countless times to see if the ads were being served up and generating impressions and/or clicks. Seeing zero movement on either the impressions or clicks front, we decided to expand our geography to NYC and our daily budget to $35 and what we were willing to spend for a click to $5.00, in case what we were willing to pay for a click (and the competition to have ads shown by competitors in the same geography for the same types of prompts) was causing the ads to not be shown or we needed a bigger geography to have enough opportunities for our ads to be shown to relevant “prompters” on ChatGPT.
  • Day 7 (June 17) – we saw in our advertising dashboard that our ChatGPT ads were starting to accrue impressions, and therefore, were being served up, but not to any great degree.
  • Day 8 (June 18) – we increased what we were willing to pay for a click to $7.50, and also added in the whole state of New Hampshire to our geographic targeting.
  • Day 9 (June 19) – seeing an alert in the OpenAI ads platform that we were often being outbid by competitors because of what we were willing to pay for a click, we increased our click bid to $10.00 from $7.50 – our first 2 clicks were achieved somewhere between the 18th and 19th, and at that point, our ads had a 0.66% click-thru rate (meaning less than 1% of individuals having our ad served up to them, clicked on it — not surprising for reasons outlined in the next bullet.)
  • Day 12 (June 22) – we just checked this morning and the increase in budget and what we are willing to spend for an ad click, plus the expanded geography seems to be paying off! As of this morning, our ChatGPT ads have generated 2,762 impressions (been served up that number of times), 13 clicks (a 0.47% click-thru rate), and an average cost-per-click of $6.44. We aren’t surprised by any of this. We had seen competitors running ChatGPT ads in our space when we were entering relevant prompts into ChatGPT, so we knew as a business-to-business advertiser we were more likely to have to pay more for a click than a business-to-consumer advertiser might. We also know that ChatGPT is a different animal than Google Search ads — the new form of ads discussed in this post is served up to individuals entering prompts into ChatGPT that might indicate they’d be interested in our services, but it’s not the same as someone entering “keywords” into Google and then Google serving up ads to those individuals because an advertiser provided those keywords as ones they wanted their ads to be served up for. We changed our daily budget to $50.00 today — we should have increased the daily budget a few days back in keeping with our increasing the amount we were willing to pay for a click! We also paused the shorter of our two ads since the longer ad was performing far better. To-date, we have not generated any leads — in the form of phone calls, e-mails, or appointment set-up — from these ads. We’re not discouraged by this at all, since, when it comes to a business engaging a firm for B2B services — or even reaching out to them — there can be a long lead time!
  • Day 17 (June 27) – we paused our ads today. Not because they weren’t generating impressions or clicks, but simply because we are a small marketing agency/SEO company who deliberately keeps our fees/rates very reasonable so that small businesses and nonprofits can afford to work with us. Going into this pilot, we planned to only spend about $300, but ended up letting the ads run until ChatGPT ads had spent $364.12, based on our daily budget and what we were willing to spend per click.

How Successful Was Our ChatGTP Ads Campaign?

Because businesses often take some time before purchasing business services, and therefore, like to research a number of companies before they decide to reach out to the one organization or the few organizations whom they are most interested in, we have yet to receive any inquiries from our ads, but still hope to get some inquiries from those who have clicked on the ads. At least we’ve generated some “awareness” among appropriate parties. We’ve also found in our many years of running online ads for our own business, that often, fellow marketing agencies/competitors click on our ads to see what we are offering and what we are all about. We did ensure our landing page for our ad clickers adhered to best practices, such as demonstrating why we are experts, including “social proof,” therefore, a review or testimonial, and much more!

Ultimately our ChatGPT ads yielded:

  • 11,321 impressions (this number of sets of eyeballs viewed our ads as part of entering an appropriate prompt into ChatGPT)
  • 46 clicks
  • 0.41% CTR (we aren’t concerned or scared off by this low click-thru rate — we’ve seen similar with Reddit and nextdoor.com ads
  • Average cost-per-click (CPC) of $7.92 – not horrible for a B2B (business-to-business) lead

As we recommended at the top of this blog post, keep coming back to learn more about our ChatGPT advertising journey! We’re all in this together when it comes to understanding this particular form of new advertising and how effective it will be in generating leads and sales, not just awareness, and if ROI makes sense for advertisers like our clients who need their ad $$ to work for them pretty quickly.

