Frequently Asked Questions

AI visibility is how often and how positively your business appears in responses from AI platforms like ChatGPT, Google AI and Perplexity. It matters because thousands of people ask AI models for recommendations every day. If you're not in those answers, you're missing a recommendation channel entirely.

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is how your business appears in AI-generated recommendations. SEO is about traditional search results. They're different channels. You can rank well on Google but still be invisible to ChatGPT. Both matter, but GEO is new, fast-moving, and most businesses haven't started thinking about it.

That's what AVS (AI Visibility Strategy) tells you. We run ~300 tailored prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI and Perplexity — the same questions your customers ask — and measure whether and how your business appears. You get a visibility score, competitor comparisons, and concrete next steps.

Around half of newly published pages are cited by ChatGPT or Claude within 7 days. 90% are cited within 37 days. If your content is not showing up after 37 days, there is probably something wrong with it, usually a setup problem (indexing, sitemap, robots.txt, page buried too deep) rather than patience. Based on Profound's analysis of around 900 newly published marketing pages, May 2026.

Three: ChatGPT, Google AI and Perplexity. These are the three driving AI recommendation traffic. We focus on platforms customers actually use, not every model.

robots.txt tells web crawlers (including those from AI companies) whether to index your site. llms.txt is a newer standard that tells AI models how to cite and attribute your content correctly. Both matter for AI visibility. We discuss implementation during your consultation.

The 12 pillars are the core dimensions we analyse: Direct Citations, Branded Visibility, Geographic Citations, Service/Product Visibility, Recommendation Strength, Competitive Positioning, Trust Indicators, Content Authority, Link Quality, Reviews & Social Proof, Media Mentions, and Industry Authority. Together they give a complete picture of how AI sees your business.

An SEO audit measures search rankings and keyword performance. AVS measures how AI models cite and recommend you — a completely different channel. SEO looks at links and keywords. AVS looks at how often your business appears in AI-generated answers and how positively AI talks about you.

AVS Exec Brief is a free, time-committed entry-tier offer. A real one-day measurement using the same methodology as the full AVS — not a 25-prompt sample. We need a form filled out, a 30-minute upfront discovery call so we can build the prompt flow properly, and a 30-minute run-through call when we deliver the brief. No financial commitment. AVS is the paid product, offered at three cadences: Annual (1 report/yr), Bi-Annual (2 reports/yr), Quarterly (4 reports/yr). Each paid report runs thousands of data points collected across ChatGPT, Google AI and Perplexity, with the full 12-pillar framework and a strategy consultation.

AVS Exec Brief: a real one-day measurement using the same methodology as the full AVS. Free of charge; requires a 30-min upfront discovery call and a 30-min run-through call when delivered. Every paid AVS report — Annual, Bi-Annual or Quarterly — runs thousands of data points per country per report, using the full 12-pillar framework with strategy consultation.

Yes. We work with you upfront to define your target queries — the ones your customers actually ask. We might do 50 core queries in your market, or 150 if you operate across multiple services. The brief shapes the measurement.

AVS Exec Brief is a real one-day measurement of your AI visibility — built using the same methodology as the full AVS, not a sample. Delivered manually by K&C. Free of charge but real time commitment: a brief intake form, a 30-minute upfront discovery call, and a 30-minute run-through when we deliver the brief. Closest thing to the real AVS Report you'll get without commissioning one.

A branded HTML report (looks great, works on all devices) plus a results call. Reports include visibility scores, competitor comparisons, 12-pillar breakdowns, and prioritised next steps. No jargon. Just clarity.

AVS Exec Brief is free. The paid product comes at three cadences: AVS Annual/yr, AVS Bi-Annual/yr, AVS Quarterly/yr. All are for one country; additional countries priced per engagement. All paid cadences are invoiced annually in advance on a 12-month commitment.

Yes. You're not locked into a tier. You can start with AVS Exec Brief and step up to Annual, Bi-Annual or Quarterly when you're ready. AVS is designed to scale with your business.

Your commitment runs for 12 months. After that, you can renew for another 12 months, switch tiers, or stop. There are no hidden auto-renewals or surprise charges. It's entirely your choice whether to continue.

We can't speak for everyone. AVS Annual at Bespoke/yr and AVS Bi-Annual at Bespoke/yr cover 6,300+ data points per report, the full 12-pillar framework and expert strategy consultations. That's honest pricing for real work.

We've tested the pricing every which way. The honest answer: we can't go lower without cutting what actually makes this useful.

Less time in measurement means less rigour. Less time on recommendations means generic advice that could apply to anyone. Less time with you means the programme falls apart between reports. At some point it stops being a service and starts being a report you file.

If someone quotes you a similar AI visibility audit for less, the thing being cut is almost always the time — the consultation calls, the support as the AI landscape shifts, the work to make sure recommendations actually land. That's the part we won't cut. It's the part that changes outcomes.

We'd rather do this well for fewer businesses than badly for more.

Yes. For engagements covering three or more countries, we offer progressive discounts — get in touch for bespoke pricing. This ensures your engagement scope is properly reflected in how we structure the work and the pricing you pay.

