Answer Engine Optimization
When they ask AI,
be the answer.
Your customers stopped scrolling links. They ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini who to choose. We make sure the answer is you.
Optimizing for
ChatGPTPerplexityGeminiClaudeGoogle AIStart here · 20 seconds · free
Does AI recommend you yet?
A free, live AI visibility check — we ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini & Google AI real buying questions from your market and show you who they name.
The shift
Search didn't die. It started answering.
0%
of searches end without a click
AI answers before the link is ever seen.
0
sources named in a typical answer
There is no page two. You're named or invisible.
0
prizes for second place
The brand the model names wins. The rest don't exist.
How it actually works
From your pages
to their answer.
engine view: unverifiable text
We practice what we preach
Everything we sell you is running on this site.
The most honest proof an agency can offer isn't a testimonial wall — it's its own site, held to the standard it sells. Ours is. Every receipt below is a live operational fact you can check before you spend a dollar.
Our own snippet runs on this site
The same lightweight snippet we install for clients is live on icarusworks.ai right now — publishing our fixes and counting our own visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and co. We track ourselves with the exact tool clients pay for.
See what the plan tracks→View our source — the schema is real
Open the source of any page on this site: the Organization, Service, and FAQ structured data you'll find is the same machine-readable layer we build for clients. Engines read us exactly the way we tell you they'll read you.
See it on our AEO page→AI crawlers are welcomed by name
Our robots.txt invites GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot and every major AI crawler in — and our llms.txt hands them a clean map of the site. Both public, both checkable right now.
Read our llms.txt→Our library was built with our own method
The hundreds of location, industry, comparison, and learn pages on this site came out of the same research-and-build pipeline we run for clients — and AI engines cite this site in our own hyper-competitive category: AI search itself.
Browse the library→Zero purchased backlinks. Zero PR retainers.
We got cited the way we'll get you cited: structured data, entity signals, and answer-first content. If link-buying worked better, we'd be buying links.
Why we don't sell links→Numbers only when they're real
We don't invent statistics, manufacture testimonials, or promise fixed outcomes. When we cite research, it's sourced. When we report your citations, they come from the engines themselves.
Our research standards→What we do
Four disciplines. One goal: be the answer.
Every engine, one playbook
We optimize for the answer, not the link.
Each model decides who it trusts differently. We build the structured, verifiable signals every one of them rewards — so you surface across all of them at once.
Plain words
We do one thing.
We intend to be the best in the world at it.
Making businesses the answer inside AI search — that's the whole company. No ad accounts, no social packages, no link-buying on the side. We hold our own site to the same standard we sell: AI engines cite icarusworks.ai in our own hyper-competitive category, earned the same way we'll earn yours. And because we only do one thing, we can promise a few things most agencies can't:
Your price, before anything
You'll never be chased by a closer or surprised by an invoice. Your exact price is on the screen before a single thing is built.
A straight answer, any hour
Ask us anything — what's working, what isn't, why your price is your price — and you get the answer in plain words. No jargon, no runaround, no waiting for a rep.
Everything we build is yours
The audit, the roadmap, the content, the code — yours to keep, whoever implements it. Leaving is easy, which is why clients stay.
We don't just get you cited — we keep you there
AI answers reshuffle constantly as engines re-index. Every plan includes protecting what you've won: we watch your share of voice and maintain it, month after month.
A note from us
Search stopped being a list of links and became an answer — and a lot of genuinely great businesses became invisible through no fault of their own.
That's the problem we exist for. Not impressions, not traffic charts, not a prettier report — whether the engines your buyers now trust say your name when it matters.
We won't pretend any of it is magic. We won't invent statistics, manufacture testimonials, or promise outcomes nobody controls. What we will do is show you exactly where you stand, do real work on real evidence, and put that work in front of you every month, in writing — then keep defending what you've won, because in AI search the answer is never won once.
Icarus is usually told as a warning — and that's why we keep it. New technology rewards craft and punishes carelessness, and we named ourselves after the warning so we'd never forget it. The other half is the answer: Worksmeans the workshop — wings built properly, flown deliberately. Because AI isn't here to replace the people behind a business. Our job is making sure the voice, the brand, and the community presence you spent years earning don't get lost when the way people search changes — they carry over, and get stronger.
We do one thing, and we intend to be the best in the world at it. We'd rather prove that than claim it.
The longer version of that story lives on our About page.
— Icarus Works
Spotlight · Law firms
When someone asks AI for a lawyer, be the name it gives.
Legal is one of the most competitive, highest-stakes categories in search — and legal questions are exactly what people now ask AI engines directly. Firms that structure their expertise so models can verify and cite it get named. The rest never enter the conversation.
By practice area
Bar-compliance aware — every recommendation respects advertising rules in your jurisdiction.
Who we work with
Built for your industry. Not a generic pitch.
100 industries, each with its own playbook for traditional search and AI search — the questions your buyers ask, mapped.
Built for your size
For the one-truck shop and the hundred-office firm.
AI search doesn't care how big you are — it cares who the clearest, most verifiable answer is. Neither do we. Same system, same rigor, priced to the market you actually compete in.
Local & single-location
The one-truck shop, the solo practice, the neighborhood firm
When someone asks AI who to hire in your city, it names a handful of businesses — everyone else is invisible. The audit is a flat $1,500 like everyone else's, and your plan is scoped to one market: yours. You pay local prices for local work.
Multi-location & regional
Growing brands covering several cities or territories
Every location is its own AI-visibility battle with its own competitors and questions. We map and work each market individually — and your plan scales per location, transparently, instead of hiding a markup in a "custom enterprise quote."