Acceptance of Circumstances, AEO, AI Search, Being Found On Bing, Being Found on Google, blog, content marketing, differentiation, GEO, good will creation, keeping up with trends, lead generation, pull marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, staying current, target audiences, Target Marketing, Understanding Your Environment, User experience, website

The ABCs & Ds Of Being Found In Answer-Engine-Prompt And Traditional-Search-Engine Results

We will continue to conduct our own informal research — assessing how and when our own website pages and posts appear in both AI/Answer Engine Prompt results and traditional search engine results — but based on what we are seeing as of the date of this blog post, the items outlined in the image and bulleted section below seem to be common features or characteristics of website content that is being served up most frequently in any kind of AI or search engine.

And, it’s also very much in keeping with what we observed and commented on almost two years ago related to commonalties among content that was being served in traditional and AI search engine results.

How To Be Found Online? Do The Following Related To Your Website Content

  • Always keep your target audience in mind — what content/information would be helpful to them vs. content/information you want to share. Don’t be self-serving!
  • Keep your content clean and easily consumable by using bulleted or numbered lists
  • Don’t be afraid to take a different approach to what other experts are saying on a particular topic
  • We’ve talked about this in a number of blog posts, including this post about the types of links every website should have — always include internal links and external links to relevant content
This light gray vertical image says in a dark powder blue "the ABCs & Ds Of Appearing In Answer-Engine-Prompt and Traditional-Search Results and Has Bulleted Sharing the Same Bulleted Content That Is Served In the Post Itself

Need Help Figuring Out How To Write Content For Your Target Audiences Or How To Structure That Content?

Reach out today for a free marketing consultation regarding your organization’s particular challenges related to being found online.

Acceptance of Circumstances, AEO, AI Search, Being Found on Google, Blog, Blogging, competitive advantage, content marketing, differentiation, GEO, keeping up with trends, online presence, organic SEO, pull marketing, Search Engine Optimization, search terms, staying current, Understanding Your Environment, website

Appearing In AI Prompt Results May Help Your Organization Get Prompt Results

As we’ve shared in recent AI-search related blog posts, a “prompt” is what an individual — related to their own personal needs or business-/work-related needs — enters into an answer engine/AI search engine, like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexi, Google Gemini, or Microsoft Co-pilot to gather information or complete a task related to a particular topic, question, or problem for which they are seeing a solution.

This image is a print screen of a prompt entered into Google's AI Mode search tool and the initial results that Google spit back. The prompt reads "how can I protect my parents' assets from nursing homes" and the results are in the format of content directly below the prompt and citations or links to websites on the right.

How Can Small Organizations Be Found In AI Search/Answer Engines and How Do They Benefit From It?

The AI train is moving fast, and while answer engines may not always serve up your content or a link to your website, known as a “citation,” to a prompter/searcher who is in a relevant geography in response to a prompt related to your organization’s products, services, or solutions, there will still be a number of times when your business or non-profit organization gets a mention or a citation served up to geographically appropriate prompters, i.e., individuals who are located in the geography your organization is able to serve.

So, if you’re a smaller shop, why not take advantage of this opportunity to have your content served up in lieu of a bigger brand’s content. You may not be able to compete with a bigger organization when it comes to ad spend/advertising dollars, and overall marketing budget, but producing easily understood, beneficial content is a low-cost way to help your organization be found online before, or more frequently than, bigger organizations.

Check Out These Resources To Help You Create Online Content That Helps Small Organizations Be Included In AI Prompt Results:

Why Citing Experts Supports Your Own Organization Being Cited
Do I Need To Keep Adding New Content To My Website To Continue To Be Found Online?
A Comfy-Cozy Recipe For Being Found Online That Any Level Of Cook Can Follow

Need Help Determining The Nature Of Content To Produce To Support Being Found In AI Search Engines? Or, Need Help Writing Content For Answer Engines?

To inform your future online content, our team can help you determine what prompts searchers are putting into answer engines, like Google AI tools, related to the products, services, and solutions to problems you offer. We can also help you produce website blog content related to the aforementioned. Reach out today to schedule a complimentary discussion about how your organization can be found online!

