The method as published
Bay Area AEO builds a list of the real questions a business's customers ask AI, such as "best family dentist in San Mateo," and runs them across every major AI platform each month. The client sees how often they are mentioned, how they are described, which competitors appear and which sources the AI cites.
Top Business Awards US quoted the method nearly word for word in its reasons: the agency “runs the real questions customers ask across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews each month and reports how often a business is mentioned, how it is described and which sources are cited.”
Step one: the question list
The list starts with how customers talk. An owner names the services they most want to grow, the cities or neighborhoods they serve and a few competitors. The agency turns that into questions in the customer’s own words. Its published examples show the shape: “best family dentist in San Mateo”; “HVAC company in San Jose that installs heat pumps and knows the rebate programs”; “Who’s a good listing agent in Willow Glen, San Jose? We’re selling a 3-bedroom this spring.” Long, specific, local questions are the ones assistants answer with two or three names.
The location pages show how a panel spreads across the region. A single question from each area gives a sense of the range.
| Area | Sample question |
|---|---|
| North Bay | Fire-resistant roofing contractor in Santa Rosa |
| South Bay | CPA in Sunnyvale for RSU and ESPP taxes |
| East Bay | Ethiopian restaurant in Temescal |
| Peninsula | Pediatric dentist in San Mateo |
| San Francisco | Plumber in the Sunset for an older home |
Step two: every major platform
The questions go to every major AI platform: ChatGPT, Google Gemini and AI Overviews, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Claude. Each draws on different sources. Gemini and AI Overviews lean on Google’s index and Google Business Profile data. Copilot leans on Bing. ChatGPT and Perplexity compose answers from pages they retrieve, and so does Claude when it searches the web. Running the same question on each shows where a business is strong and where it is missing.
Step three: four things reported
The report covers four things. Mention frequency: how often the business is named across the panel. Description: the words the assistant uses about it, which show whether AI understands what the business does best. Competitors: which other names appear in the same answers. Cited sources: which pages and directories the assistant drew on, which tells the agency where to work next.
Step four: repeat every month
Prompts are re-tested monthly so progress is visible. The client sees the real answers before and after. Because the same questions run each month, a change in an answer can be traced to the change in the inputs: a corrected listing, a new FAQ, a new mention in a local guide.
The client reads the same kind of answer the customer reads, every month.
Why the questions stay fixed
A fixed list is what makes month-to-month comparison fair. If the questions changed each month, a business could look better or worse simply because the questions did. Running the same list keeps the comparison honest, and new questions can be added as the business adds services or locations.
Why the issuer called it transparent
The method is printed on the agency’s home page and in its FAQ, so any buyer can read it before signing anything. It reports in the unit that matters, the AI answer itself, and the agency says it uses no vanity metrics and no guesswork. The issuer’s criteria give particular weight to results tied to observable AI answers. This method is built on exactly that.