Africa's first AI visibility platform. Lighthouse GEO monitors your brand's presence across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude - so you know exactly where you stand when AI recommends.
94%
of marketers increasing AEO/GEO investment in the next 12 months
97%
report positive funnel impact from AEO/GEO activity
12%
average digital budget allocation to AEO/GEO globally
0%
Most SA brands? Zero visibility, zero strategy, zero investment.
Sources: Profound Strategy AEO/GEO Survey 2026, HubSpot State of Marketing 2025, internal Algorithm client data.
The shift
People are skipping Google. They're opening ChatGPT and asking "What's the best insurance provider in South Africa?" They're asking Perplexity to compare accounting software. They're asking Gemini to recommend a marketing agency. And they're trusting the answers.
This isn't a future trend. It's happening right now, at scale. Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) have emerged as the most important new disciplines in digital marketing because the underlying behaviour has already changed.
The brands that appear in AI recommendations are gaining an unfair advantage - one that compounds every day. The brands that don't appear are invisible in the fastest-growing discovery channel in history.
And unlike traditional SEO, where you can see your rankings and measure your position, most organisations have no visibility at all into what AI is saying about them.
If you can't see what AI is saying about your brand, you can't control it.
What is Lighthouse GEO?
Lighthouse GEO is a proprietary AI visibility monitoring platform built in South Africa - for a market where nothing else existed. It's not a bolted-on SEO feature or a generic AI tool. It's purpose-built intelligence that monitors what the major AI engines are saying about your brand, your competitors, and your category.
We built it using direct API integrations with each AI platform - not scraping, not proxying, not guessing. Real queries, real responses, real data. Scored, structured, and turned into strategy you can act on.
Where global AEO/GEO tools exist, they were built for mature markets with single-language audiences and established digital infrastructure. South Africa has neither. That forced us to build something better.
Monitoring 4 AI Engines
GPT
ChatGPT
GEM
Gemini
PPX
Perplexity
CLD
Claude
Real APIs. Real queries. Real data.
What Lighthouse GEO delivers
Each capability is a distinct layer of visibility into how AI engines perceive your brand, your competitors, and your market.
One number. Total clarity.
Every entity you care about - your brand, your competitors, your product categories - gets a colour-coded visibility score out of 100. Green means AI is recommending you. Red means it isn't. No ambiguity.
Real example
A mid-size financial services brand scored 12/100 for their core product category across ChatGPT and Gemini. Their primary competitor scored 71. Within 60 days of acting on the Lighthouse GEO strategy, the client's score moved to 38 - and their competitor hadn't changed.
See who's winning the AI conversation - and why.
Lighthouse GEO doesn't just tell you your score. It tells you who's beating you, how often they're recommended, which content sources AI is citing, and where the gaps are that you can exploit.
Discover what your audience is actually asking AI.
People don't search AI engines the way they search Google. The queries are longer, more conversational, and often multilingual. Lighthouse GEO maps the actual questions your audience is asking - in English, Afrikaans, isiZulu, and any other language relevant to your market - across every journey stage.
Know exactly where your brand needs to be.
AI engines don't invent answers. They cite sources. Lighthouse GEO maps exactly which websites, publications, directories, and content platforms each AI engine is citing for your category - so you know precisely where to build authority.
Every entity analysed gets a plan. Not a spreadsheet.
Data without a plan is noise. Every Lighthouse GEO analysis produces a prioritised action plan - with specific moves, impact scoring, quick wins, and long-term structural plays. You'll know exactly what to do, in what order, and what to expect.
AI visibility is not static.
What AI says about your brand changes as models update, new content is published, and competitors move. Lighthouse GEO provides automated monitoring with configurable refresh cycles, trend lines, and competitor alerts - so you're never caught off guard.
The data
Most SA organisations would sit in the low-maturity bracket. That's either a crisis or a first-mover opportunity.
Built for Africa. Not retrofitted.
Built for a market with eleven languages, dozens of active platforms, and an audience that doesn't behave the way Western marketing playbooks expect. Every query, every entity, every score reflects the reality of operating here.
Lighthouse GEO doesn't translate English queries into other languages. It starts with the languages your audience actually uses - isiZulu, Afrikaans, Sesotho, and beyond - and maps AI responses in those languages natively.
