Be found. In Google. In ChatGPT. In Perplexity. In AI Overviews.
valUX runs Pulse audits that measure both classic SEO and generative search in one score, one roadmap, one afternoon.
One score. Every engine your buyers actually use: ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google Gemini, Google Search, Microsoft Copilot, Apple Intelligence, Meta AI.
SEO and GEO are not two things. They're one outcome: being found.
SEO alone is a shop with a polished shopfront on a street nobody walks down. Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT web search, Perplexity, and Gemini answer the question before your listing gets the click.
GEO alone is viral word-of-mouth through a broken front door. An AI will happily recommend a site it can't crawl, only to send visitors into a slow, unschemaed page that converts no-one.
You have visibility when both are done together. That's what Pulse measures, in seven categories, with a reproducible score you can track month on month.
Pulse audits, one-off, three disciplines, three depths
Pick the discipline your business needs. Most buyers pick Complete, because that's what actually moves the needle in 2026. Split audits exist for teams who've already got half of it handled. Pricing is quoted per buyer scope at proposal stage; email info@valux.uk or use the contact form to enquire.
Pulse SEO. SEO discipline only, for sites whose AI visibility is already professionally handled.Pulse AI. GEO discipline only, for sites whose SEO foundation is already strong.Pulse Complete. ★ Recommended default. Both disciplines, unified score, single integrated roadmap.
Turnaround: Pulse Essentials 48 hours, Pulse Growth 5 working days, Pulse X 7 working days. No lock-in.
Pulse Retainer, monthly ongoing engagement
One product, three tiers, always Complete (SEO + GEO together). No split retainers. Pricing quoted per buyer scope at proposal stage. 30 days notice. No lock-in. Requires a Complete audit within the past 90 days (or bundled as month one).
Who Pulse is for
Three buyer profiles, one audit shape. In-house marketing teams who need a defensible third-party score. Founder-led SMEs with no in-house SEO. Agencies who need a second opinion , white-label-friendly. Not for: pure local SEO with no AI exposure, vendor lock-in, day-rate engagements.
The 12-week plan, week by week
Five phases, each with named outputs and a re-score at the end. Week 1: audit, baseline, prioritise. Weeks 2-4: quick wins and the technical floor (schema, robots, llms.txt, Core Web Vitals). Weeks 5-8: content and citation surface (citation-shaped pages, author entities, sources blocks). Weeks 9-11: authority and AI-engine probe (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini). Week 12: re-score, signed delivery report, next-quarter plan.
SEO audit, UK
An SEO audit you can defend in a board meeting. Six SEO surfaces (technical foundations, on-page structure, authority and brand, content and intent, local visibility, schema) on the seven-category Pulse rubric. Read the SEO audit page .
GEO audit, UK (includes AEO)
Be cited by ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini. Six AI surfaces (AI citability, brand authority, structured data, platform optimisation, agent readiness, content + E-E-A-T) on the seven-category rubric. Direct citation probes across each engine. AEO (answer engine optimisation) is included: Google AI Overviews, featured snippets, People Also Ask, voice answers all map to existing Pulse categories. Read the GEO audit page , or SEO vs GEO vs AEO explained .
Monthly notes
One email a month. What changed in AI search, what we shipped, what we'd do differently. Subscribe at hello@valux.uk . No course pitches, no growth hacks.
How Pulse scores, seven weighted categories
Pulse scores a site across AI Citability & Visibility (25%), Brand Authority (18%), Content Quality & E-E-A-T (18%), Technical Foundations (13%), Structured Data (8%), Platform Optimisation (8%), and Agent Readiness (10%). Most UK SEO audits cover the middle four. The other three are categories most agencies don't measure. Reproducible scoring. Same site, same inputs, same number next month. Full scoring rubric .
From the Insights desk
Field notes from a UK visibility agency. The reasoning behind Pulse and the maths behind GEO. Read the full insights index , or jump to a recent post:
Frequently asked questions
What is GEO (generative engine optimisation)? GEO (generative engine optimisation) is the discipline of getting your site read, referenced, and cited by the 5 AI search surfaces buyers now use: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and 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.
What is SEO (search engine optimisation)? 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.
What is AEO (answer engine optimisation)? AEO (answer engine optimisation) is the discipline of getting your site cited inside answer surfaces: Google AI Overviews, featured snippets, People Also Ask, and voice assistants. Where SEO measures rank and GEO measures whether AI engines like ChatGPT or Perplexity recommend you, AEO measures whether your content gets pulled into the answer the user actually reads. The technical floor (structured passages, FAQPage and HowTo schema, agent-readiness) overlaps with GEO, which is why Pulse covers AEO inside the same audit. 2 of the 7 Pulse categories (AI Citability and Platform Optimisation) pick it up directly. There is no separate AEO audit; if you run Pulse AI or Pulse Complete, AEO is included.
How much does a Pulse audit cost? Pricing is quoted per buyer scope, not from a fixed menu. The catalogue is 9 SKUs (3 disciplines: Pulse SEO, Pulse AI, Pulse Complete; 3 tiers: Pulse Essentials, Pulse Growth, Pulse X) plus an ongoing retainer option. Use the contact form or email info@valux.uk for a quote. Most engagements scope in a 30-minute call so the proposal matches the actual site rather than a menu.
What is Pulse? Pulse is valUX's search visibility audit and retainer product, scoring your site across 7 weighted categories that cover both Google SEO and generative-engine optimisation. It measures how the 5 named AI search surfaces (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Bing Copilot) read and cite your site. 1 reproducible score, 1 unified roadmap, ±2 points of reproducibility across re-runs in the same week.
