The research is happening before you ever speak to them
B2B buyers were already doing most of their research independently before approaching suppliers. That’s not new. What’s changed is where that research starts.
A growing number of professionals especially in law, finance, and consulting are opening ChatGPT or Perplexity before they open Google. Not instead of Google, but before it. They want a synthesised answer, not ten links to evaluate. They want a shortlist, not a search results page.
The questions look like this:
“Which London law firms specialise in cross-border M&A?” “What should I look for in a B2B SEO consultant?” “Who are the best management consultants for financial services firms?”
If your firm isn’t in the answer, you’re not losing at the pitch stage. You’re not even making the shortlist. You were never considered.
Why good Google rankings don’t protect you here
This is the bit that surprises most people. Firms with genuinely strong websites and solid rankings are still invisible in AI search — not because they’re doing SEO badly, but because AI systems have different criteria for what they use as source material.
To be cited in an AI-generated answer, your content needs to be structured so that an AI can actually extract and use it. It needs named authors with real credentials behind them. It needs to directly answer the questions buyers are asking, not describe your firm’s capabilities in general terms. And critically, it needs signals from outside your own website third-party mentions, trade coverage, citations that confirm your credibility exists beyond what you’re saying about yourself.
Most professional services websites aren’t built that way. Not because the firms are bad at what they do, but because nobody built their site with this in mind. Until very recently, nobody had to.
There are three patterns I see repeatedly:
Expertise that’s real but anonymous. Articles published under “The Editorial Team.” Service pages making claims with no named specialist behind them. Bios that are thin or absent. AI systems are looking for signals that credible, named humans stand behind the content. If those signals aren’t there, you get skipped — regardless of how good the underlying work is.
Content written about the firm rather than for the buyer. A lot of professional services content describes capabilities and credentials. That’s not what AI rewards. AI rewards content that directly and clearly answers a specific question a buyer would actually ask. The distinction sounds small. In practice it’s significant.
A digital footprint that doesn’t extend beyond your own domain. Your website is one source. AI systems draw on everything: trade publications, LinkedIn, review platforms, press mentions, directory listings. If the only place you exist digitally is your own site, you’re working with a thin evidence base — and AI will treat you accordingly.
What GEO actually is and what it isn’t
Generative Engine Optimisation, GEO , is the practice of making your content legible to AI systems. Not just crawlable by Google, but genuinely usable as source material when an AI constructs an answer.
It’s different from SEO, but it’s not separate from it. If your technical foundations are solid and your content has real depth, you’re partway there already. The gap for most firms is authorship signals, content structure, and off-site presence — things that don’t require rebuilding from scratch, but do require deliberate attention.
I’ll be direct about something: GEO is not a magic fix, and anyone promising you a specific ranking in an AI response is overselling it. What you can do is remove the reasons you’re being excluded and build the signals that make inclusion more likely. That’s slower and less satisfying than “we’ll get you to position one” — but it’s honest.
The internal conversation nobody wants to have
If you’re the person responsible for marketing or digital in your firm, you probably already sense that something has shifted. The harder problem is explaining it to a senior partner or managing director.
“Our firm is invisible to an AI chatbot and it’s costing us enquiries” is a genuinely difficult sentence to say in a partners’ meeting. Especially when Google rankings look fine, the website looks fine, and there’s no obvious data showing a problem.
The reason there’s no data is that the journey that bypasses you never reaches your website. There’s no “AI citations” column in your analytics dashboard. The loss is invisible precisely because the prospective client went somewhere else before they ever got to you.
What I’ve found actually works in these conversations: run the prompts. Type in the questions your ideal clients are likely to ask. Screenshot what comes back. Count how many times your firm appears versus your competitors. That’s a more persuasive ten minutes than any report I could write.
A quick sense-check before you do anything else
Worth asking yourself honestly:
Does every piece of content on your site have a named author with a real bio — not a job title, an actual explanation of their expertise and why someone should trust what they’re saying?
Does your content lead with the answer? Read the first paragraph of any service page. Does it directly address a question a buyer would ask, or does it start with context about the firm?
What does ChatGPT say when you ask about your sector? Try it now. See which firms appear. See if you’re one of them.
Are you mentioned anywhere outside your own website? Search your firm name in quotes, filtered to the last 12 months. How much of what comes back is your own content?
If those answers are uncomfortable, that’s the gap. And it’s fixable — but only if you know it’s there.
Where to start
The starting point is always the same: find out what AI actually says about your firm when a prospective client asks. See which competitors are being cited instead of you. Understand where the gaps are before deciding what to do about them.
That’s what an AI Presence Diagnostic with Envision SEO covers — a structured set of prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, mapped against the questions your ideal clients are actually asking, with a clear picture of where you stand relative to your competitors.
