The Schmitdy dispatch
Blog
Practical case studies and honest takes on using AI for business. Real implementations, real results — no fluff, no jargon.
Private Dining in London: Why AI Never Suggests Your Room
Someone types private dining room in London for 20 into ChatGPT. It is one of the most valuable queries in hospitality, and one of the hardest for an engine to answer, because your private-dining details are locked where no model can read them. Here's the fix.
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GEO vs AEO vs SEO for Restaurants: What Each One Does
Three acronyms, one dinner booking. SEO ranks your pages, AEO and GEO get your restaurant named inside the AI answer. Here's the difference for a restaurant specifically, and why the work is not either-or.
Read →Opening in a New City? Your Restaurant Starts Invisible on AI
Brand equity is a human thing. When you open in a new city, an AI engine sees a venue it cannot yet place, with no local proof, and it keeps recommending the incumbents. Here's how to close the AI cold start on a new opening.
Read →Restaurant AI Visibility Statistics (2026): The Numbers, Sourced
Every headline number on restaurants and AI search, in one place, with its source, date and market attached. Built to be cited, and honest about what is US data and what is UK.
Read →GEO for Wine Bars: Why Drinks-Led Venues Vanish From AI Search
Almost every GEO guide is written for restaurants that serve food first. Wine bars, cocktail bars and drinks-led venues have a different, harder problem, and no one is writing about it. Here's why you vanish from AI answers and how to show up.
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OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need a Word for GEO. You Do. (2026)
A widely shared post argued that OpenAI and Anthropic don't care about GEO or AEO, so the whole category must be marketing. We sell GEO for a living, and we half agree. The acronyms are marketing. The work, and the way you now measure it, is not. And the job posting used as proof says so.
Read →Why Your Restaurant Group's Venues Cannibalise Each Other on ChatGPT
A single independent has one entity to get right. A group has one brand smeared across many venues, and AI engines routinely name the wrong branch, or none. Here's the multi-venue problem no one is writing about, and how to fix it.
Read →The Star Rating Trap: Why Your 5-Star Restaurant Is Still Invisible on ChatGPT
Restaurants rated 4.8 stars and above were hidden from Google's AI answers more often than solidly good ones. Stars are not the signal you think they are. Here's what the data shows and what actually earns the mention.
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Does Schema Markup Improve AI Search Visibility? What the Evidence Shows
Schema remains good technical search hygiene, but no official source promises a direct ChatGPT citation boost. Here is what the evidence supports and how to test it properly.
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How ChatGPT Chooses Sources to Cite: What OpenAI Confirms and What It Does Not
OpenAI documents search, crawlers, consulted sources and inline citations, but not a complete ranking formula. Here is the practical five-stage model publishers can actually test.
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AI Search Agents for SMBs: What They Do in a 30-Day Operating Cycle
An AI search agent should run a measured publishing and citation cycle, not spray content. Here is the 30-day operating model, the human gates and the evidence an SMB should expect.
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How to Track AI Crawler Traffic on Webflow: Native AEO, Cloudflare and Peec
Webflow can show AI bot visits, but the right setup depends on your plan and traffic route. This guide separates crawl permission, bot requests, retrieval, citations and conversions, then maps four practical tracking options.
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How to Make Your Restaurant Visible on ChatGPT: A GEO Guide for German Hospitality
Google AI Overviews only launched in Germany in March 2025, Google AI Mode in October 2025, and ChatGPT needs no login at all. Around 70% of guests already search for restaurants digitally, while nearly 2,900 hospitality businesses filed for insolvency in Germany in 2025. A Germany-specific GEO guide for restaurants: what's actually live, and five levers that move visibility on ChatGPT.
Read →Why Your Restaurant Is Invisible on ChatGPT (and Google Won't Warn You)
UK diners are already asking AI where to eat, and Google can soon book the table for them. Here's why most restaurants never get mentioned, and five fixes that close the gap.
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How to Get Your Brand Recommended by ChatGPT (and Claude, Gemini, Perplexity)
Getting named in an AI answer is not the same skill as ranking on Google, and most brands are invisible for reasons that have nothing to do with how good their product actually is. Here is how the recommendation actually happens, and what to change.
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How Much Does an AI Search Agency Cost in 2026?
Before you sign a retainer, work out what you're actually paying for. Here is how AI search agencies price their work, what each level should include, and when the cheaper answer is to skip the agency entirely.
