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Case Studies/National Private Investigators

AEO Strategy That Drove Major Visibility, Authority & Citation Growth Across AI Platforms

The Background

National Private Investigators partnered with us to grow their presence beyond traditional SEO and future proof their brand. As users increasingly turn to tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity for advice, recommendations, and service guidance, NPI wanted to ensure that whenever someone asked an AI system about private investigators, bug sweeping services, or surveillance, their brand was consistently included, cited, and trusted.

Keyword Strategy: Owning the UK’s Most Competitive PI Searches

We focused on high-intent, commercial keywords directly tied to service enquiries:

These are some of the most competitive keywords in the private investigation industry, with national level search volumes and high commercial value. Ranking for them meant capturing users ready to enquire.

AEO Strategy: How We Built NPI’s Authority Across AI Platforms

Topic & Prompt Mapping: Reframing Search for the AI Era

AEO is not built around keywords it is built around questions. The questions users now ask AI assistants instead of typing into Google.

Our first step was to reframe NPI’s search landscape around this new behaviour.

We analysed dozens of high-intent prompts that users ask across LLMs, such as:

“Who is the best private investigator in London?”
“How much does a bug sweep cost?”
“What do private detectives actually do?”

We mapped these prompts into structured topic clusters covering:

private investigation
surveillance
background checks
bug sweeping

This gave us a framework for visibility that aligned with how AI systems interpret intent not how traditional search engines interpret keywords.

LLM-Optimised Content: Built for How AI Reads, Not Just How Humans Browse

Once the prompts were mapped, we created and refined content specifically designed for LLM comprehension.
AI models prioritise clarity, structure, and depth. So every piece of content was engineered to offer exactly that.

Our approach included:

clean, structured, scannable layouts
comparison-style breakdowns and ranked lists
detailed explainers written with expert-level clarity
step-by-step guides on investigative processes
rich FAQ sections answering real user prompts
precise, confident language LLMs can parse easily

We also implemented highly detailed schema markup to help LLMs understand:

what the content is about
what each section represents
which pages demonstrate expertise
how topics relate to each other

This schema-first approach is a major differentiator in AEO and played a key role in the results.

Strengthening E-E-A-T for an Industry Where Trust Is Everything

Because private investigation falls under YMYL guidelines, AI platforms apply much stricter trust and safety filters.
We strengthened NPI’s credibility across the board to ensure LLMs viewed them as a reliable, expert-safe source.

This included:

enhancing professional authority across key pages
improving clarity around services, methods, and legal compliance
ensuring accuracy and consistency in all content
reinforcing trust signals and expertise markers that AI platforms prioritise

The goal was not just to appear but to be chosen and cited by the AI models generating the answers.

Multi-Platform Monitoring & Continuous Prompt Expansion

AEO is dynamic. AI models evolve constantly, and user prompts shift with them.
We monitored performance across:

ChatGPT
Perplexity
Gemini
Copilot
Google AI Overviews

We tracked how often NPI appeared, how frequently they were cited, which prompts they won, and where competitors gained ground.
As new prompt trends emerged, we added them to our tracking list and expanded content coverage accordingly.

This ensured that NPI remained ahead of the curve not reacting to AI changes, but keeping pace with them.

Results

The first month of AEO already delivered significant improvements across all major performance metrics.

01. Visibility: A Major Increase in AI Presence

NPI’s visibility score surged from 3.9% to 16.5%, placing them #4 overall across all tracked competitors. This means AI systems are now consistently including NPI in responses across the prompts we monitor.

02. Share of Voice: Gaining Ground Against Competitors

NPI achieved a 2.7% share of voice, ranking ahead of multiple national investigation brands. This shows that AI platforms are recommending or referencing NPI more often than many established competitors.

03. Citation Share: Becoming a Trusted Source for LLMs

This is where NPI performed exceptionally well.
They reached a 2.8% citation share, the #1 position overall.

This means AI systems are:

directly citing NPI’s content
pulling details from their pages
using their blog posts and service pages as sources
treating their information as authoritative

Several listicles, service pages, and topic explainers became top-cited assets across all LLMs.

NPI is now positioned as a trusted, go-to source that AI systems repeatedly reference and recommend to users.

This is what future-proofing your brand looks like in the AI search era and NPI is now fully ahead of the curve.

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