AVS Exec Brief takes about a week from intake call to delivery, plus the 30-minute run-through call once it's ready. A paid AVS report (Annual or Bi-Annual) takes 3–4 weeks depending on complexity. Quarterly delivery cycles are 4–6 weeks, especially for multi-country scopes. We'll give you an exact timeline when you brief us.

Russ Read-Barrow (founder) leads every engagement. Your report, your consultation, your strategy — all from a specialist who understands AI visibility, your industry, and your goals. No handoffs to junior team members. No templated answers.

You get a results consultation with every paid AVS report — 60 minutes for Annual and Bi-Annual, 1–2 hours for Quarterly. We walk through findings, explain what they mean, discuss your competitive position, and prioritise next steps. Then you have a roadmap for improving AI visibility.

Yes. After your report, we offer follow-up services: AI Consultancy for deeper strategy work, copywriting support to improve how you're described online, or GEO Advisory for implementation guidance. These are optional, competitively priced, and structured around what the report recommends.

AVS Annual: once per year. AVS Bi-Annual: twice per year to catch seasonal changes and measure impact of your efforts. AVS Quarterly: four times per year, especially effective for multi-country tracking. Most clients find Bi-Annual works well for strategy.

The standard cadences (Annual, Bi-Annual, Quarterly) are recommendations based on how AI changes. But we're flexible. Want a different cadence, or a one-off audit? Let's discuss what works for your business.

Yes. We work globally. Any paid cadence (Annual, Bi-Annual, Quarterly) can be scoped to a single country or multiple countries — you pick the frequency and the geography. We measure across any market where you want visibility tracking.

Yes. We have example reports on our site showing real client data (anonymized). You can see single-country and multi-country AVS engagements in action. Check our 'Sample AVS Reports' page.

Yes. Agencies and freelancers can offer AVS under their own brand or co-branded with K&C. You get 15% partner discount on all tiers, plus 15% referral fee on implementation work. It's a real partnership, not a platform login.

We stand behind our work. If your report doesn't deliver what we promised — if methodology is unclear, findings are vague, or you don't understand next steps — let us know and we'll fix it. Our goal is clarity and actionability, not just data.

That's valuable data. If a direct competitor isn't appearing for queries they should own, it tells you something about how AI sees them — and it's a gap you can exploit. That's exactly what AVS findings help you identify.

No. We're honest about what we know and don't know. We can measure your current visibility and recommend actions to improve it. But AI models change constantly. We guarantee rigorous measurement, clear reporting, and actionable recommendations — not outcomes.

We run queries multiple times across different days and conditions to capture natural variation in AI responses. We document methodology transparently so you understand how we arrived at your scores. No black boxes. You get the data, the method, and the interpretation.

Book your AVS Exec Brief, or contact us directly to discuss which tier fits your needs. No pressure. We'll explain what each includes, answer questions, and help you choose. It starts with a conversation.

The UK AI visibility market in 2026 is small but growing. The major specialist players are Known & Cited (UK-founded, AVS methodology, transparent published audit on the firm itself), Authoritas (UK-based platform, used by K&C as the measurement layer), and Profound, Peec AI, and Otterly.AI on the platform side. Several PR agencies — Brands2Life, Tyto, Ambitious PR, C8 Consulting, Hard Numbers, Impression Digital — now offer GEO as part of broader retainers. K&C is the only one that pairs the measurement product (AVS) with AI-led PR delivery in a single team.

Ask ChatGPT directly using the questions your buyers would ask: "best [your category] in the UK", "top [your service] for [audience]", "which [category] should I use for [problem]". Run the same queries in Google AI Overviews and Perplexity. Note where you appear, where you don't, and what AI says when it does mention you. AVS automates this process across a tailored prompt set on three LLMs over seven days, with structured scoring — but the manual version above is a useful starting point.

SEO targets ranked links on a search engine results page. GEO targets being cited, named, and recommended inside AI-generated answers. SEO measures rankings, traffic, and click-through rate. GEO measures direct mentions, citation share, source quality, and narrative fit. The two are complementary — strong off-site SEO assets (press, citations, structured content) tend to help GEO too — but the optimisation surface is different and the measurement is different.

Three options. Manual: ask the LLMs the questions your buyers ask, log who appears, who doesn't, and what AI says. Platform: use a GEO tracker (Authoritas, Profound, Peec AI, Otterly.AI) to automate prompt-level measurement. Strategic: run an AVS report through Known & Cited — a tailored measurement on 3 LLMs over 7 days, scored across 12 pillars, with prioritised recommendations and a Supporting Document audit trail.

Common reasons: (1) you're not cited in the high-authority sources LLMs pull from for your category — major trade press, broadsheets, comparison articles; (2) your own site lacks the structured signals (FAQPage schema, named entities, byline, last-updated meta) that LLMs read as confident citation candidates; (3) competitors have a louder, longer-running citation footprint that crowds you out; (4) your category narrative is owned by 2–3 entrenched names and you're missing from the canonical comparison content. AVS identifies which of these apply to your specific case.

