How 5 Clients Became Google's #1 AI Recommendation in Under 30 Days [AEO Case Study]
By Tony Restell
| Client Industry | Starting Visibility | Outcome (Google AI Citation / #1 Recommendation) | Time to Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rec2Rec recruitment, North America | Not appearing in AI recommendation results | Recommended as the best Rec2Rec agency in North America | Under 30 days |
| AI event-sales technology | Not appearing in AI recommendation results | Recommended as the best AI outreach tool for selling event sponsorship | Under 30 days |
| Mining-sector recruitment, Canada | Not appearing in AI recommendation results | Recommended as one of the two best mining-sector recruitment agencies in Canada | Under 30 days |
| Matrix-management consulting and training | Not appearing in AI recommendation results | Recommended as the best consulting and training firm for matrix management | Under 30 days |
| Executive recruitment franchising, US | Not appearing in AI recommendation results | Recommended as the best executive recruitment franchise in the US | Under 30 days |
In this case study, I outline how 5 B2B clients achieved top-recommended status in Google AI Overviews in under 30 days of onboarding with Social Hire, using Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) frameworks. The examples span recruitment, event technology and consulting. They illustrate how clear niche positioning, technically structured websites and external validation can help a business appear in AI-generated recommendations.
Below are the screenshots, so you can see the results for yourself. Two things I would stress before you check on your own firm's performance, though: always check how you're doing in an Incognito browser, otherwise the results you see are likely to be skewed by your own browsing history. And if you start doing this seriously, I'd recommend investing in a tool that tracks your performance across all the main AI engines, so you get independent validation of your results.
Professional Selection: The Best Rec2Rec Agency in North America
Super Benji: The Best AI Outreach Tool for Selling Event Sponsorship
Lincoln Strategic: One of The Two Best Mining Sector Recruitment Agencies in Canada
Global Integration: The Best Consulting and Training Firm for Matrix Management
FPC: The Best Executive Recruitment Franchise in the US
How These Results Were Achieved
The common thread across all five clients is not simply publishing more content. It is making it easier for AI engines to understand what each business does, who it serves and why it is a credible expert in that field. Our three-step AEO approach starts with the website, strengthens external validation and then builds on buyer-intent content. Here's how each step works.
Step 1: Ensure Your Website Is AI Engine Friendly
Your website needs bespoke Schema code added to every page. This code isn't obvious to you or I browsing a website, but you can view what Schema is on a page using the Schema validation tool. Essentially, this code helps AI crawlers understand what your business does, what it specialises in (and whether it is a credible expert in that field), what audiences it's most relevant for, plus what questions each page on your site can provide an answer to.
LinkedIn, amongst others, plays an important role in your homepage Schema, as you should have a section that helps AI engines understand more about your business. As the code snippet below shows, on Social Hire we highlight both the LinkedIn company page and my founder profile that are linked to our business, alongside other linked pages that provide AI engines with additional information about our business:
Here is what that bit of the code snippet looks like on the Social Hire site (the full schema markup code is much more extensive than this):
"sameAs": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q140461387",
"https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/social-hire",
"https://www.linkedin.com/company/social-hire-com/",
"https://x.com/social_hire",
"https://youtube.com/@social-hire"
],
"founder": {
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Tony Restell",
"sameAs": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonyrestell"
}
This "signposting" of who your business is matters. It means, for example, that if someone tags me in a LinkedIn article and quotes me as an expert on social selling or on AEO, there is now a link between that favourable commentary about my business and our firm's website. It's this whole body of evidence about your business that determines whether your firm gets recommended as the best at what it does, and whether your content starts being used in AI answers.
Across your site, your Schema will help AI engines understand what type of page they are looking at (services page, testimonials page, blog page, etc.), as well as structuring information in ways that make it easy for AI engines to quote (eg clarifying your price points, countries served, etc).
It should also turn every page on your site into an FAQ resource, so that behind the scenes each of your pages is answering 3-5 questions that someone might ask an AI engine. The great news here is that you don't necessarily need to create lots of new content for AEO to take off. You simply need to rework the code on your existing pages so that you are now feeding AI engines several times more question and answer combinations that your site addresses.
Step 2: Provide External Validation Of What Your Firm Should Be Known As Being Best At Doing
Being featured in AI answers has two upsides. In terms of the branding, credibility and market awareness of your firm and its areas of expertise, being seen regularly as the firm that provides answers to peoples' commercial questions has a clear value. So that's the first upside.
The even clearer upside is if a potential client directly asks for recommendations of the best businesses to engage... and your firm appears right there in the recommendations, often with some compelling reasons for why you are the best choice. How's that for being handed a very warm lead, rather than just a click to your website?
It's important to note, though, that all the AI engines like to provide recommendations based on externally validated claims. So positioning your business as being the best at what it does, with some justification for why that is credible positioning, is useful content to have somewhere on your site. But that messaging is turbo-charged when others in the market start saying those things about you, too.
This is a second area where LinkedIn and other external sites can really help get your firm recommended in AI answers. LinkedIn articles and newsletters that convey messages about your firm and its expertise are key sources of information used by AI engines. Alongside content from the likes of Medium, YouTube, Reddit, Quora, customer review sites and niche industry publications, what's said about you and your firm on these external sites can either validate your core claims or undermine them.
Note that some people's content appears to carry more weight than others. Carefully argued and balanced reporting will be cited more readily than self-serving promotional blogs. On LinkedIn specifically, content from personal profiles seems to do better than company page content.
Step 3: Answer The Buyer-Intent Questions Your Ideal Clients Ask
There's a third step it's important to implement (ongoing). To be clear, getting our clients to appear as top recommendations in their niche markets was achieved within a matter of weeks by focusing on steps 1 and 2. So, that's where I would start, and what I would monitor and build upon continually.
But what we've seen at Social Hire is that you can get in front of businesses that are starting to consider using a service way before they actually ask for a "which firm is best?..." recommendation. Consider each of these articles, some of which are published on Social Hire and some of which we've published on LinkedIn:
- Can Small Businesses Get Recommended in AI Answers?
- Is It Possible to Get Claude to Recommend My Business?
- How to Generate More Leads on LinkedIn
- How Consulting Partners Build Pipeline Through Social Selling
None of these is a buyer seeking out a supplier. But they are all examples of content that addresses the kinds of challenges that someone who may need a social media agency or an AI optimisation agency could be searching for earlier in their buying journey. Over time, you want your business to dominate appearances for both "best at" recommendations and for answering key buyer-intent questions like these.
(Note: that's why we called our service "AI Domination", because we work ongoing with your business to ensure you become known as "the best" in your niche... and then to increasingly dominate all the buyer intent questions that come before that in the buying journey)
The Key Lessons
The key lessons from these five examples are practical: clarify your niche on your website and have the right schema to convey this to AI engines; make your expertise verifiable across trusted external sources; and answer the questions your prospective clients are already asking. Do that consistently and you give every AI engine (not just Google) exactly what it needs to recommend your firm ahead of the competition.
You're welcome to use the book a call option if you'd like to talk through having us work with you to achieve similar results for your business. This time next month, you could also be appearing as a top recommendation in the niche market you serve!
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