by The Influence AgencyOntario Family Law Firm, multi-office
14 to 131
top-3 Google rankings, October 2025 to October 2026
Last verified: November 1, 2026
Canada’s answer engine optimization practice, by The Influence Agency
Be the answer.
Answer engine optimization (AEO) is how a business gets cited and recommended when people ask Google AI, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Copilot. AEO.ca is Canada’s AEO practice. We make you the answer, get you recommended, and make it unmistakable what you do and who you do it for.
See whether AI recommends you today.
[7] of 10Canadian AEO questions where AI named us this week
We run the same check on ourselves every Monday across five engines and publish the result whether it goes up or down. See the scorecard.
Most AEO vendors are SEO shops. Answer engines read the whole web.
When ChatGPT or Google AI recommends a company, it weighs what the press wrote, what the reviews say, what people on Reddit answered and what shows up on YouTube, and only then what the company’s own site says. An SEO team can fix the site. It cannot write the press, brief the creators, shoot the video or move the Reddit thread. We have those teams in house, and they work from one scorecard.
Three things an engine needs before it names you
Be the answer
Pages that open with the answer, headings that match the questions people ask, and content that argues your case for a specific person: your value proposition, your guarantees, how you compare. Built on the SEO foundation and written by people.
Be recommended
Press, reviews, Reddit threads, creator content and video that agree about you. Engines trust what other people say over what you say about yourself, and the agent tells us where it went, so we know where you are missing.
Be understood
One clear statement of what you do and who you do it for, placed everywhere an engine reads. We call it your Answer Profile, and it is the first thing we build.
Results you can see in the answer itself
National Furniture Store Chain
218
keywords where Google’s AI Overview cites the chain, October 2026, up from 21 a year earlier
Ontario Restaurant Equipment Supplier
16x
AI Overview citations, 4 to 63, October 2025 to October 2026, while estimated visits stayed flat
Our first case study is us. Here is what our own method did for AEO.ca’s parent agency.
Month one is setup, on every plan
Your first month is research: who your customers are, the phrases they actually use, what your site needs technically, where the low-hanging fruit is, and a baseline of where AI recommends you today. It ends in a 12-month plan we agree on together, and every monthly and quarterly review is measured against it. No setup fees. No audit that fillets the person who hired us. Ninety days’ notice if you ever want out, and a twelve-month mindset if you want results.
The Canadian AI Answer Index
Every quarter we ask the same questions across five engines, in English and French, from Canadian locations, and publish which sources get cited by sector. The first study: eight Canadian sites, one structured data rollout, and what moved. Read it.
Four free tools, no account
- Visibility Check: see whether AI names you for your category, and who it names instead.
- Schema Maker: Organization, Service, FAQ and Article markup that matches what your page says.
- llms.txt and crawler check: see which AI crawlers your robots.txt blocks, and fix it in one paste.
- Answer-readiness: paste a URL and see whether the page opens with an answer an engine can lift.
Built by the team behind The Influence Agency
AEO.ca is the answer engine optimization practice of The Influence Agency, a 65-person Toronto agency named to the Globe and Mail’s Top Growing Companies, with PR, creator, video, social, content and web teams under one roof. Michael Landry, Founder, leads the practice. Meet the team.
Honest work, written by people
We do not lie about ourselves and we do not lie about anyone else, and we do not do work that has no value to the person reading it. Everything we publish for you reads at least 80% human by Grammarly’s measure, written by staff writers, because an AI agent gets nothing from content it could have written itself. Nobody has AI search figured out, so we take a baseline and do evergreen work against it, and we show you the numbers from two instruments, ours and Semrush, so they keep each other honest. Read how we work.
Questions people ask us
What is answer engine optimization?
AEO is the work of getting your business cited and recommended by AI answer engines such as Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. It builds on SEO and is measured by share of answer rather than rankings.
Is AEO different from SEO?
SEO makes you the best resource on a topic and gets you ranked. AEO makes the case that you are the best answer for a specific person and gets you recommended. About 70% of the work overlaps, and every plan includes the SEO foundation.
Do we have to leave our SEO agency?
Not for our plans; accountability for results has to sit with one team, and we will not do overlapping work or check someone else’s. If you want to keep your SEO agency, we offer a social and embedded content package that follows their plan.
How long will it take?
Month one is setup and gives you the baseline and the plan. Movement usually shows within three to four months and compounds over twelve, and we report it monthly against the plan either way.
How do we know it works?
Two instruments, reported monthly against the plan we agreed on in month one: our own tool, which we built and understand, and Semrush as a second opinion. When both show progress you can be reasonably sure; when they disagree, we investigate and tell you why.
Do you work in French?
Yes. Quebec programs are run by French-speaking members of the team, and our research measures French answers separately.
What does it cost?
Local starts at $5,000 a month, Growth runs $7,500 to $15,000 depending on what you already have in house, and Enterprise runs $20,000 to $30,000. Month one is setup on every plan, with no setup fee, and every price includes measurement.