National & enterprise
Brands competing for category-level answers
At national scale the question isn't "who's near me" — it's "who's the best." We build the entity depth, structured data, and answer coverage it takes to be the name the engines reach for first in your category.
The method
A system, not a guess.
Your audit is step zero — it maps the exact gap before we touch anything. From there, the same four-step loop runs every month.
Research
We map the exact questions your buyers ask AI — and who it cites today. Real data, every engine.
Build
We produce the structured, citable answers AI engines trust: schema, entities, answer blocks.
Deploy
We push it live to your site and verify it's crawlable, indexed, and machine-readable.
Measure
We track your citations across every engine and report the trend — on the right timescale.
Inside the audit
Know exactly what you're buying.
Every engine, queried live
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews — asked the real questions buyers in your market use, not hypotheticals.
Who gets named today
The competitors AI currently recommends in your category and city — and the sources each engine cites to justify the pick.
Your citation gap
Where you're missing and why: the structural, content, and entity signals the engines looked for and didn't find on your site.
A prioritized roadmap
Exactly what to fix first and what it unlocks — written so your own team can execute it, or we can. No lock-in by obscurity.
$1,500 single location · $3,000 multi-location. There is no implementation fee — ever.
Credited back in full
Start a plan within 15 days and your audit fee is credited back in full off month one — the audit is essentially free.
Pricing
Three parts. One of them is free.
The Audit
$1,500 flat
one-time · every industry, same price
Your real buyer questions through every AI engine, the competitors winning your answers, and a prioritized roadmap. The audit is the quote — and it's yours to keep, whoever implements it.
Implementation
Free
always · no setup fees, ever
Everything your roadmap calls for, built for you at no separate charge. Start within 15 days of your audit and the full audit price is credited off month one.
The Plan
Custom
monthly · most plans $2,500–$10,000/mo
One personalized monthly price — scoped to your industry, your market, and exactly what we're ranking you for — revealed with your audit, before you commit to anything.
Weighing your options?
AI-search agency vs. traditional SEO agency vs. tools.
Honest side-by-side comparisons — what each approach covers, what it costs, and where each one genuinely wins.
Learn the craft
We teach what we sell.
Questions, answered
Everything buyers ask us first.
AEO is the practice of structuring your website and content so AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews cite your brand as the answer when buyers ask who to hire. It combines schema markup, entity signals, and answer-first content that models can verify and quote.
SEO earns you a ranking in a list of links. AEO earns you a place inside the answer itself. The disciplines overlap — technical health and authority still matter — but AI engines reward structured, verifiable, quotable content in ways classic ranking factors don't capture. We do both, because your buyers still use both.
SEO targets traditional search rankings. GEO — generative engine optimization — targets AI-generated answers like Google AI Overviews. AIO — AI optimization — is broad visibility across AI assistants. AEO — answer engine optimization — is being cited as the answer itself. Every Icarus Works engagement covers all four disciplines together.
It varies by engine and by market — AI engines refresh their sources on different cycles, and no honest agency will promise a fixed date. Structural fixes are crawlable as soon as they ship; citations build as engines re-index and re-evaluate their sources. We track your citations across every engine and report the trend monthly, so you see real movement instead of guessing.
No. We can work alongside an existing SEO provider — our work concentrates on the answer-engine layer: schema, entities, answer-block content, and citation tracking. If you'd rather consolidate, we cover traditional SEO too.
The audit is $1,500 for a single-location business or $3,000 for multi-location — one flat price, every industry. Ongoing work is a monthly plan custom-priced to your industry, market, and what we're ranking you for; most plans land between $2,500 and $10,000 per month, and implementation is free — there is no implementation or setup fee, ever. If you start a plan within 15 days of your audit, the full audit price is credited off your first month.
Yes. The free AI visibility scan on this page is a live, interactive checker: type your website, and we query the real AI engines your buyers use — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI — with real buying questions from your market, then show you whether they name your business or a competitor. It takes about 20 seconds, requires no signup to start, and the results are real engine answers, not a simulation.
No, by design. AI engines cite the clearest, most verifiable answer in a market — not the biggest link graph. Our own site is cited by AI engines in the most competitive category possible, AI search optimization itself, with zero purchased backlinks and zero PR retainers. That method — structured data, entity signals, and answer-first content — is exactly what we build for clients. If you want link-building or PR on top, our audit and roadmap work with any vendor.
Yes — local service businesses are a core fit, not an afterthought. When buyers ask AI who to hire in your city, the engine names a handful of businesses and everyone else is invisible. The audit is one flat $1,500 regardless of industry or size, and monthly plans are scoped to your actual market, so a single-location business pays single-location pricing. We work with local firms, multi-location brands, and national companies on the same system.
We were built for AI search from day one — not a traditional SEO shop with a GEO add-on. Every finding in every audit traces to a real answer we captured from a real engine, every deliverable is QA-scored before it ships, implementation is free, and results are measured the only way that matters in AI search: whether the engines actually cite you. We hold our own site to the same standard, and AI engines cite it in our own hyper-competitive category.
We ask the engines your buyers actually use — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews — the real questions in your market, and record who gets named and who gets cited. You get the trend across every engine in a monthly report, alongside your classic search metrics.
Something we didn't cover? Run the free check or start with the pricing breakdown.
Find out what AI says about you.
A complete AI visibility audit — your real buyer questions, every engine, the exact gap, and the plan to close it.
Questions first? Start with the free scan — your dashboard comes with a concierge that answers anything, in plain words, any hour.