AEO, AI Search, Being Found On Bing, Being Found on Google, blog, Blog, Blogging, marketing best practices, organic SEO, pull marketing, Search Engine Optimization, search terms, SEO, Understanding Your Environment, website

Why Citing Experts Supports Your Own Organization Being Cited

Since we’ve already detailed in a recent blog post the reasons why you want your organization to be cited (when it comes to being found online), we won’t revisit that extensively here. We will say that being cited by a search engine or search tool, i.e., having them serve up a link to your organization’s website vs. just mentioning your name in relevant search results is a very positive thing. But, as we’ve also shared in the past, in order to increase the probability of that happening, your organization needs to demonstrate to search engines (both AI and traditional search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo) that you are credible and trustworthy.

What’s An Easy Way To Show Search Engines You’re Credible?

There’s a very easy way to show search engines you’re credible and that’s citing other organizations in your website content, i.e., mentioning and sharing links to experts in your field, or on whatever topic you are addressing in a particular section of your website. You can also ask experts to write a “guest blog post” for your site, or partner with a fellow expert on a blog post.

Citing experts on your website demonstrates to search engines:

  • Your organization makes and takes the time to follow and learn from experts
  • Your organization is not too self-serving, i.e., only focused on your needs and self-promotion vs. wanting to provide valuable information to your readers/target audiences, even if it means sharing information about other organizations
This is a gray rectangular image that runs vertically and says in dark-powder-blue letters, "citing experts supports your own organization being cited" and that contains the logo of our Braintree Digital Marketing agency.

How Do I Know What Experts To Cite?

One of the easiest and best ways to figure out who to cite on your website is to use LinkedIn’s search tool to enter search terms/keywords related to the topic for which you want to identify experts. You’ll likely want to select “posts,” “people,” or “services” by clicking on those buttons to generate lists to review after you’ve entered the keywords in the main search tool on the left top of your LinkedIn homepage.

Review the bios and posts of some of the individuals LinkedIn has served up to you, and begin following those that interest you. Their posts will start appearing in your newsfeed. You’ll soon see/learn which individuals resonate with you and whose websites you want to share on your website in appropriate places. And, keep in mind, you don’t have to share links to their website on your website, you can also share links to their LinkedIn profiles, as we’ve done below.

Here’s Some Of The SEO/AEO/GEO Experts We Like To Follow On LinkedIn

Kristine Schachinger

John McAlpin

Mike Friedman

Erik Marsh

Neil Patel

Eli Schwartz

The above individuals are just a handful of those we follow on LinkedIn because there’s so many experts, like us, who regularly create and share content about search engine optimization (SEO), answer engine/AI engine optimization (AEO), and generative engine optimization (GEO).

Need Help Identifying Which Experts You Should Follow On LinkedIn?

Reach out today to our Greater-Boston digital marketing agency for a complimentary discussion about your marketing challenges and opportunities.

Acceptance of Circumstances, accountability, AEO, AI Search, Being Found On Bing, Being Found on Google, blog, Blog, Blogging, content marketing, GEO, keeping up with trends, marketing best practices, organic SEO, pull marketing, Search Engine Optimization, search terms, SEO, staying current, strategic planning, target audiences, Target Marketing, website

Do I Need To Keep Adding New Content To My Website To Continue To Be Found Online?

The answer to the above question is pretty straightforward, and in most cases, “yes.” Given that we are in the day and age where individuals are using what’s known as answer engines — think ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude — more and more for both business and personal purposes, if an organization wants to continue to be found online, it DOES need to regularly produce and publish new content. Unless your site is one that is only meant to provide very static information and credibility to people who already know or have found your organization, your organization will need to do the following to support your organization’s name being mentioned or a link to your organization being served up by answer engines in response to relevant prompts.

This image is a print screen of what it looks like when you go into a WordPress website to add a new post and says "Add new Post" at the top and "enter title here."

What Types Of Content Do I Need To Create If I Want To Be Found In Answer Engine Results?