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9 Questions to Ask Before You Let Anyone Build Your Website (Most "Site in Minutes" Services Fail 6)
Two AI website builders collapsed in the past year, leaving customers scrambling to export their own sites. Here are nine questions to ask any provider before you hand over your domain, so you own your website instead of renting it.
Read →Why Your Website Never Shows Up in ChatGPT (and How to Build One That Does)
Ranking on Google no longer means an AI assistant will ever recommend you. Here is why most business websites are invisible to ChatGPT and Perplexity, and what an AI-search-ready page actually looks like.
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Chat-to-Build Website Tools Compared: What Actually Happens After You Hit Send
Most chat-based website builders get you a live site fast, then hand you off to their own dashboard. A smaller group, including Schmitdy, keep you editing by message after launch, with checkout and AI-search structure built in.
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How to Get Someone to Build Your Website Without Touching a Builder (the Chat-First Way in 2026)
"Build my website for me" gets you five real routes in 2026, from DIY AI builders to full agencies. Here is an honest, priced comparison, including the chat-first model where you manage the whole site by message.
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Otterly.AI Alternatives in 2026: 9 AI Search Monitoring Options Compared
Otterly.AI is the cheapest way into AI search monitoring, but not the only one. Nine verified alternatives compared on engines, cadence and price, plus the one thing no dashboard does: the work.
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AirOps Alternatives in 2026: 9 Options by What You Actually Need
AirOps buyers want three different things: content workflows, AI visibility data, or the work done for them. Nine verified alternatives, priced and sorted by job.
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7 Gushwork Alternatives for AI Search Growth in 2026
Gushwork is a credible, well-funded AI search partner for US SMBs. These seven verified alternatives cover done-for-you delivery, senior strategy, in-house tooling and pure measurement, with July 2026 pricing.
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The 11 Best GEO Agencies in 2026 (AEO and AI Search, Compared Honestly)
An honest roundup of 11 real GEO and AEO agencies, including ours (disclosed upfront), with verified pricing and the questions that separate operators from list-sellers.
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The 11 Best AI Search Visibility Tools in 2026 (And the One Thing None of Them Do)
We checked live pricing and engine coverage for 11 AI visibility tools in July 2026, split by buyer type. The honest bit: every single one stops at a dashboard.
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AI Search Tool vs Agency vs Agent: Which Do You Actually Need in 2026?
There are three ways to improve your AI search visibility, and they're layers of the same stack, not rivals: a tool (Peec, Profound) measures where you stand; an agency executes the optimisation work with people; an agent — an AI-search agent — does the recurring volume under human review. A tool changes your understanding, not the answer. An agency changes the answer but costs the most and moves at human speed. An agent does the volume at mid-market cost with humans owning quality and strategy. In 2026 most teams keep a tool and add one execution layer — the real decision is which one.
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How to Build AI Agents on the Peec AI MCP for AEO and GEO (2026)
In late 2025 Peec AI shipped an official MCP server, which makes its entire AI-search measurement layer — projects, prompts, per-engine brand visibility, full AI answer transcripts, the source/citation graph and scored Actions — directly callable by an LLM agent. That means you can wire a Claude or GPT agent straight to the ground truth of how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews answer your category, and have it reason over the data and draft the work to close the gaps. The defensible build pattern is a read-only, five-stage loop with a human ship gate: the agent triages and drafts; a person verifies and ships.
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From Peec or Profound Data to AI Citations: A 5-Step Playbook (2026)
Your Peec or Profound dashboard tells you where you're invisible in AI answers, but a visibility score is an outcome, not an instruction. Turning the data into citations is a five-step job: read the gap reports rather than the vanity metric, turn the cited sources into a third-party target list, fix the pages that are retrieved but not cited, build the off-site footprint the data points to, then re-measure the delta on a cadence. The highest-leverage move is the source/domain gap report — the third-party sites citing your competitors but not you. Most of the work lands off your own domain and has to recur, which is the gap between owning a dashboard and moving its numbers.
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You're Tracking AI Search Visibility. Who's Actually Fixing It?
AI search visibility tools tell you where your brand is missing from AI answers. They don't fix it. Here's why the number doesn't move when you only buy the dashboard — and what closing the gap actually takes in 2026.
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Best AI Search Agencies for B2B Companies: GEO Audit, Content, and Agentic Execution
The best AI search agency for a B2B company is not just a content shop or a dashboard reseller. It should measure prompt-level visibility, explain why AI engines recommend competitors, and turn the source gaps into shipped work.
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The dispatch, by email
One useful AI Search note a week. No fluff.
What's changing in how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews cite brands, and what to do about it.