AI Search Optimisation
Most of what is sold as AI search optimisation is guesswork
We know, because we went and measured it. A hundred high-volume Indian shopping queries through Google's AI Overview, three separate runs each, every citation coded by hand, and the whole method published so anyone can check it.
What it actually is
Not a separate discipline. A different surface.
People increasingly ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI Overview instead of scrolling ten blue links. The answer arrives already written, with a handful of sources cited underneath. If you are not one of those sources, you are not in the conversation, and no amount of ranking fourth will help you.
So the question changes. Not "where do we rank" but "when someone asks about this, which pages does the machine read, and are we one of them".
Here is the part most agencies will not tell you. In our own data the single largest source of citations is brands' own websites, at 34%. But roughly a third of citations come from pages ranking below organic position 10, so being cited is related to ranking without being the same thing.
Which means anyone selling you AI optimisation as a bolt-on, separate from your SEO, is selling you something that does not exist. It is the same work, aimed at a surface that behaves differently.
What we do
Measure first, because almost nobody does
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Find out where you actually stand
We run the queries your buyers really use through the AI surfaces that matter in your market, and record whether an AI answer appears at all, who gets cited, and where you sit. Most businesses have never seen this and are surprised by it.
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Run it more than once
This is the part that gets skipped. Ask the same question twice a few minutes apart and the citations can change, and sometimes the AI answer disappears entirely. A single check is a snapshot of one moment, not a measurement. We take several and report the spread.
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Fix what makes a page citable
Clear answers near the top of the page, structure a machine can parse, entity and schema markup that says plainly who you are, and the authority that gets you into the top positions the AI reads from in the first place.
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Track it as a number, monthly
Presence rate and citation share, tracked in Dorqa, the platform we built. Not a screenshot of one lucky answer in a monthly deck.
Why take our word for it
We published the research
In August 2026 we ran 100 high-volume Indian D2C shopping queries through Google's AI Overview, across five categories, three separate draws each. We coded every citation by hand and published the method, the rules, the dataset and the things that surprised us.
We also wrote down the three headlines we thought the data might support before collecting any of it, and published the one it actually supported. That is an unusual thing to commit to and it is the reason the numbers are worth anything.
Almost all public AI-search tracking is global and blended across engines. Ours is Google, India, one vertical, and every figure shows its working. As far as we know there is no other published India baseline.
The measurement runs on Dorqa, the SEO and AI-visibility platform we built and run ourselves. When we tell you what your AI presence is doing, we wrote the instrument, and we know exactly which of its numbers are measured and which are modelled.
Honestly
What nobody can promise you
Guaranteed citations. The answer is regenerated each time it is asked. We have watched identical queries, minutes apart, in the same market, return different sources, and sometimes no AI answer at all. Anyone guaranteeing you a spot in an AI Overview is either misunderstanding the surface or hoping you will not check.
A stable playbook. This surface has changed repeatedly in the last year. Tactics that worked in one quarter have quietly stopped working in the next. We would rather keep measuring than sell you a framework with a shelf life.
That it matters equally everywhere. AI answers show up far more on some kinds of query than others, and the difference between categories is large. For some businesses this is urgent. For others it is a 2027 problem and we will say so rather than take the budget.
That it replaces SEO. It does not. It is the same foundation aimed at a new surface, which is why we do not price it as a separate product.
Find out if you are being cited
Send us your site and we will come back with a free audit: where you stand in search and AI, and what we would do first. Hemant or a senior strategist replies within one business day.