A sales team at a mid-sized SaaS company kept hearing the same thing from prospects: they had found a competitor through ChatGPT. Not Google. Not a paid ad. An AI recommendation — and Boost One SEO’s client wasn’t in it. That gap, repeated across dozens of client conversations, pushed the Montreal agency to spend twelve months testing what actually drives visibility on AI platforms.
The result is an optimisation framework covering ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google’s Gemini and other generative AI tools. Boost One SEO announced the methodology’s completion this week, having run tests across hundreds of scenarios since early 2024.
“A year ago, we started running systematic tests across every major AI platform to understand what drives recommendations,” said Kathleen A., Communications Director at Boost One SEO. “There was no established roadmap, so we built our approach through testing and measurement across hundreds of scenarios.”
The timing reflects a genuine shift in how people find businesses. Google’s AI Overviews, launched in May 2024, changed how the search engine itself surfaces information. Perplexity built an AI-native search product that attracted tens of millions of users. ChatGPT added browse and search functions. Collectively, these tools now sit between a buyer’s question and a company’s website — and they make recommendations based on signals that traditional SEO does not address. The field has acquired its own name: Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO.
The unnamed SaaS company’s experience illustrates the stakes. “We had a strong SEO foundation, but our sales team kept hearing prospects say they found competitors through ChatGPT searches we weren’t appearing in,” said the firm’s CMO. “We realised we’d optimised for one channel while our potential customers were searching everywhere. Adding AI platform optimization didn’t cannibalize our Google traffic. It opened entirely new pipeline sources.”
That last point matters. Boost One SEO frames its approach as additive rather than disruptive — AI platform optimisation running alongside Google strategy, not instead of it. For B2B companies and professional services firms, where buyers research extensively before making contact, appearing across multiple platforms compounds the touchpoints available before a prospect reaches out.
Kathleen A. acknowledges the field remains unsettled. “The industry is still developing best practices because there’s limited official documentation,” she said. “We’ve spent the past year testing and refining what works. Our clients are benefiting from that experience as this channel continues to grow.”
Boost One SEO offers audits that assess current visibility across traditional search and AI platforms, then builds integrated strategies from the findings. The agency’s founding in 2012 predates both the Google Partner certification programme and the current AI search wave — a timeline that its team points to as evidence of adaptability across multiple industry shifts. It holds both Google Partner and SEMRUSH Certified Agency Partner status.
“Google isn’t going anywhere, but it’s no longer the only game in town,” Kathleen A. said. “Smart businesses are building visibility everywhere their customers search. The companies that adapt fastest will own their categories across every platform that matters.”
Further information: https://boostoneseo.com/