  • Blog posts or questions that reside within a website FAQ (frequently asked questions) page that answer questions that your organization regularly gets asked by prospective clients and existing clients
  • Blog posts or questions that reside within a website FAQ page that answer questions that keyword research and answer research indicates your target audiences are asking answer engines/searching on
  • Blog posts that speak to topics that are “tangential” to the particular products and services you offer, but that are important ones for your target audiences. For example, you might offer seniors in-home care, but write and publish some blog posts about senior fraud, aging in place/aging at home, and exercises for seniors. You get the picture!

Even if you’ve already published such content, target audiences’ questions and needs change/evolve, and both from a marketing standpoint and a search-engine standpoint, you need to demonstrate that you are staying current/relevant/up-to-date. It’s not good to have clients or prospective clients visit your site and see that you haven’t put up any new content in many months and/or content is outdated — it looks like you’re not minding your shop, and if you aren’t, what else might you neglect? And, search engines are more likely to serve up new, fresh content than content that is old and dated.

In sum, a static site will NOT help your organization be found online by target audiences, given how individuals gather information these days. Sure, it’s time-consuming, but regularly producing and posting new content answering questions and providing information that benefit your target audiences needs to be an ongoing marketing activity. As we’ve always said, “SEO (search engine optimization) is NOT a one-and-done exercise.

Need Help Figuring Out What To Blog About And How Frequently?

Reach out today to schedule a complimentary discussion with our digital marketing agency about your blog strategy!

Acceptance of Circumstances, AEO, AI Search, Being Found On Bing, Being Found on Google, community involvement, digital marketing agency, diversity, GEO, good will creation, Google Ads, Google My Business Profile, integrated marketing, keeping up with trends, local search, marketing best practices, nextdoor, online advertising, online presence, organic SEO, paid search, public relations, sales, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, social media, social media strategy, staying current, strategic planning, target audiences, Target Marketing, traditional marketing, Understanding Your Environment, website

The Marketing & Sales Downfall of Focusing Too Much On Appearing In Answer Engines (AI Search)

I’ve attended a decent number of webinars about AI search and how to get your organization’s name or a link back to your website (citation) to be shared by an answer engine in response to a topic-relevant user’s prompt. To-date I’ve heard the following list of key tactics mentioned related to how to get your organization’s name or page served up by answer engines like ChatGPT:

This is a very brightly colored image with question marks of different colors in the background and then the words, where, what, when, why, how, and who in brightly colored captions bubbles -- yellow, blue, pink, red, green, and orange.

What Types Of Organizations Benefit The Most From Appearing In Answer Engines/AI Search Engines?

For bigger brands who offer services and products throughout the whole U.S., or even the world, it makes great sense to want your organization’s name and links back to your website to appear in answer engine results related to relevant-topic searches. But for organizations who only offer services or products locally, i.e., in one city or town, in one state, or in one region (such as New England), there will likely be far less value to your organization to your organization from being found on answer engines than there would be for a national or international organization. Why? Because many individuals entering prompts into an answer engine just want their question answered. They aren’t looking to buy a product or pay for a service. And, the answer engines are more concerned about serving up content that easily/readily answers the question, regardless of the geography of the content producer or of the individual who is looking to get their question asked or answered. Unless, of course, the searcher/prompter includes their geography in the prompt, such as a prompt like “who’s the best digital marketing agency in Braintree MA.”

The Big Mistake That Organizations Who Need To Rank Locally Are Making Related To AI Search

Let’s face it, smaller, local organizations have far smaller budgets than a national brand like Progressive Insurance. They also have far smaller marketing teams. When they put the majority of their marketing dollars and energy into producing content that will be found in AI tools like Perplexity, Claude, and ChatGPT, they are missing out on other opportunities which might better help them be found locally, since, as we shared above, many individuals to whom their website content or name will be served up by answer engines won’t be in their geography.

What Are Some Marketing Tactics That Help Organizations Be Found Locally?

