You’re ranking fine. You’re still losing revenue to AI search.
An AEO consultant optimizes your brand to be cited by AI engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews) when buyers ask questions in your category. The work is technical: schema markup, entity definitions, and citation-ready content structure. Corey Fox is a senior AEO consultant for mid-market brands, with retainers from $2,000/month.
8 minutes of analysis. A 20-minute call. No pitch, just your numbers.
The report looks fine. The revenue doesn’t.
Your rankings held. Your content calendar is full. And your organic traffic is still sliding.
That is not a ranking problem. AI Overviews, Google’s AI-generated answers shown above the traditional results, now appear on the top of Google searches, and buyers get their answer without ever clicking through.
If your brand is not the source the AI cites, you are invisible at the exact moment your buyer is deciding.
What does an AEO consultant do?
Three things, in this order:
Dominate. You become the default cited source in your category, a moat competitors cannot quickly copy.
Quantify. Pull your data and put a dollar figure on the organic traffic value lost in the last 12 months, which competitors displaced you, and where you are missing from AI-generated answers.
Build. Technical foundation, schema and entity optimization, and citation-ready content that gets your brand quoted in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews.
AEO consultant vs SEO agency
| AEO consultant (this) | Typical SEO agency | |
|---|---|---|
| Optimizes for | Google rankings AND AI citations | Google rankings |
| Reports | Dollar figure of lost revenue | Rankings and vanity metrics |
| Who does the work | The senior person you hired | A team of juniors |
| Retainer | From $2,000/month | $5,000-10,000/month |
| Timeline honesty | 30-90 days, stated per workstream | “6-9 months” |
What is AEO, and why haven’t your competitors caught up?
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is the work of making your brand the source AI engines cite when your buyers ask questions. It is the on-page counterpart to GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), which earns brand mentions through off-page reputation.
When someone asks ChatGPT which product to buy or which provider to trust, the engine answers from the sources it considers authoritative. If that is not you, your buyer gets a recommendation and never sees your site.
The mechanics are technical, not promotional: schema markup that machines can parse, entity definitions that leave no ambiguity about who you are, and content structured so an AI can lift your answer and attribute it to you.
Persuasion copy does not get cited. Clear, verifiable, well-structured information does.
How much does an AEO consultant cost?
Retainers start at $2,000/month. AI infrastructure handles the repetitive layer (crawls, competitive analysis, audit production), so there is no team of juniors to fund. What you pay for is senior strategy and implementation, delivered directly.
How fast do results show?
- Technical fixes: 30-60 days
- Content strategy: compounds over 90 days
- AEO citations: 60-90 days from implementation
FAQs
See What’s Costing You Revenue
Free 8-minute revenue audit, run before we ever get on a call.
What you get:
- Your exact monthly traffic value loss, in dollars
- The named competitors who took it, and on which keywords
- Your AI visibility gap across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews
- The three highest-impact fixes, prioritized by recoverable revenue
What it costs: Nothing. No pitch, no obligation. A 20-minute call and a written summary you keep either way.