What is GEO (generative engine optimisation)?

GEO is how you get your site read, referenced, and cited by AI search. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Bing Copilot. It measures whether AI assistants can find your content, understand what you do, and recommend you when a buyer asks them a question. SEO answers "will Google rank me". GEO answers "will AI recommend me". In 2026 buyers ask both, so both scores matter.

SEO (search engine optimisation) is how you rank in Google. Technical crawlability, on-page signals, content depth, authority, and site speed. Done right, Google sends organic traffic for the queries that match your business. SEO has driven the bulk of qualified traffic for UK buyers for twenty years and still does. The shift in 2026 is that AI Overviews intercept some of those clicks before they reach your site, which is why SEO now has to sit next to GEO.

How much does a Pulse audit cost?

Pulse audits start at £695. Three disciplines, three tiers. Pulse SEO (SEO only) from £695. Pulse AI (GEO only) from £895. Pulse Complete (both disciplines, recommended) from £1,095. Growth and Dominance tiers go deeper and come with longer readout calls; tier-level pricing is quoted per buyer scope, email info@valux.uk or use the contact form to enquire.

What's the difference between an SEO audit and a GEO audit?

SEO audits score how you rank. GEO audits score how you get recommended. An SEO audit looks at Google: crawlability, indexation, page speed, content structure, backlinks, intent match. A GEO audit looks at AI search: can ChatGPT read your site, does Perplexity cite you, do you appear in Google AI Overviews, do entity signals and brand mentions line up. The two overlap in technical foundations but diverge on content shape and citation signals. Running one without the other leaves half the funnel unmeasured. Google sends the click. AI decides whether the click ever happens. Pulse Complete covers both in a single score so you see the full picture.

Sample audit

One category, in full. The other six, summary-graded.

valUX scores its own site monthly. Below is the full prose for one category from the latest run, plus letter grades for the other six. Enough to show how Pulse reads. Not enough to clone the deliverable.

Composite

43 / 100

Grade

Audited

27/04/2026

Tier

Pulse Complete · Dominance

Re-audit pending after 29/04 Agent Readiness ship (+20 raw, est. +2 composite).

One category, in full

AI Citability & Visibility

Grade D49 / 10025% of composite

Average citability of 41.8 across five pages, zero citations in ten monitored AI queries, and no llms.txt deployed leaves the brand invisible to AI answer engines despite all tier-1 crawlers having default access.

One finding, in full prose

Zero AI citations across 10 monitored queries

Effort

8 hours

Time to see

70 days

Phase

Phase 3

Why it matters

Ten test questions covering 'best SEO agencies London', 'GEO audit UK', and related terms returned no valUX mentions from Gemini or any other monitored engine. Re:signal and Reboot Online appear in multiple responses. When a buyer asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for an agency, the answer cites our competitors and not us.

The fix

Root cause is third-party signal scarcity: no backlinks, no Wikidata entry, no Reddit or Hacker News presence for AI models to draw on when forming citations. Fix sequence: (1) claim Wikidata entity for valUX with founder, founding date, headquartered-in, services properties; (2) seed first-party brand corpus on the live site (named publications, named clients, dated case-study URLs); (3) submit to three UK B2B directories (Clutch, Sortlist, The Drum) which AI models index; (4) re-monitor at 70-day mark.

Six more categories

Grades only.

The full breakdown, fix-by-fix narrative, and phase-tagged delivery plan ship with every paid Pulse audit.

Brand Authority

18% of composite

Content Quality & E-E-A-T

18% of composite

Technical Foundations

13% of composite

Structured Data

8% of composite

Platform Optimisation

8% of composite

Agent Readiness

10% of composite

What's in the full audit

The deliverable, in shape.

All seven weighted categories scored 0–100, not just one
Every finding tagged with phase (0–4), effort hours, and time-to-see in days
12-week 5-phase delivery plan, written into delivery_plan.md per audit
Standard PDF (skim-friendly) and Deep PDF (archival, full breakdown)
Five competitor benchmarks named, scored on the same rubric
Reproducible: same site next month, same number within ±2 points

The Standard PDF, Deep PDF, and delivery plan ship to paying clients only. Sample shows the rubric and the voice; not the archive.

Want to see your own site scored on the same rubric?

Run a free Pulse Check (60 seconds, no credit card) for the headline numbers, or enquire for a full Pulse audit with the fix-by-fix delivery plan.

Run a Pulse Check Enquire about a full audit How Pulse scores