Your customers have started asking an assistant before they ask around. It answers with three or four names. This page is about how to find out whether you are one of them, what it costs to change that, and how to avoid being sold something that does not work.
Whether it matters for you
It matters most if your customers research before they buy, if the decision carries some risk, and if there are several firms they could choose. Storage, trades, clinics, professional services, anything a nervous buyer wants a recommendation for. It matters least for impulse purchases and passing trade.
You do not have to take a view on that in the abstract. It is measurable. Ask an assistant the question your customers ask and see whether it produces a useful shortlist for your market at all. If it produces vague waffle, you have time. If it names four competitors with prices, you do not.
What the work actually involves
- Measurement. Your customers' real questions, asked repeatedly across the assistants they use, scored, and recorded with dates. This is the part most providers stop at.
- Diagnosis. Why you are absent from the ones you lose. Usually a mix of pages that answer nothing specific, facts trapped in images, and no independent corroboration.
- The fixes. Page changes, structured data, consistent business details, and getting corroborated in the places that get cited in your trade.
- Measuring again. The only way to know whether any of it worked, and the step that separates a service from a subscription to a dashboard.
What it costs, honestly
You will find audits in this market from under a hundred pounds to a few thousand, and monthly retainers from about a hundred and fifty pounds upward. The cheap end is almost always monitoring: software that watches and emails you a score. The expensive end should be implementation and proof. Neither is wrong, but they are different products, and the price difference usually tells you which one you are being offered. Ours is published here.
Four questions to ask any provider
- How many times do you ask each question? Answers change between identical runs roughly 19% of the time in our measurements. One run is not a measurement.
- Can I see the raw answers? Not a score. The actual text, with the date, the assistant and the question.
- What did you hold back? Serious measurement leaves something unchanged so you can tell your improvement from the whole market moving.
- What will you not promise? Nobody can guarantee a recommendation. A provider willing to say so is telling you something useful about the rest of their claims.
If it is useful, we will run ten of your customers' questions and show you what comes back, before any money changes hands. That is how we start with everyone.
Common questions
Is AI visibility worth it for a small business?
It depends entirely on whether your customers ask an assistant before they choose. For considered purchases where people research first, and for trades where buyers are nervous about picking badly, it increasingly matters. For impulse or purely walk-in trade it matters much less. The honest first step is measuring whether the assistants are being asked about your market at all, and what they say.
How much does it cost?
Across the UK market you will see audits from under a hundred pounds to a few thousand, and monthly work from around a hundred and fifty pounds upward. The gap is usually the difference between monitoring, which watches and reports, and implementation, which changes things and proves whether it worked. Our pricing is published.
How do I know a provider is any good?
Ask one question: how many times do you ask each question before quoting me a number? Answers vary between identical runs, so a single check proves nothing. If they talk about repeated measurement, held-back controls and dated before-and-after evidence, take them seriously. If they show you a proprietary score out of ten and no raw answers, be careful.
Do I need to leave my current marketing agency?
No, and we would advise against it. This runs alongside search and social work rather than replacing it, and the technical foundations overlap. Most of our engagements run beside an existing agency, with the changes put on an approvals sheet so nothing lands on the site twice.
Updated August 2026