Questions we hear all the time.

You cannot guarantee a specific recommendation, but you can materially improve your odds. ChatGPT pulls from the Bing index plus its own crawler, and it weights the public entity graph heavily (Wikidata, Crunchbase, LinkedIn, plus consistent NAP across directories). The fixes that move it: a clean LocalBusiness JSON-LD on your site, a complete Google Business Profile with the right primary category, FAQPage schema on the questions ChatGPT users actually ask, and 5 to 10 corroborating profile pages on the platforms relevant to your vertical. The Velox $199 Sprint executes those fixes in 30 days. No engine guarantees citations after the work is done, including ChatGPT.

No. Anyone selling guaranteed AI-search rankings is misrepresenting how the technology works. AI engines change their citation behavior 40 to 60 percent month-to-month on the same query, and closed-model engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) cannot be deterministically tuned by external work. What Velox sells is the implementation work itself: schema deployed, citations added, content shipped, entity-graph cleaned. The Sprint includes a before / after recheck on the same prompts so you can see whether the work moved the needle. See /ai-visibility-methodology for the full disclosure.

Yes, different layer of the discovery stack. SEO is about Google blue-link search results. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is about AI-generated answers in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews. Most SEO work helps AEO indirectly (clean URLs, fast pages, accurate metadata), but AEO has its own explicit fixes that traditional SEO agencies do not prioritize: FAQPage schema, LocalBusiness JSON-LD, entity-graph linkage, topic-cluster content. Run both. AEO does not replace SEO.

On its own, no. /llms.txt is a public-facing markdown file that tells AI crawlers what your site is about and where the authoritative content lives. It is similar in spirit to robots.txt but for LLMs. It is a useful AI-readability signal, but it is not a recommendation lever; AI engines decide what to cite based on the entity graph, structured data, and content authority, not on any single file. Velox includes /llms.txt on every site we build, but treat it as one signal of many, not a magic bullet.

Whether your business is named in AI engines' answers to a defined buyer-intent prompt set, what other businesses get cited instead of you, and which queries you do not show up for at all. The free check runs 5 prompts against 1 grounded engine. The $9 / $19 paid scans run 10 prompts across 6 engines. The Sprint runs a 25-prompt baseline plus a T+30 recheck. Mention is binary (cited or not), not a frequency or sentiment score. See /ai-visibility-methodology for definitions of mention, citation, competitor mention, and volatility.

Varies by engine and signal type. Schema and FAQ deployments often reflect within days on engines that re-crawl frequently (Perplexity, Google AI Overviews). Entity-graph corroboration (Wikidata, Yelp, vertical directories) typically needs 2 to 4 weeks to propagate. Closed-model memory (Claude, Gemini, Grok in ungrounded mode) lags further (sometimes months) because their internal training data refreshes on its own cadence. The Sprint runs the T+30 recheck specifically because that window catches most of the early signal without waiting so long the comparison loses meaning.

Start at /web-design. Velox builds AI-search-ready websites from $299 (Starter, 1 to 4 pages) up to $799 (Pro, 9 to 15 pages). Schema, FAQ markup, AI-friendly metadata, and entity signals are baked in by default, so a fresh Velox build does not need a Sprint on top right away. The Sprint is for optimizing an existing site you already have. Without a real site under your control, AEO has no canonical surface to point AI engines at. Your Google Business Profile and review platforms can carry some of the signal, but a clean home base is the foundation everything else stacks on.

Fix it before anything else. GBP is the single highest-leverage AEO signal for a local business. Complete every section: primary and secondary categories, hours including special hours, full description with relevant keywords, photos (10 plus, dated), services list with prices where appropriate, attributes, and Q&A. Then keep review velocity steady. The Sprint includes GBP refinement as one of its 5 signal groups. If you have not even claimed your GBP listing yet, the Sprint will note that as the first fix; the math works regardless.

Free check: Perplexity Sonar Online (single grounded engine, live web search). $9 / $19 paid scans: 6 engines via OpenRouter, namely Anthropic Claude 3.5 Sonnet, OpenAI GPT-4o, Google Gemini 1.5 Pro, Perplexity Sonar Large, xAI Grok 2, and Cohere Command R+. Every paid-scan engine queries with live web search via OpenRouter's :online suffix or native Sonar grounding, so no parametric-memory-only answers. Sprint baseline plus recheck use the same 6-engine panel. Google AI Overviews coverage is reflected indirectly through Gemini behavior; we do not currently scrape AIO directly.

Three reasons. First, different engines use different signal weightings: Perplexity prioritizes live citations and per-claim sourcing, ChatGPT prioritizes the public entity graph, Gemini leans on Google's search index, closed-model engines weight their training-data shadows. Second, the engines are non-deterministic by construction; running the same prompt twice can return different cited businesses. Third, when an engine "remembers" a prior session (some closed-model deployments do), one user's ChatGPT may cite differently than another's. Divergence between engines on the same prompt is a feature of the system, not a bug. It is also why the Sprint covers 6 engines rather than relying on any single one.