AI platforms treat South Africa differently to the US or UK. Citation sources differ. Recommendation patterns differ. Lighthouse GEO accounts for these regional differences rather than assuming global patterns apply.
Built for Africa doesn't mean limited to Africa. The same platform monitors AI visibility in any market, any language, any category. Clients operating across continents get one unified view.
Where Lighthouse GEO fits
Generative Engine Optimisation
Monitor and optimise your visibility across AI-powered search engines. This is where Lighthouse GEO operates - the newest and fastest-growing discovery surface.
Search Engine Optimisation
Traditional and AI-enhanced search optimisation across Google, Bing, and emerging search surfaces. The foundation that feeds AI citation authority.
Social Engine Optimisation
Visibility across TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, and social platforms where discovery and research happen in parallel with traditional and AI search.
Your 90-day plan
Run a Lighthouse GEO analysis to establish your baseline score across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude. You can't optimise what you can't measure.
Identify who AI is currently recommending in your category, which sources it's citing, and where the gaps are. This is your competitive intelligence foundation.
Implement the quick-win actions from your Lighthouse GEO strategy - entity markup, content structure, citation source targeting. These are the changes that move your score fastest.
Create the long-form, expert-level content that AI engines prefer to cite. Structured for AI consumption, published on high-authority platforms, and targeting the specific queries your audience is asking.
Run a refresh analysis to measure score movement, identify new opportunities, and recalibrate your strategy. AI visibility compounds - the earlier you start, the harder you are to catch.
Go deeper
Our comprehensive report covering global trends, South African market context, competitive intelligence frameworks, and a practical 90-day action plan.
What's inside
Global AEO/GEO adoption data and trend analysis
South African market context and maturity assessment
The Lighthouse GEO methodology explained
Competitive intelligence framework for AI visibility
90-day action plan template for CMOs and marketing leads
Case examples from early adopters
From SEO specialists to GEO market leaders
Algorithm started as a search agency. SEO was our foundation, and it still is. But as AI engines began reshaping how people discover brands, we saw the gap before most of the market knew it existed.
No tool could tell us what ChatGPT was saying about our clients. No platform could score AI visibility. No framework existed for optimising brand presence across generative engines. So we built one - from scratch, using proprietary API-based monitoring rather than scraping or screenshot analysis.
The result is Lighthouse GEO: a platform that gives brands something they've never had before - visibility into the AI conversation that's already shaping their market.Built in South Africa, battle-tested in one of the world's most complex digital environments, and ready for any market on the planet.
What CMOs are asking
GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) is the practice of optimising your brand's visibility in AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude. Where SEO focuses on ranking in Google's link-based results, GEO focuses on being cited and recommended in AI-generated answers. The strategies overlap but are fundamentally different - AI engines prioritise entity authority, content structure, and citation sources rather than traditional ranking signals.
We use direct API integrations with each AI platform - not scraping, not screenshots, not third-party proxies. This means we query the same APIs that power the AI responses your customers see, giving us accurate, real-time data on what each model says about your brand, your competitors, and your category.
Most brands see measurable score movement within 30-60 days of implementing the quick-win actions from a Lighthouse GEO analysis. Structural gains compound over 90 days and beyond. Unlike SEO, where ranking changes can take months, AI engines update their citation patterns more frequently - meaning well-executed GEO moves show up faster.
No. Lighthouse GEO was built in South Africa because the complexity of this market forced us to build something more robust than anything available globally. But the platform monitors AI visibility in any language, any market, and any category. Clients operating in the UK, US, EMEA, and across Africa all use the same platform.
No - GEO and SEO are complementary, not competing. Strong SEO actually feeds AI visibility, because AI engines often cite high-authority web content. What Lighthouse GEO does is add a new dimension to your strategy - ensuring you're optimised not just for Google but for the AI engines that are increasingly shaping discovery.
Pricing is scoped to the complexity of your competitive landscape - number of entities, languages, markets, and competitors. Contact us for a custom proposal. The analysis is available as a once-off report, as part of an ongoing retainer, or as a periodic refresh for existing clients.
The only question is whether your brand is part of the answer.