Published: 15 March 2026. This post will date itself — that’s the point.
Earlier today I published the entity corroboration for AI provider visibility framework. The core argument: there is a difference between topical visibility (AI uses your content as a source) and provider visibility (AI names your business as a recommendation). The gap between the two is driven by independent, third-party corroboration signals — Wikidata entries, Clutch profiles, editorial roundups, LinkedIn articles, attributed frameworks with verifiable provenance. Without those signals, you are what the GLEIF taxonomy calls ENTITY_SUPPLIED_ONLY: an entity whose existence is only confirmed by its own website. AI systems will use your content. They will not name your business.
Having written that framework, I decided to check my own position. Here is what I found.
The query: “aeo seo consultant”
“Aeo seo consultant” shows as a dash in Google Keyword Planner — sub-10 monthly searches in the UK, not measurable. I’m not optimising for search volume here. The same keyword data shows “aeo seo” at 170/mo and +767% year-on-year, “aeo agency” at 90/mo and +100% year-on-year, “aeo vs geo” at 70/mo and +1,600% year-on-year. The curve is forming. The practitioner who owns the AI-generated answer for “aeo seo consultant” when volume arrives will have been in position for months before anyone else noticed the query existed. I know this pattern — I wrote about it in Reading the Keyword Curve.
seostrategy.co.uk currently ranks on page 2 organically for this query. Not page 1. Not the AI Overview. Page 2.
What Google’s AI Overview actually says
The AI Overview for “aeo seo consultant” names the following businesses under “Top UK AEO Agencies/Consultants (2026)”: ClickSlice, Artemis Marketing, ROAR Digital Marketing, Wolf Digital Marketing, Trio Media, Click Intelligence, Fly High Media. ClickSlice is cited as the primary source — it appears as “ClickSlice +4” and “ClickSlice +6” in the source attribution, meaning ClickSlice’s own roundup content is the dominant grounding source for the entire Overview.
seostrategy.co.uk does not appear in the AI Overview in any form. Not as a named provider. Not as a cited source.
The organic result on page 2 — which I can see in the same screenshot — has a reasonable meta description. It is invisible to anyone looking at the AI Overview above the fold. For a query with AI Overview coverage, page 2 organic is effectively zero.
ChatGPT and Perplexity: the same gap, cross-platform
This isn’t a Google-specific problem. I ran the same check on ChatGPT and Perplexity.
ChatGPT’s response to “best AEO consultants in the UK” lists: ClickSlice, The SEO Works, Whitehat SEO, Found, Click Intelligence, UK AEO Agency. Not seostrategy.co.uk.
Perplexity’s response names: ClickSlice, AEO Agency, ThatWare, Charle, Figment Agency, and a longer tail including LevelUp Leads, Expre, The Digital Pine, Paramount Digital, Hooked on Media, Buried Agency, Novos, Exposure Ninja, Blend, Passion Digital, Found. Not seostrategy.co.uk. The response even notes my location — Northampton — and tells me agencies like ClickSlice and Figment work remotely with UK clients, so geography isn’t a barrier. It knows where I am. It still doesn’t name me as a provider.
Three platforms. Zero appearances as a named provider. This is not a content problem. It is a corroboration problem, and it is exactly the failure mode the entity corroboration framework I published this morning describes.
Applying the GLEIF taxonomy to my own position
The GLEIF three-tier taxonomy provides the diagnostic model. FULLY_CORROBORATED requires independent confirmation from multiple authoritative sources — Wikidata, Clutch, editorial roundups, LinkedIn articles, GBP. PARTIALLY_CORROBORATED has some signals but significant gaps. ENTITY_SUPPLIED_ONLY has only self-published evidence.
Where is seostrategy.co.uk? Applying the taxonomy honestly:
Wikidata: There is a personal entry (Q28747532 for Sean Mullins) but it is incomplete — missing occupation, employer, website, and several other properties. There is no SEO Strategy Ltd company entry. This is a structured entity gap in the most important knowledge graph available.
Clutch: No profile. Clutch is the primary structured review platform AI systems use for professional services provider lists. Its absence means seostrategy.co.uk does not exist in the most important single corroboration source for this query type.
Crunchbase: No entry for Sean Mullins or SEO Strategy Ltd in the People or Organisation databases.
Editorial roundups: Not present in any “best AEO consultants UK” or “best SEO agencies UK” roundup that AI systems are drawing from. ClickSlice’s own roundup is the dominant grounding source for the AI Overview — which is a neat illustration of the mechanism: ClickSlice publishes a list that names ClickSlice first, that list gets indexed and cited by Google’s AI, which then names ClickSlice as the primary recommendation. Self-reinforcing. Not self-supplied — there are multiple ClickSlice citations creating genuine corroboration weight — but the flywheel started from their own content.
LinkedIn articles: Four published on 14 March 2026 — AI Discovery Stack, OARCAS, the AEO transparency piece, ChatGPT/Bing framing. These are new. AthenaHQ data says LinkedIn accounts for 4.02% of AI citations. These articles exist now; they were not in the training data these AI systems are currently using. That takes time.