  • Nextdoor Business Profile and Advertising – you can’t get more local than that!
  • Google Search Ads – where you’ve selected a geography appropriate for your business
  • Display Advertising – Google, Meta (Facebook/Instagram), other social media advertising – again, where you’ve selected a geography appropriate for your business
  • Publicity in Local Newspapers and/or on Local Media websites
  • Community Event Participation and Sponsorships – in communities your organization serves
  • Social Media Strategy and Posting – like with AI/answer engine search – you can reach local individuals and businesses who follow you this way, but there’s always some “waste,” where you are reaching individuals who can/will never become a client or customer because of geography or for other reasons
  • Optimizing Your Google My Business Profile — this is your best opportunity to be found locally and have your organization served up for “near me” terms
  • Writing a guest blog post for another local organization who serves your geography and/or requesting a backlink from their website to your website

Why You Need To Diversify Your Marketing Efforts

Check out our blog post on why it’s particularly important right now to diversify your marketing efforts and reach out today to schedule a complimentary discussion of your organization’s particular marketing challenges and opportunities in the time of AI!

Acceptance of Circumstances, digital analytics, digital marketing agency, Google Analytics, marketing analytics, Results Analysis, strategic planning, website

Which Google Analytics Website KPIs No Longer Make Sense To Track & Analyze Because Of Spam and AI Bot Visitor Upticks?

I’ve been talking to clients (and with SEO and marketing colleagues on LinkedIn), about the huge uptick in spam and AI bot traffic since fall 2025, and I’ve shared the following on some clients’ monthly dashboard reports and/or in e-mails to them: “analyzing overall/total website traffic and making comparisons to previous months’ figures no longer makes sense. Across all industries, site traffic volumes are up significantly because of increased spambot (also spelled as two words “spam bot) and AI agent bots/AI bots visiting/scraping websites. Most of this traffic is earmarked as “direct” traffic by Google Analytics and many organizations are seeing a big uptick in their direct traffic.”

I promised in a LinkedIn post comment related to the AI and spam bot uptick that I would take the time to document which data available in Google Analytics it still make sense to track and analyze. So, here goes:

  • Traffic volume at the specific defined traffic source or user source/medium level to ascertain how much traffic your site is getting from various marketing vehicles or tactics, such as e-mail marketing, social media posts, social media advertising, paid search (Google Ads), or traditional search (organic search) engines, vs. how much traffic the site as a whole is getting
  • Engagement rate at the defined traffic source level vs. the overall website engagement rate (average engagement rate across total website visitors, which, unfortunately, includes direct visitors)
  • Page views at the defined traffic source level
  • Time on site at the defined traffic source level
  • Conversion rate at the defined traffic source or user source medium level — to learn what specific marketing activities/vehicles are converting, i.e., causing visitors to complete desired events, such as clicking on an e-mail link or phone # link, completing a form, or making a purchase
  • Referral traffic by specific domain/URL — while we don’t want or need to be analyzing spam bot or AI bot traffic, and likely can’t since Google Analytics is currently rolling such traffic up into “direct” traffic, it is very beneficial to know from what external websites, if any, your site is receiving traffic (backlinks), and to see if you are receiving traffic from prompts/searches completed in AI tools such as Google Gemini, Microsoft Co-pilot, Perplexity, Claude and ChatGPT. Such referral traffic indicates that the source in-question is including a link back to your site in the results they share in response to a user prompt/search and that you are getting important AI citations.
This is a light gray rectangular shape image that runs vertically that says "In This Age Of AI, Are You Tracking & Analyzing Website Data That Is No Longer Meaningful Nor Data You Can Act On?" and the image also contains the logo of our digital marketing agency, Results Communications & Research

What’s The Easiest And Visually Best Way To Present And Analyze Appropriate Google Analytics Data Or Other Marketing-Related Data?

Similar to many agencies, our firm has started investigating and testing Google Looker Studio as a means to both visually present and analyze results since there are capabilities within the Studio to pull in data from a variety of sources — think Google Ads, Google Search Console, Google Analytics, CallRail, SEMRush and more — and automatically have the tool calculate changes in data from a previous time period.

We are still learning the ins and outs of Google Looker Studio but are very optimistic about how we can use it to tell a story with our clients’ data.

Want To Learn More About What Google Analytics Data You Should Be Analyzing With The Event Of AI? Wondering If Your Team Should Be Using Google Looker Studio to Present Results?

Schedule a complimentary time to meet with our digital marketing team to learn how we can help related to digital analytics and marketing analytics in the age of AI.

