Case Study: One Week of AEO Work at Tint Guy LLC, Then This Message
Case Study: One Week of AEO Work, Then This Message
Tint Guy LLC, a window tinting company in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Established business, strong review count, active Google Business Profile. Zero AI citation rate at baseline.
What we found when we audited
Tint Guy LLC had everything a local business is supposed to have. Years in operation. Real customers. More than 900 Google reviews, up from 483 when we started working together in 2023. An active, updated Google Business Profile. A site that ranked for their target keywords.
The AI Visibility Audit told a different story. Overall score: 66 out of 100. The GBP alignment dimension came back at zero: their Google Business Profile was not connected to the business entity in a way AI platforms could verify. FAQPage schema was missing entirely despite having FAQ content on multiple pages. The site had no named author: no Person schema connecting a human to the content.
These are not obscure technical requirements. They are the basic signals AI platforms use to decide whether a source is credentialed enough to cite. This business was invisible in AI search not because of anything it did wrong, but because it was built for a search environment that no longer exists alone.
What we fixed
The intervention was focused, not broad. We did not rebuild the site. We did not rewrite the content. We closed the specific gaps the audit identified:
- FAQPage schema deployed across all pages with FAQ accordion sections, converting existing question-and-answer content into machine-readable structured data
- Schema markup completed and corrected: schema score moved from 75 to 100
- GBP entity anchoring: connecting the Google Business Profile to the structured data entity so AI platforms can verify the business location and service area
- Person schema added: named owner/author now attached to site content
Nothing else changed. Same site, same content, same pages. We added the structured layer that AI platforms require to parse and cite a source.
One week later
A customer of this business sent them a message on Facebook. The message read:
“It works! Whatever you did to our site last week has us now showing up in most of the major AI platforms.”
That is an unsolicited, real-world confirmation, not from an analytics dashboard, but from the business owner, relaying what a customer told them directly. The customer had tested it. The business was showing up.
This is what AI citation feels like at the business level. Not a ranking position to track in Search Console. A customer noticing that when they ask ChatGPT or Perplexity who to call for window tinting in their area, this business’s name comes up.
The score movement
- Before: 66/100: schema 75, GBP 0, 2 critical gaps
- After: 90/100: schema 100, GBP 71, 1 remaining gap
- Current: 88/100 (minor adjustment, continued optimization)
- GSC: 349 clicks/month · 55,566 impressions · avg position 22
What this tells us about AI visibility
The gap between ‘has a Google presence’ and ‘gets cited by AI platforms’ is not about content quality or business quality. It is about structure. AI platforms cannot cite what they cannot parse. They cannot trust what they cannot verify as a credentialed local source.
Tint Guy LLC had the reviews, the GBP, the site traffic. What it lacked was the structured data layer that connects all of that into something AI platforms can read, evaluate, and recommend. Once that layer was in place, the citations followed within a week.
Most service businesses are in the same position. The work is findable. The reputation is real. The structure is missing.
Open ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity and ask: ‘Who is the best [your service] in [your city]?’ If your business name does not appear, you have an AI visibility problem. The free audit tells you specifically why and what to fix.
For AI citation specifically, yes, especially when the gaps are structural rather than content-based. AI platforms crawl frequently, and when you add properly formatted structured data to a site that already has good content, the citation rate can improve quickly. Ranking changes in traditional search take longer.
Reviews contribute to authority signals, which is one of the five dimensions. But reviews alone do not drive AI citations. A business with 900+ reviews and no schema can still have a 0% AI citation rate. We have documented this. Schema, content structure, and entity anchoring matter more.
More client results
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