Skip to content
POLARGATE
Grow // Findable in Google, quotable in ChatGPT.

AI search and SEO

Technical SEO and generative engine optimisation on one job: server-rendered content, correct crawler access, schema.org, hreflang and Core Web Vitals, plus honest measurement of citations in ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews. It starts with an AI visibility audit from 1,500 EUR, credited against the work if contracted within 60 days.

A hotel manager with reading glasses in her hair compares an AI assistant's list of recommended hotels with a crawler report, an old town street outside

What it is

Search has two front doors now. One is Google, where a page still has to be crawlable, fast and correctly marked up. The other is an assistant: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot or Google's AI Overviews, which read a handful of pages and answer on your behalf. Polargate treats both as one job. Technical SEO is the floor, generative engine optimisation is the layer above it, and they share one requirement: the answer has to sit in the HTML the crawler receives, in plain language, before any JavaScript runs.

That is where most sites fail. GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot fetch raw HTML and do not execute JavaScript, so a client-rendered React site shows them an empty shell. ChatGPT in its fastest mode sees little more than the title, the H1 and the first couple of hundred characters. Bot protection at the edge can quietly serve those fetchers a challenge they cannot solve, and your analytics will never show it, because bots do not run the tracking script either.

How we do it

We start with an audit, not a proposal. We fetch every important URL the way a crawler does, with JavaScript off, and count the characters that are actually readable. We read robots.txt group by group, check the Vercel or Cloudflare rules in front of the site, verify hreflang return tags and canonicals, look at Core Web Vitals field data rather than lab scores, and check whether you exist in Bing at all, since ChatGPT and Copilot lean on that index.

What a visitor reads, and what an AI crawler receives

What a visitor reads, and what an AI crawler receivesA JavaScript site serves a full page to a browser that runs its code, and an almost empty shell to the AI crawlers that do not run it. A pre-rendered site serves the same complete HTML to both.A JavaScript siteVisitor in a browserruns the code, reads everything11,421The same siteGPTBot, ClaudeBot,Perplexitydoes not run the code14Pre-renderedVisitor in a browsersame complete HTML11,421Pre-renderedThe same crawlerssame complete HTML11,421
Characters of body text from one real news page, before and after. An assistant recommends what it could read, so the second number is the one that decides whether you are in the answer.

Then we fix things in the order that changes outcomes. Server-rendered pages first, so the content exists without JavaScript. Answer-first structure next: one H1, headings phrased as the questions buyers actually ask, a direct forty to seventy word answer under each. One schema.org entity graph, built from a single source of truth and serialised into the HTML, never injected at runtime. We are honest about the limits: a 2026 study of 1,885 marked-up pages against 4,000 controls found no measurable citation uplift from schema alone, and no engine has shown a citation lift from llms.txt. We ship both because they cost little and keep the site consistent, not because they are a lever.

What you get

A prioritised findings list with the evidence behind each item, the implemented fixes, and tests in your build that fail when a page loses its H1, its hreflang or its structured data. On Hotel Talavera that approach surfaced 48 confirmed findings and 16 real bugs, including a robots.txt inheritance error and English pages served with lang="es". On Malacca Tables the crawler-readable content went from zero characters to 105,212 across 65 URLs. You also get measurement that survives the fact that AI bots are invisible to client-side analytics: server-log tracking by user agent, Bing's AI Performance report, an AI referrer group in GA4, and a fixed set of buyer prompts we re-run every month.

What it costs

The AI visibility audit starts at 1,500 EUR and is credited in full against the implementation work that follows if contracted within 60 days. Implementation is quoted as a fixed-price block once we know what the site actually needs. Ongoing work runs on a monthly retainer under our CARE line.

Proof

FAQ

Questions, answered

How much does an AI visibility and SEO audit cost?
Polargate's AI visibility audit starts at 1,500 EUR as a fixed price, and the full amount is credited against the implementation work if you go ahead within 60 days. It covers the HTML crawlers actually receive, robots.txt, edge and firewall rules, hreflang, structured data, Core Web Vitals field data and your presence in Bing. Implementation is quoted separately as a fixed-price block once we know what the site needs.
How long does it take to show up in ChatGPT or AI Overviews?
The technical fixes land in days. Once pages are server-rendered and the fetchers are allowed through, GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot can read your site on their next visit. Citations run on a slower clock, driven by authority, freshness and third-party mentions, so we measure monthly and look for movement across a quarter. Nobody can guarantee a citation or a ranking, and we do not.
Does llms.txt help my site get cited by AI?
Not on its own. Consumer crawlers do not request llms.txt, Google Search ignores it, and no study shows a citation lift from it. It is genuinely useful for coding and agent tools that read it deliberately. We generate it from the built HTML because it costs almost nothing and stays accurate, but the work that moves citations is server-rendered, answer-first content.
Will schema.org markup get me into AI Overviews?
Structured data helps machines read your page correctly, but it is not the lever people think it is. A 2026 study of 1,885 marked-up pages against 4,000 controls found no measurable citation uplift from schema alone. Visible text does the work. We write one accurate entity graph into the served HTML, mark up only facts a visitor can see, and skip the schema types Google retired.
Can you do this on WordPress, or only on custom builds?
Both. Malacca Tables ran on WordPress and WooCommerce before we rebuilt it, and Hotel Talavera is a Vite and React site pre-rendered with vite-react-ssg. The audit is platform-neutral because it only looks at what the crawler receives. On WordPress we fix rendering, robots, structured data and speed in place. If the platform itself is the blocker, we say so and price a rebuild separately.
How do you measure whether AI assistants are citing my site?
With server-side data, because AI bots do not run JavaScript and never appear in GA4 or Plausible. We track requests by user agent in your server logs, use Bing Webmaster Tools and its AI Performance report, add an AI referrer group in GA4 for the humans who arrive from chatgpt.com or perplexity.ai, and re-run a fixed panel of buyer prompts every month.
INITIATE

Start the engine

Tell us what you are building in a few short questions. A senior engineer answers in writing within 48 business hours, with a first take on scope, timeline and price.

Start your project Talk to us