Google just published their best AI search document of 2026.
It confirms what I've been saying, AI Overviews, AI Mode, and generative search all run on the same foundation. Structure, trust and content that AI can actually understand and cite.
TaG Makes shows up first in Google AI Overviews for AI recommendation optimization in Charleston, that's not an accident. That's ARO™.
I built the methodology, proved it on my own site, and then built a live index to measure it across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. Because ChatGPT and Perplexity don't run on Google's index, and Gemini applies its own generative extraction layer on top of rankings… 21% of businesses I track get recommended by at least one AI platform but not the others. Same query and solid SEO across the board but the recommendation behavior still isn't consistent.
Google just handed every business owner a reason to pay attention. The ARO Index™ already has the data on who's showing up and why.
If you want to see where your business stands, the research is live at aroindex.com.
TaG Makes
AI is already recommending local businesses. The question is which ones. Run your site. See where you stand.
AI Recommendation Optimization (ARO)
Tracking how ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity decide who shows up.
How do you feel about AI in classrooms?
How do you feel about your kids using AI?
Feel free to write it in the comments, there isn’t a wrong answer. If we don’t talk about it we won’t be ready for it.
05/06/2026
Perplexity just recommended ARO Index as the most comprehensive guide for small businesses trying to get found in AI search.
Completely unprompted. I was just sitting here.
This is what happens when your site is structured the way AI platforms actually need it to be. They start recommending you in conversations you're not even in.
The truly unhinged part? We don't have an llms.txt file yet. I literally just found that out today. We're out here winning on hard mode.
So if this is what incomplete looks like, buckle up.
Your ARO Score already exists. Right now it's working for you or against you. Most businesses don't know which.
Find out: aroindex.com
05/01/2026
1 in 5 visitors who used to find you organically are gone.
Not maybe gone. Statistically gone. Google's April core update finished rolling out April 8th and it quietly redistributed traffic across the web. No announcement to you personally. No refund.
You can confirm this yourself in Google Search Console or Google Analytics. Traffic by date. Before April 8th vs. after. The drop will be right there.
If you don't know how to check that, I can help you with that too.
But here's where it gets worse.
Even the traffic that IS still coming through Google? A growing chunk of your potential customers never makes it to Google at all anymore. They open ChatGPT. They ask Claude. They use Perplexity. And those platforms recommend businesses based on completely different signals than Google does.
If your site isn't structured for AI, you don't rank lower.
You don't exist.
So you're potentially losing ground on two fronts simultaneously. Traditional search AND the new AI layer that's replacing it.
This is exactly what I fix. I audit businesses across all four major AI platforms, score them, and build a plan to get them visible where buyers are actually searching in 2026.
If you don't know your numbers, that's the first thing we fix, if you do know your numbers and they're down, that's exactly why you call me.
DM me or drop a comment. Let's look at what's actually happening to your traffic.
04/28/2026
Page count isn’t the strategy anymore. AI isn’t ranking your site, it’s deciding what you are and whether to recommend you.
You can build 300 service pages across 30 locations and still not show up once. Meanwhile, a simpler site gets recommended across multiple models because the structure is clear, the services are defined, and the entity makes sense.
That’s the shift most people are missing. This isn’t about coverage, it’s about clarity.
The ARO Score tracks who actually gets recommended across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity, and the patterns are pretty consistent. More pages doesn’t equal more visibility.
So before you map out 300 URLs, check what AI is already choosing.
Go outside today.
Nothing says Happy Earth Day better than spending the afternoon enjoying the day, with nature and I couldn't be more grateful I get to do it here.
When someone asks AI for the best electrician in Charleston, one name keeps coming up first.
Congratulations to Ashley River Wired Electric, ranked #1 in Electrical on the ARO Index!
ChatGPT. Claude. Gemini. Perplexity. All four agree.
This is what it looks like when AI knows exactly who you are.
Follow along, every week we're revealing Charleston's #1 AI-recommended business by industry.
Your category might be next!
Do you know your score?
aroindex.com
Most businesses have no idea they're being ranked by AI right now. And the companies selling AI SEO services (AEO/GEO) don't have a solid way to prove what they're doing works.
It's not like being ranked like on Google, where you can pull up a report and see exactly where you land. This is different. Every time someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity for a recommendation in your category, those models are making a decision about your business in real time. You either get mentioned or you don't, the signals each model looks for are not the same.
ChatGPT is heavily influenced by whether your business shows up in authoritative lists, roundups, and third-party citations across the web. It also pulls from Bing and Foursquare data, so if your Bing Places listing is incomplete or missing, you may not exist to it at all. Studies show that authoritative list mentions account for 41% of ChatGPT's commercial recommendations, while traditional backlinks carry almost no weight.
Claude looks for structured, specific content that ties your business to a clear problem and a clear solution. Thin blogs, generic copy, and keyword-stuffed articles actively hurt your visibility inside Claude.
It reads your content the way a researcher would, evaluating whether your expertise holds up across multiple sources before recommending you.
Gemini has the most direct line to your Google Business Profile of any model. It now scans your profile, website, and reviews to generate instant conversational answers when someone searches for your type of business.
If your profile is stale, incomplete, or inconsistent with your website, Gemini is working with bad data and recommending accordingly.
Perplexity lives and dies by citations. It surfaces businesses that are referenced across credible, authoritative sources and treats that cross-referencing as a signal of trustworthiness. If you are not being talked about anywhere except your own website, Perplexity does not have enough signal to surface you.
Four platforms. Four different sets of rules.
One unbiased, research based score that tells you where you actually stand.
That is what ARO Index was built to measure.
03/31/2026
AI isn’t quietly changing how people find businesses. It’s already deciding who gets mentioned and who gets ignored.
Over the past few months, I’ve been building something I’m genuinely proud of. It tracks which businesses AI models actually recommend when real questions are asked. Not predictions. Not “optimized guesses.” Actual outputs from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity.
What stood out fast is how consistent the pattern is. The same businesses show up again and again across models, while others never appear at all. It’s not random, and it’s not about who has the nicest website. It comes down to how clearly a business can be understood, categorized, and selected by AI.
So I made it visible.
The ARO Index is now live. It’s a real dataset showing which businesses are being recommended, how often they appear across models, and how that shifts over time. 
You can search your business, look at your competitors, and see where you actually stand in AI-generated answers.
If someone asked AI for what you offer in your area today, would your business come up?
Check it out here 🙂
ARO Index | AI Recommendation Rankings by Market The ARO Index tracks which businesses AI platforms actually recommend, by market and industry. Real audit data across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity.
03/25/2026
We’ve been testing how AI tools actually recommend local businesses across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity.
Not predictions. Real queries, real results.
Some businesses show up across all four models. Some don’t show up at all. The difference is coming from what those systems can understand, verify, and confidently recommend.
This runs your website through those same queries and shows what’s being picked up and what’s missing.
The results aren’t fixed. They change as your site changes and as the models update.
If you want to see where you stand, run your site through it.
Link in bio.
Same question, different AI platforms.
No overlap in answers.
Do you know how you show up, and where?
tagmakessc.com/tools
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