✦ FAQ

Questions we hear a lot.

On AI visibility, how we work, and what makes brand presence actually compound.

✦ AI Visibility

What is AI visibility?

AI visibility is how often, how accurately, and with how much authority your brand appears in answers from AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews. It rests on the same inputs that have always driven good PR: your earned media, your website's content and structure, and what people say about you in the communities your buyers trust. Our complete guide to AI visibility goes deeper.

How is AI visibility different from SEO?

SEO earns your pages a place in search results. AI visibility is about whether an AI assistant names you, cites you, and describes you correctly when a buyer asks about your category. The two overlap heavily: Google says its AI Overviews and AI Mode are rooted in its core Search ranking systems, and both reward credible content, a well-built site, and earned authority. Where they differ is weight. AI answers lean heavily on sources you don't own, such as news coverage, community discussions, and reference sites, so your presence off your own site matters more than it does in classic SEO. GEO and AEO vs SEO sets out what changes and what stays the same.

What is GEO, or generative engine optimization?

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of getting your brand found, cited, and described accurately by AI assistants. You'll also hear answer engine optimization (AEO), usually for the narrower job of structuring a page so an engine can lift a direct answer from it. Most of the work is familiar, aimed at a new reader: pages that answer buyers' questions plainly, a site that search engines and AI crawlers can read, coverage in the publications and communities AI engines cite, and consistent facts about who you are wherever they appear. Google's own guide says that, from its side, optimizing for generative AI search "is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO." Althea Labs' PR Plus methodology covers each of these. If you are hiring for it, what a GEO agency actually does covers the work and the red flags.

What is AEO, or answer engine optimization?

Answer engine optimization (AEO) is structuring a page so an answer engine, from Google's featured snippets and voice assistants to ChatGPT, can lift a direct answer from it. It sits alongside GEO: AEO shapes how one page answers one question, while GEO is about whether AI assistants find, cite and describe your brand at all. Althea Labs covers both under a single visibility program. What Google actually says about page structure covers how to do it.

How does earned media affect AI visibility?

Earned media is most of what AI assistants cite. In Muck Rack's May 2026 study of more than 25 million links cited by ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, 84% were earned media, and journalism alone accounted for 27%. When an assistant searches the web to answer a question, it tends to cite sources people already trust, such as news coverage, Reddit threads, Wikipedia, and respected industry blogs, so placements in those outlets make it more likely your brand is named in the answer. It's the same work that has always built credibility, and now you can measure its effect. PR for SEO explains how coverage helps you rank and get cited.

✦ PR Plus Methodology

What is the PR Plus methodology?

PR Plus is Althea Labs' integrated approach to brand visibility. It runs four components as one system: Authority (earned PR), Infrastructure (SEO and structured data), Human Proof (community presence), and The Bridge (content). The work follows five steps: Audit, ICP + Messaging, Visibility Tracking, Strategy, and Execution. Because every placement, page, and community post is planned together, each one makes the others more findable. Read the full methodology.

Why does Althea Labs use an integrated approach instead of specializing in one channel?

Althea Labs runs PR, SEO, content, and community together because AI visibility is the output of all of those inputs working at once. A great PR placement with no site infrastructure behind it loses much of its value. Strong SEO with no earned authority behind it hits a ceiling. The brands that show up consistently in AI answers have built credibility across all of these layers, and PR Plus is built to do that.

What does the audit cover?

The Brand Intelligence Audit covers four areas: your SEO footprint (rankings, technical site health, content gaps), your earned media (volume, quality, outlet authority), your AI visibility (how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode describe you for the prompts your buyers use), and your community presence (Reddit, LinkedIn, industry publications, forums). It's delivered in five days as a deck and a one-hour session, with Althea Score benchmarks and recommendations for the next 30 to 45 days.

✦ Working with Althea Labs

What types of companies does Althea Labs work with?

Althea Labs works best with Series A and B B2B companies in developer tools, fintech, adtech, martech, and B2B SaaS that have funding, a marketing lead as the day-to-day contact, and a founder who understands that visibility is infrastructure, not a nice-to-have. If you're pre-product-market fit or mainly consumer-focused, we're probably not the right fit yet.

How much does an Althea Labs engagement cost?

Althea Labs prices each engagement after a scoping call, because the right mix depends on your stage, your category, and how much your team runs in-house. There are four packages: the Brand Intelligence Audit (one time, five days), the AI Comms Toolkit (one time, scope-dependent), the AI Visibility Sprint (3 to 6 months), and Steady State (6 months and ongoing). Book a call and we'll tell you which fits and what it costs.

What does an Althea Labs engagement include?

Every PR Plus engagement starts with an audit of where you stand. From there it includes ICP and messaging work; a baseline of 300 to 500 prompts in Gauge, the AI visibility measurement platform we use with clients, with a tracked set re-run every month; a 90-day editorial calendar across PR, content, and community; and monthly execution and reporting. You work directly with Kara Silverman, Althea Labs' founder, throughout.

Does Althea Labs work with companies outside the US?

Yes. Althea Labs works with international companies building their US presence, whether they're entering the US market or already have a US team. The focus is B2B tech with a meaningful US presence or US ambitions.

Do you offer standalone audits?

Yes. The Brand Intelligence Audit is available on its own: five days, delivered as a deck and a one-hour session. It's a useful starting point if you want a clear picture of where your brand stands before committing to an ongoing program, or if your team can execute and wants an outside view on strategy.

✦ Results & Measurement

How does Althea Labs measure AI visibility?

Althea Labs measures AI visibility with Gauge, the AI visibility measurement platform we use with clients. We start with a baseline of 300 to 500 prompts specific to your business, pulled from real conversations online and from your own customer interactions, so you're tracking what buyers actually ask. After the baseline, we re-run a tracked set every month and report how often you're mentioned and cited, which sources the engines relied on, and how your search performance is moving.

How long does it take to see results?

In our experience, early signs such as a cleaner site, first placements, and a growing community presence show up within 60 to 90 days of consistent work, and movement in AI answers builds on those inputs over the months that follow. You see your baseline in the first month. The work compounds from there: month one makes month three more effective, and month six more effective still.

Can Althea Labs guarantee we'll be cited by ChatGPT?

No, and be wary of anyone who promises it. OpenAI's publisher FAQ says only that any public website "can appear" in ChatGPT search, and Google's guide to its AI features says that even for pages meeting every requirement, "Indexing and serving aren't guaranteed." What Althea Labs can do is strengthen the inputs AI engines draw on, measure the result against your baseline, and report what changed.

What does success look like?

Success is a top-of-funnel presence that isn't dependent on any single channel, platform, or placement. Your brand appears accurately and favorably when buyers ask AI assistants about your category, each earned placement makes the next one easier to land, and your content and community presence keep adding to the human signal that AI systems and buyers both trust. You'll see it in your AI visibility score against the baseline; the lasting result is a brand whose work compounds.