Your site looks fine. Can AI work out what you do?
Someone needs a sparky, a plumber or the bloke who does air-con. These days they ask Google or ChatGPT, not ten blue links. I’ll have a look at your site and tell you straight whether you’d actually get picked, or scrolled past for someone with a tidier answer.
Why now? Ask Google, ChatGPT or Siri to find a tradie on the Gold Coast these days and you’ll often get handed one AI-written answer, not a list of links to scroll through. If your site isn’t built for machines to read, you don’t make the shortlist.
Illustration of a modern local search on the Gold Coast. A customer searches “electrician robina.” An AI-generated answer forms first, describing local electricians that service Robina, and confidently surfaces one business, Coastal Spark Electrical, whose site clearly states it’s an electrician covering Robina and the Gold Coast, offering residential and commercial work and emergency call-outs. A second business, Robina Electrical Co., is also mentioned. Further down, a sponsored listing and a traditional search result appear, including a business called Your Local Sparky that the AI answer never refers to.
How I work
I have a look
I check your site the way Google and AI actually read it, not the way it looks when you scroll through on your phone at smoko.
I work out what matters
Every site's got a dozen things wrong with it. Most don't matter. I work out which few are actually costing you jobs.
I explain it properly
No dashboard, no 40-page PDF. Plain English on what's actually wrong and why you should care.
I sort the right things first
If it's worth fixing, SORTED does it in the order that actually gets you found, not the order that's easiest to bill.
Invisible where it counts
Someone needs an electrician in Nerang. Ten years ago they’d ask a mate, or scroll through ten blue links until one looked legit. Now they ask Google or ChatGPT one question and go with whatever answer comes back, often without ever landing on a website at all.
That answer gets built from whatever those systems can actually read on your site. If they can’t work out what you do, where you do it, or whether you’re a real business, you don’t get a mention. Doesn’t matter how good the work is, how long you’ve been trading, or how many vans you’ve got on the road. Google shouldn’t need a detective licence to work out what you do.
The annoying part is you’re probably not losing that job to a better business. Just one that’s easier for a machine to understand.
That’s the gap Thommo closes: making sure the machines doing the reading actually get it right, so you’re in the running before the phone even has a chance to ring.
What is Answer Engine Optimisation?
AEO is the acronym. The plain version: making it easy for AI tools and modern search to work out who you are, what you actually do, and where you do it, so they can vouch for you when someone asks.
In practice that’s three ordinary things done properly: making the structure of your site obvious, not clever; answering the questions your customers already ask instead of making them dig; and making sure your business details say the same thing everywhere, your site, your Google listing, the directories. No keyword stuffing. No AI magic. No secret formula someone’s selling in a webinar. Just making the right information easy to find and hard to get wrong.
SEO hasn’t gone anywhere. AEO is what SEO turns into once the thing reading your site isn’t only ranking pages, but deciding what to actually say about you.
Read the full answer →What does the Once-Over actually check?
Think of it like a once-over on a car, except instead of kicking the tyres, I’m checking whether Google and AI can actually tell what your business does. Quick, practical, and I’ll tell you what’s fine and what’s not.
Twelve checks, run the same job-sheet way every time: structure and headings, schema, whether you’re answering the questions customers actually ask, whether your business details are visible as real text (not stuck inside a logo), whether Google can actually crawl the place, your Google Business signals, and whether the site holds up on a phone, because that’s where most of your customers are looking.
It doesn’t audit your listings across the web, run a live AI-query test, or fix anything. That’s SORTED territory. The free report only claims what it actually measured, no padding the score to make you feel better, or worse.
A finding, then what it actually means
You don’t need to learn the acronyms. Every check resolves the same way: what the machine actually found, what that means for your business in words you’d use, and the call: worth sorting, or leave it alone.
NO PROPERLY TYPED SCHEMA DETECTED
On the pages we checked, Google and AI tools aren’t getting a clear structured description of your business, services or reviews.
Worth sorting.
NO QUESTION-FORMAT CONTENT DETECTED
On the pages we checked, you’re not answering the questions customers actually ask in a format AI tools can easily understand and lift into answers.
Worth sorting.
HEALTHY TEXT-TO-MARKUP RATIO
There’s plenty of readable content for search and AI tools to find and understand.
Good.
Here’s what I found
One score, then the findings in the order I’d actually deal with them if it was my own site. No dashboard to log into, no forty tabs of charts, nothing you need a marketing degree to read.
You’ve got the basics. The bigger opportunity is making it easier for search and AI tools to understand what you do and use your content in answers.
The biggest weak spots the checks found on the pages it looked at, ordered so the ones costing you the most come first.
Structured data
On the pages we checked, Google and AI tools aren’t getting a clear structured description of your business, services or reviews.
NO PROPERLY TYPED SCHEMA DETECTED
On-page answers
On the pages we checked, you’re not answering the questions customers actually ask in a format AI tools can easily understand and lift into answers.
NO QUESTION-FORMAT CONTENT DETECTED
Business details
We couldn’t find your business name, address and phone as readable text on the key pages we checked.
NAP NOT DETECTED AS TEXT
The parts of the site that are already pulling their weight, so you know what not to touch.
Reachable
Nothing obvious is blocking search tools from your important pages.
ROBOTS.TXT OK
Speed
The page responds quickly.
SERVER RESPONSE TIME OK
The Once-Over tells you what needs attention. Sorted is how we fix it.
If the free check turns up more than you fancy tackling yourself, SORTED is the paid engagement that fixes it properly: six steps, done in order, with a straight answer at each one, not a retainer that quietly runs forever.
Structure
01Clean H1s, schema, a layout machines can actually read. If the current site's broken, unreadable or not mobile-friendly, this is where we repair or rebuild the foundation first.
On-page answers
02The questions your customers actually ask, turned into direct, quote-ready answers AI tools can lift and use.
Reachable
03Site speed, mobile layout, crawlability, broken links, all sorted so people and search tools can actually get in.
Trust signals
04Google Business Profile set up properly, your map pin optimised, and reviews actually showing where people can see them.
External consistency
05Your business name, address and phone lined up the same way across the directories that matter, True Local, Yellow Pages and the rest.
Diagnostics, ongoing
06Re-checking AI readiness, watching your map visibility, adjusting as things move. Real movement takes time, usually 2-4+ months.
Clean H1s, schema, a layout machines can actually read. If the current site's broken, unreadable or not mobile-friendly, this is where we repair or rebuild the foundation first.
Real movement takes two to four months, sometimes longer. Anyone promising it by next Tuesday is guessing, or lying, take your pick.
See the full breakdownYou don’t need another dashboard
You need someone to have a proper look, tell you what matters and help sort it. Not another login.
The checks and the automation do the reading. I do the judgement. That’s the difference from a generic SEO tool: a scanner spits out a list of forty things wrong with your site and leaves you to work out which ones matter. I tell you the three that are actually costing you jobs, and leave the rest alone.
I’m not an SEO agency wearing an AI badge. If the honest answer is that your site itself is the problem, it hasn’t been touched since 2014, it was built for a screen that isn’t square any more, nobody can find your phone number without playing hide and seek, that’s also something I fix. You don’t get handed a diagnosis and a list of other people to call.
No fake guarantees, no traffic-light dashboard to log into every week. One page of straight answers, and a phone number that goes to an actual person on the Gold Coast if you want to talk it through.
See how your site stacks up
Pop the address in. I’ll tell you straight what’s working, what’s not, and whether it’s actually worth losing sleep over. Free, takes about a minute, no salesy follow-up call.