The free AI Visibility check runs 5 buyer-intent prompts against a single grounded engine (Perplexity Sonar Online with live web search and citation extraction) and tells you whether your business is surfaced today. The $9 tier runs 10 prompts across multiple AI engines, every one with live web search, so you can see where each one names you. The $19 tier adds a 1-page analysis brief: competitor map, top 3 entity / content gaps, recommended next step. The $199 AI Search Visibility Sprint goes from diagnosis to implementation: schema, content, entity-graph, citation work over 30 days plus a before / after recheck on the same prompts. No ranking or citation guarantees on any tier.

Cost discipline. The free check uses Perplexity Sonar Online via OpenRouter, a single-shot AI search engine with live web search and citation extraction. It costs us roughly $0.025 per check, which keeps the free tier financially sustainable at any reasonable volume. Multi-engine fan-out across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude is gated behind the $9 tier so the math still works.

Either works. The $19 brief tells you exactly what to fix. If you have an in-house developer who can deploy schema, ship FAQ content, and refine GBP / citation data, you can self-implement and rerun the free check after. The $199 Sprint is the pre-built version: we do all of it in 30 days and recheck. The brief is roughly 4-8 hours of skilled work to implement; the Sprint trades that time for $199.

Three tiers: Starter ($299 setup + $79/mo) for up to 4 pages, Growth ($499 + $99/mo) for up to 8 pages, and Pro ($799 + $129/mo) for up to 15 pages. AI Search Visibility schema baked into every Velox build. Custom builds (15+ pages, web apps, complex integrations) quoted separately. See /pricing or /web-design for details.

Most sites launch within 1 to 2 weeks from kickoff. Complex projects with custom features or lots of content can take 3 to 4 weeks. We move fast without cutting corners.

It helps, but it's not required. We can write your copy, source professional photos, and build the whole thing from just a conversation about your business. That said, your own photos and words always connect better with your customers.

Yes. We build with content management in mind. For simple text and image updates, we set up an easy editing interface. For anything more complex, we're a quick message away.

We deploy on fast, reliable infrastructure (usually Vercel or similar). Hosting is included for the first year. We'll help you pick and set up your domain name if you don't already have one.

Absolutely. A lot of our work is rebuilding sites that aren't performing. We'll audit your current site, identify what's holding it back, and rebuild it to actually convert.

If your current site loads in under 2 seconds on mobile, converts visitors, and shows up in local search, you probably shouldn't. Most don't. Book a free audit at /audit and we'll show you PageSpeed scores, mobile issues, and where you're losing leads. If your site is solid, we'll tell you that too.

Starter is $299 upfront and $79/mo. That's less than most small businesses spend on ads in a week, and one extra lead per month usually pays for it. If the setup fee is the blocker, talk to us and we can break it into two payments. A site that isn't working is expensive too.

You can. Most people who try spend 30 to 40 hours on it and end up with a template site that loads in 5+ seconds and ranks nowhere. Our sites are custom-coded, load in under 2 seconds, are built for the searches your customers actually make, and you still own everything. If your time is worth more than $12 an hour, we're cheaper.

Three things. Pricing is published on the site, so no $5K "custom quote" games. We write custom code instead of stacking WordPress themes, which is why PageSpeed scores stay in the 90s. And you talk to the person building your site, not a project manager relaying messages. Small agency, senior work, NYC-based.

Referrals Google you before they call. If they land on a broken or dated site, you've already lost credibility you didn't know you had. A good site doesn't replace referrals. It converts the ones you're already getting.

Good. You shouldn't have to. Onboarding is one 15-minute call. We write the copy, source photos, build the whole thing, and send you one draft to review. Most clients spend under an hour total from kickoff to launch.

Yes. Eight live demo sites at /portfolio, each one fully functional with PageSpeed scores you can verify in your own browser. Three written case studies at /case-studies with before-and-after numbers. No sign-up, no login, no "book a demo" wall.

Before we deliver a design draft, your setup fee is fully refundable. Once a draft is delivered, the setup fee is non-refundable, but we'll keep iterating until the site works for you. Monthly plans can be cancelled with 30 days' notice. Full refund policy is at /terms.

Both. AI handles what AI is good at: boilerplate code, first-draft copy, page-speed optimization. Humans handle what matters: design decisions, your strategy, the relationship. That combination is why we can ship in a week at this price. A traditional agency quoting $5K and up is usually just slower, not better.

No. You own the site, the code, and the domain. Monthly plans are cancelable with 30 days' notice. If you leave, we hand over the files and help with the transition for up to 30 days. The goal is that you don't want to leave, not that you can't.