AEO, AI Search, Being Found On Bing, Being Found on Google, blog, Blog, Blogging, keeping up with trends, marketing best practices, online presence, organic SEO, pull marketing, SEO, SEO tags, staying current, Understanding Your Environment, website

A Comfy-Cozy Recipe For Being Found Online That Any Level Of Cook Can Follow

There’s so much talk these days about what tactics to use to be found in answer engines or AI tools. I like to refer to solutions like Google AI mode, ChatGPT, and Perplexity as answer engines or AI tools vs. search engines because these tools go far beyond search. Many individuals are using such tools to complete tasks, such as asking them to create formulas or work plans for them, or to come up with trip itineraries or write content/copy for them.

I wanted to come up with and share a recipe for being found in both traditional search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) and answer engines that felt authentic to those following the recipe. Something that felt comfortable and right vs. complicated and didn’t leave the cook feeling stressed out and confused and wondering how to “game” the answer engines. Below is a simple recipe for SEO (search engine optimization) and AEO (answer engine optimization) success that I came up with.

This is a rectangular image that shows a cookbook open on a table that houses a red and white checked tablecloth and fresh tomatoes and herbs that will be used to make the vibrant Italian recipe shown on the right hand side of the cookbook, a recipe that has mozzarella cheese and a thick tomato sauce

A Simple Recipe For SEO and AEO Success

  1. Start by answering questions via a main FAQ page, or in shorter FAQs housed within main pages of your website, that target audiences have about your organization and your specific products and services.
  2. Add in answers to questions that target audiences have, in general, about your industry/business line and the different products and services associated with it – again, these should be more general vs. about your specific products and services and could be answered in an FAQ, or in one or a series of blog posts.
  3. Sift in some website blog post content that is helpful to your target audiences that is “tangential, i.e., not directly related to your products or services, but information that would be valuable to your target audiences.
    • A great example of this is an estate planning law firm client who is sharing information about aging well with clients since many are seniors.
  4. Sprinkle in a synopsis at the beginning or end of any blog post you create, so search engines, answer engines, and readers know what they will learn about when they read that blog post. Then, use that synopsis to inform your meta description tag for that blog post.

And, voila, you’ve created a recipe that all adds up to being helpful and kind, and created an approach that should feel comfortable and authentic to every organization!

Acceptance of Circumstances, AEO, AI Search, Being Found On Bing, Being Found on Google, organic SEO, pull marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, website

The Kind Of Citation Your Organization Wants To Get

Often when we think of the term “citation,” whether it pertains to our personal life or our business, we think of something bad or negative. Per Findlaw.com’s definition of “citation,” when someone hears the word “citation,” their mind may immediately go to thoughts of having to appear in court and/or being charged for some kind of minor offense.

But in the world of being found online (SEO, GEO, AEO), particularly in the results spit back by AI search tools like ChatGPT, being awarded a citation is a positive thing. It means the AI search engine in-question has included a link back to your organization’s digital property or assets or an external organization’s digital content that mentions you (often your or an external party’s website, but it could be a social media or discussion-forum presence or post).

Two Types Of Citations You’ll Want And Need To Be Found Online

As we outlined in great detail in our blog post about how to ensure AI search tools view your organization as trustworthy, you are going to want and need these two types of citations to succeed in being found online in AI search tool results:

  • Citations from AI search tools themselves where they are sharing a link to content that you own or that mentions you
  • Citations from non-search-tool, external organizations who provide links on their digital properties/assets back to your digital properties and assets

You’ll really want and need both of the above in order to drive traffic directly from AI search tools to your website because, as pointed out in the previous blog post whose link we shared above, an AI search tool is less likely to provide a citation (backlink) to your website if you aren’t receiving citations from other creditable external organizations on the internet.

This is a rectangular-shaped image that runs vertically with a gray background that reads in turquoise or dark gray letters: "Two citations you'll want and need for your organization to be found online: backlinks from AI search tools/engines themselves that appear in the content they spit back in response to a query and backlinks from other external organizations that indicate to AI Search Engines Your Organization is Trustworthy!!!"

Need Help Identifying Opportunities For Positive Online Citations?

Reach out today to schedule a complimentary discussion about how you can support your organization being found online via external citations from search tools and other organizations.