Service
AEO in Portsmouth: when someone asks an assistant for a business in Southsea, be the one it names
A visitor on the Hard asks ChatGPT for a good breakfast in Southsea and gets three names. A boat owner in Gosport asks Google who can service an outboard and an AI Overview answers above the map. The businesses named are rarely the biggest. They are the ones whose profile, reviews and pages say the same thing, name the district, and answer the question in the first paragraph. Being that business is answer engine optimisation, and it is inside every tier we sell.
Run the test yourself
Five minutes, three assistants, your trade
Before reading the theory, find out where you stand. The result is the most useful thing you can send us with the audit form.
01
Write the question a customer would ask
Not your keyword. The sentence: "Who is a good emergency plumber in Fratton?" or "Where can we eat near Gunwharf with a pushchair?"
02
Ask ChatGPT, Google and Perplexity
The same sentence in each. Note which businesses are named and, where it shows sources, which pages it read.
03
Look at what the named ones have
Open their profiles and the pages cited. Count the reviews from the last three months, check whether the district is on the page, read their first paragraph.
04
Compare with yours
The gap is almost always one of three things: a profile with less in it, reviews without words, or a page whose first paragraph does not answer the question.
Why it skipped you
What the assistant needed, where it looked, and what most Portsmouth sites gave it
| It needed | It looked at | It usually found |
|---|---|---|
| Proof the business exists and is open | The Google profile: hours, category, photographs, recent reviews | A profile claimed in 2019, hours wrong since the pandemic, no photograph newer than the van |
| The district | The profile's service area, the page titles, the reviews | "Portsmouth" in the footer and nothing that says Southsea, Cosham or across the water |
| An answer to quote | The first paragraph of the page for that service | A welcome message, then a paragraph about values, then the answer in the fourth |
| Something a customer said | Reviews with words: the job, the street, the day | Four five-star reviews with no text, and one complaint with no reply |
| Agreement | The registers and directories that mention the business | Three different phone numbers and an address from the previous premises |
The district rule
Ask for Southsea, and the assistant looks for Southsea
An assistant answering a question about Southsea does not translate it to Portsmouth. It looks for pages and reviews that say Southsea, and the venue whose profile says Portsmouth, whose page says Portsmouth and whose reviews mention nothing is not on the shortlist, however good it is. The same is true for Cosham, for Gosport across the harbour, for Hayling in the summer.
The fix is not a page per district. It is the district you actually serve in the profile's service area, in the title and first paragraph of the pages, in the markup, and in the reviews, because customers write what you ask them to mention.
Inside the monthly work
What changes when a page is written for an assistant as well as a person
- The first paragraph is the answer, complete on its own, with the district in it. The rest of the page is evidence.
- Every heading and the paragraph under it make sense lifted out, because that is how they are quoted.
- The questions customers ask are answered in a marked-up block, two or three sentences each, no sales copy.
- The markup carries the same name, address and hours as the profile, and the registers and directories are corrected until they agree.
- Twenty prompts for your trade and district are run through the three assistants monthly, and the table goes in your report next to Search Console.
The map side of the same work is on the local SEO page.
Questions about AI search
Which assistants actually matter for a Portsmouth business?
Google's AI Overviews first, because they sit above the map on searches people already make. ChatGPT second, for the visitor planning a weekend in Southsea or a landlord comparing letting agents. Perplexity and the rest are small here today. We measure all of them because the work that wins one wins the others.
Can I pay to be recommended?
No. There is no advert inside an AI answer for a local business yet, and when one arrives it will be labelled. The businesses named are the ones whose profile, reviews and pages give the assistant something to quote and nothing to doubt.
Do I need an llms.txt file?
It costs nothing and every site we build has one, but Google ignores it and the assistants that read it treat it as a hint. It is the least important thing on this page. The profile, the reviews and the first paragraph of each page are what get quoted.
How long before an assistant names us?
The Google Overviews follow the map and the results, so they move when those move: weeks for a profile fix, months for a competitive search. ChatGPT and Perplexity read the web live and can change the week a page is published, if the page answers the question.
Is this extra?
No. AEO is inside every tier, because it is the same profile, pages and mentions held to a stricter standard. The page exists so you can see what the standard is and run the test yourself.
Send us the answer the assistant gave you
Named or not, the audit shows why, page by page, and what the assistants would need to see to name you.