By the GLEIF taxonomy: ENTITY_SUPPLIED_ONLY trending toward PARTIALLY_CORROBORATED as of today. Not yet FULLY_CORROBORATED. The AI systems are behaving exactly as the framework predicts.
The Algorithmic Trinity diagnosis
The Algorithmic Trinity — LLMs, Knowledge Graphs, Traditional Search — provides the layer-specific diagnosis.
Traditional Search (Layer 2 — Retrieval): Not the constraint. seostrategy.co.uk is indexed on Google and Bing. Pages are crawlable. AI crawlers can access the site. The retrieval layer is functioning.
LLMs (Layer 3 — Selection): Probably not the primary constraint. The AEO page, the entity corroboration framework, the AI Discovery Stack — these are structured content with definitions, statistics, and attributable claims. They are citation-ready. The content quality is not what is failing.
Knowledge Graphs (Layer 4 — Recommendation): This is the constraint. The Knowledge Graph layer determines whether an entity is trusted enough to be named as a provider rather than used as a source. Wikidata incomplete, Clutch absent, Crunchbase absent, no editorial roundup coverage. The independent corroboration that the Knowledge Graph layer requires is what is missing. This is a Layer 4 failure in a situation where Layers 1, 2, and 3 are all functioning.
The practical implication: adding more content will not fix this. Better schema will not fix this. A more detailed AEO service page will not fix this. The fix is off-page entity corroboration work, in the sequence the framework describes.
The remediation sequence, in public
I’m documenting the planned remediation here because the compounding argument only works if the provenance is transparent. When this gap closes — and I expect it will, given the framework is now built and the off-site work is scheduled — I want a dated record of what was missing, what was done, and in what order.
Clutch — immediate. Create and verify the profile, categorise under AEO, GEO, LLM Optimisation, and Entity SEO. Request reviews from Azure Outdoor Living, Olliers Solicitors, and Coviant Software. This is the single highest-leverage action for professional services provider visibility in AI search and it costs nothing except time.
Wikidata Q28747532 — this week. Add label, description, instance of Q5 (human), occupation (SEO consultant), country of citizenship (UK), employer (SEO Strategy Ltd), website. Create a separate SEO Strategy Ltd organisation entry. Add AI Discovery Stack and OARCAS as notable works with dates. These are verifiable facts with external sources. Wikidata approval is not guaranteed but the entry is strong enough to pass notability given the client work and published frameworks.
Crunchbase — this week. Sean Mullins People entry. SEO Strategy Ltd Organisation entry. Add LLM Optimisation and Entity Corroboration as categories. Link to case studies as portfolio items.
Editorial outreach — this month. The journalist outreach plan in the provenance action document covers SEL, SEJ, The Drum and Marketing Week. The 2030 piece and the AI content cliff data are the pitch angles. Each placement creates an editorial mention that feeds the corroboration stack. One piece in Search Engine Land naming seostrategy.co.uk as a practitioner in this space is worth more for provider visibility than any on-page optimisation.
Google Business Profile — update immediately. Add AEO, GEO, LLM Optimisation, and Entity Corroboration as services. This is a direct Google entity signal and takes five minutes.
The keyword curve, again
“Aeo seo consultant” shows as a dash in GKP today. “Aeo seo” is at 170/mo with +767% year-on-year growth. “Aeo agency” is at 90/mo and +100%. “Aeo ai” is +1,000%. The parent term “aeo” is at 2,900/mo and +89%.
This is exactly the pattern I documented for “geo agency” (now +1,200% year-on-year) and “aao” (zero volume when I built the AAO page, now a live framework with its own provenance chain). The volume is not here yet. The curve is identical.
The business that is in the AI Overview when volume arrives will have been in it for months before the volume arrived. The entity corroboration work required to get into the AI Overview takes 3–6 months to compound through the systems. Starting that work when the volume is zero is not early. It’s the correct timing. Starting when the volume arrives means you are always six months behind the businesses that started when it was zero.
What this means if you’re in the same position
The gap I’ve described is not unusual. It is the default state for consultants and agencies that have invested heavily in on-page content and entity architecture but have not yet built the off-page corroboration stack that AI provider recommendation queries require. The on-page work creates the floor — without it, the corroboration signals have nothing to corroborate. But the on-page work alone does not get you onto the AI-generated provider list.
The diagnostic is straightforward: search your service category plus “consultant” or “agency” in Google. Look at the AI Overview. Search the same query in ChatGPT and Perplexity. If you are absent from all three, you have a Layer 4 corroboration gap. The entity corroboration framework defines the five signal types and the diagnostic tiers. The Universal Corroboration Stack is the twelve-step implementation guide.
I’ll update this post when the gap closes. The date will matter.
Sean Mullins is founder of SEO Strategy Ltd, a Southampton-based SEO consultancy specialising in AI-first visibility, entity SEO, schema architecture and LLM optimisation. He has been building websites and SEO strategies since 2005.