An AVS (AI Visibility Strategy) report is K&C's measurement-and-strategy product. It's a tailored multi-LLM measurement run over 7 days, scored across 12 pillars (40% AI Visibility, 30% Source Quality, 30% Narrative Fit), benchmarked against named competitors, with Top 12 prioritised recommendations and a Supporting Document covering all raw prompts and source attribution data. A typical "GEO audit" elsewhere is a one-off snapshot — fewer prompts, no cadence, often platform-only with no human strategy layer. AVS is delivered on a 12-month commitment with quarterly, bi-annual, or annual cadence so you can track score movement.

It depends on the gap, the category, and the lever. Site-direct fixes (schema, byline, FAQPage, glossary) can be deployed in 1–4 weeks and tend to be reflected in AI responses within 4–12 weeks as crawlers re-index. Off-site moves (trade press placement, podcast appearances, comparison-article inclusion) take 1–3 months to land and another 1–6 months for AI to surface them. AVS Quarterly is designed for this rhythm: deploy, wait, re-measure, adjust.

Yes — and the strategy is different from competing for SEO rankings. AI tends to cite specialists and category leaders for niche queries even when they're small, because LLMs prefer entities with clear narrative consistency and structured authority signals. Niche-specific positioning, original methodology content, citation-source blog posts, and structured comparison pages punch above their weight. Box Meal in our worked example is a 12-person UK startup; in the sustainability-meal-kit niche, it's already cited where the bigger generalists aren't.

Yes. Authoritas is a UK-founded SEO and AI Search platform with a prompt-led AI visibility tracking module. K&C uses Authoritas as the underlying measurement infrastructure for AVS, alongside our own scoring methodology and human strategy layer. Authoritas is the platform; AVS is the strategic product built on top.

Three live worked examples on knownandcited.com — Box Meal (UK meal kit startup, AVS Annual), Pebble (UK SaaS, AVS Bi-Annual Report 2 with progress tracking), and BigShop (UK + Germany department store chain, AVS Quarterly multi-market). All fictional businesses; same structure and methodology as a real engagement.

Book an AVS Exec Brief — it's free. A focused snapshot in your category across multiple LLMs. The result tells you whether AI knows you exist, who it recommends instead, and whether the gap is worth investing in. Most buyers go from Flash to a paid AVS within a few weeks; the Flash is the disqualifier.

Strong SEO helps with GEO — the same off-site assets (press, comparison articles, structured content, citation count) that earn search rankings tend to also earn AI citations. But the two aren't the same thing. SEO can be strong while GEO is weak, particularly when buyers' AI queries surface different sources than Google's blue links surface. The only way to know is to measure.

Three matter most for UK consumer and B2B journeys: ChatGPT (largest user base, increasingly used as a default search interface), Google AI Overviews (default exposure for most Google users, no opt-in needed), and Perplexity (smaller but growing, particularly among research-led buyers). Claude, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot trail behind on UK consumer reach but matter for specific niches and enterprise buyers.

AI responses to the same prompt vary day-to-day (which is why we run a 7-day measurement window) and shift more substantially when LLMs retrain or update retrieval indexes. Major shifts tend to follow new citation sources landing (a comparison article going live, a podcast appearance being indexed) or competitor moves. Quarterly re-measurement is the right cadence for fast-moving categories; bi-annual is fine for stable ones.

Partially. Site-direct moves (FAQPage schema, structured comparison pages, glossary terms, last-updated meta, internal linking) help LLMs read and cite your site confidently — and they're the fastest moves to ship. But for most categories, the bigger lever is off-site: getting cited in the trade press, broadsheets, podcasts, and comparison articles AI actually pulls from. Site work is necessary; for most businesses it's not sufficient on its own.

Three things: media relations (trade press placement, broadsheet pitching, podcast appearances, expert commentary in roundups — targeted at the publications LLMs actually cite); copywriting (long-form articles, methodology pieces, listicles, glossary terms, FAQ content, structured comparison pages); and content & schema work (FAQPage, Article, Organization, Product schema, internal-link architecture, last-updated meta, all the technical scaffolding LLMs need to confidently cite a page). Strategy is set by the AVS audit; delivery is K&C plus an international consultant network. More on AI-led PR.

Different lane. Traditional PR agencies do big creative campaigns, full corporate retainers, day-to-day media office, and crisis response — with GEO often added as a module inside a broader retainer. K&C is the opposite: AI visibility is the entire business, the AVS audit is the starting point of every engagement, and PR delivery is tactical and focused on the citation sources AI reads. We're cheaper for the specific outcome of AI visibility; we're not the right team for full-service PR. For larger PR programmes we refer to trusted partners on a 15% referral basis.

Less reliably than content with clear author signals. LLMs increasingly weight source credibility — and named authors with byline schema, a known publisher, and an associated knowledge graph (Wikipedia, LinkedIn, Person schema) score better than anonymous content for citation purposes. For B2B content, named expertise matters; for category content (recipes, listicles, definitions) authorship matters less than structure and citation density.