What's the difference between SEO, GEO, and AEO? SEO measures rank, GEO measures recommendation, and AEO measures inclusion in the answer itself, so the 3 disciplines cover 3 different stages of the same buyer journey. 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 entity signals and brand mentions line up. AEO sits inside GEO and is specifically about answer surfaces: Google AI Overviews, featured snippets, People Also Ask, voice. The 3 overlap on technical foundations but diverge on content shape and citation signals. Running SEO without GEO leaves half the funnel unmeasured. Pulse Complete covers all 3 in a single score, on the same 7-category rubric, so you see the full picture.
What's the difference between Pulse SEO, Pulse AI, and Pulse Complete? 3 disciplines on the same 7-category rubric. Pulse SEO scores classic Google search readiness only: technical foundations, content quality, structured data, links, on-page. Pulse AI scores generative-engine readiness only: AI citability, brand authority, agent readiness, platform optimisation across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Bing Copilot. Pulse Complete runs both passes, returns 1 composite score, and shows where the 2 halves drag or lift each other. Most UK buyers in 2026 want Complete, the recommended default; the 2 split versions exist for sites with 1 specialism already strong.
What is a generative engine optimisation agency? A generative engine optimisation agency measures and improves how AI search engines find, read, and cite your site, separately from and alongside traditional Google SEO. valUX is a UK generative engine optimisation agency offering Pulse audits across 5 named AI surfaces (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Bing Copilot). The work is measured against 7 weighted categories with a reproducible score, not a retainer of untested opinion.
We have a tight budget. What should we do? Pick Pulse Complete Essentials over a higher tier of just Pulse SEO. Less depth but coverage on both disciplines, which is what actually moves the needle in 2026 when AI Overviews and ChatGPT intercept clicks above the first blue link. Pricing is quoted per scope; enquire via the contact form for a number.
How fast is a Pulse audit? Pulse Essentials ships in 48 hours with a 30-minute readout call, Pulse Growth in 5 working days with a 60-minute readout, and Pulse X in 7 working days with a 60-minute readout plus a 90-day implementation roadmap sequenced across 5 phases. The tier you pick sets the depth and turnaround, not the methodology. The 7-category rubric is the same.
How long until the score actually moves? Technical fixes move the score in 2 to 4 weeks, content and citation work in 4 to 8 weeks, brand authority and platform signals in a quarter or more. Technical foundations (Core Web Vitals at LCP 2.5s, INP 200ms, CLS 0.1; schema; crawler access) ship and re-run immediately. Content and citability rewrites need AI engines to re-crawl and re-evaluate. Brand authority is the slowest because it depends on third-party publishers and platforms. The 12-week phased plan is sequenced so the fastest-moving categories ship first, which means the score starts climbing inside the first month for most sites.
What does a retainer actually include? A Pulse retainer includes 4 things: automated Pulse runs, a monthly written report, a quarterly deep-audit PDF, and (from Pulse Growth tier upward) implementation hours for the fixes we recommend. Retainers are always Pulse Complete (SEO + GEO together) on the same 7-category rubric. No split retainers. 30 days notice, no lock-in.
What happens after the 12-week implementation plan? 3 options after delivery. Stop and run the work in-house, with the report and roadmap as your reference. Re-engage for a quarterly Pulse re-audit to track movement against baseline. Or move into the Pulse Complete retainer for ongoing automated runs, monthly written reports, and implementation hours on the fixes we recommend. No lock-in either way: the audit and the roadmap are yours regardless.
Is the audit automated or run by hand? Both, deliberately. The probes are automated and reproducible: Core Web Vitals from Google PageSpeed (LCP 2.5s, INP 200ms, CLS 0.1 thresholds), schema graph parsed from the live HTML, crawler access checked against robots.txt across 19 explicitly named AI crawlers, citability scored across 5 axes per page, and citation probes run against 5 AI engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Bing Copilot). The interpretation, the prioritisation, the implementation plan, and the readout are run by the named architect on your audit. Robots gather the evidence; a human assembles the call.
How do we know GEO is real, not marketing fluff? GEO is measured in 7 weighted categories with a published rubric and a reproducible score that holds within ±2 points across re-runs in the same week. The same site, with the same content, scores the same number next month. The methodology is deterministic. The full per-category breakdown is on the scoring page. Independent research backs the underlying mechanics: see the Princeton/Georgia Tech GEO paper (Aggarwal et al., KDD 2024).
Do you guarantee rankings, traffic, or AI citations? No, and we wouldn't trust an agency that did. Rankings depend on competitor moves, algorithm updates, and intent shifts none of us control. What we guarantee is the method: same 7-category rubric, same maths, same probes on every audit, with reproducibility holding within ±2 points across re-runs in the same week. If something improves on the rubric, the score moves. If it doesn't, it won't. The work is honest about what's in your control and what isn't.
Our last agency only did SEO and it worked fine. Why change? It probably did work fine before Q3 2024, when 2 platform launches reshaped commercial search: Google AI Overviews rolled out from May 2024 and ChatGPT web search shipped in late 2024. Both intercept clicks above the organic result. Run the free 30-second Pulse Check: 5 live probes, scored result by email. 30 seconds of measured data is more reliable than a memory.
Do you work with existing in-house teams or agencies? Yes. Pulse is often bought as a second opinion alongside an existing SEO agency, or as the GEO specialist layer on top of a traditional SEO retainer covering Pulse AI only. We'll happily produce a handover document the incumbent team can act on; the AUDIT_SUMMARY.md and 5-phase 12-week implementation plan ship in a format an external implementer can pick up cold.
What do you not do? Templated sites, WordPress themes, Wix migrations, "let me just install a plugin" work, day-rate contracts, or retainers that cover only SEO or only GEO. If that's what you need, we'll happily recommend a better fit.