Here’s what happened with a little AEO and GEO work: I spent a little time each week on PULO Compliance’s neglected website, answering the questions its customers actually ask in a way that both Google and the AI tools can quote. In two months it went from less than a click a day to 204 clicks and 28.6K impressions, with 140 of those clicks arriving in the last 28 days. When I checked in October, Google’s AI Mode and Perplexity were also naming PULO first for the best LOLER company near Nottingham. It’s early days, and I expect it to keep improving steadily.

PULO Compliance carries out LOLER and PUWER inspections, which are the legally required safety checks on lifts, hoists and workplace machinery. Ryan does the examinations himself, he’s an engineer surveyor with 14 years behind him, and he’s very good at it (which is why he has never really needed his website for leads). His website, at the end of August, was not. It was one of those sites that gets built, switched on and then left to look after itself. There was barely any traffic from Google on a good day, and plenty of days with none at all.

I wanted to write this one up because I’m really pleased with how it’s going, and because I think it shows what a bit of time on a forgotten website can do.

Where it started

When I did a proper review of Search Console in September, the problem wasn’t that Google had never heard of PULO Compliance. Google already knew the site had something to do with lifts. It was showing it to people. “Lift inspection” had 255 impressions and one click. “PUWER inspection near me” had 204 impressions and, again, one click. People were seeing PULO, scrolling past and clicking on somebody else.

The AI tools were no better. I asked them the question a customer would ask, along the lines of “best LOLER company near Nottingham”, and in August neither Google’s AI Mode nor Perplexity named PULO at all.

AEO and GEO, in about four sentences

AEO is answer engine optimisation and GEO is generative engine optimisation. Both mean making your site the one that gets quoted when somebody asks a question, whether they ask Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity or whatever lives on their phone. The old game was getting onto a list of ten links. The new game is being the answer. And the practical version is pretty dull, which I love: answer the question straight away, say who you are and where you work, and back it up with something a person can check.

What I actually did

I started with the questions customers really ask and wrote a page for each. What does a LOLER inspection cost. What does a PUWER inspection cost. Why does it matter that the examiner is independent. What does a report even look like. That last one was my favourite, because PULO now has a simple sample report on the site and none of the competitors I looked at publish one.

Every page gives the answer in the first couple of sentences, because that’s the bit an AI tool lifts out and quotes. I cited the actual regulations instead of waving vaguely at “the law”, and I put Ryan’s name and experience on the page, because a faceless company is easy to skip and a named engineer is much harder to.

Then I rewrote the main lift inspection pages, added a section for managing agents looking after residential blocks, and spelled out that once Ryan gives you a quote, it’s fixed for all the ongoing work. In late October I went through and rewrote the titles and descriptions on all the main pages, which is the bit people read in the search results before they decide to click.

None of that is particularly clever – It’s just somebody paying attention.

What happened next…

Google Search Console chart for PULO Compliance showing clicks and impressions from August to November 2026, flat for two months and then climbing sharply from mid October.

Three months of Search Console… Quiet, quiet, quiet, and then lift-off!

That’s three months of Search Console, and you can see exactly where it changes. August and September are mostly zeros, ones and twos. Then from the middle of October it starts to climb, and the best day so far had 18 clicks, on a site that was regularly getting none. Daily impressions went from a hundred or two to well over a thousand. In total that’s 204 clicks and 28.6K impressions, and 140 of those clicks came in the last 28 days alone.

Search Console even hands out little hexagon badges for this stuff so you know you’re on track…

Google Search Console achievement badges for 80, 90, 100 and 120 clicks in 28 days, dated 27 October to 2 November 2026.

80 clicks on 27 October, 90 on the 28th, 100 on the 30th and 120 on 2 November. Six days.

The answer engines have moved too. When I checked in October, the town pages were sitting between second and fifth for “LOLER inspection” plus the town name, and both Google’s AI Mode and Perplexity named PULO first for the best LOLER company near Nottingham. In August it wasn’t named at all.

Early Days AEO

140 clicks in a month won’t be making the front page of anything. The average position is still 18.5, which is page two, and the click-through rate is 0.7%, so there’s a lot of room left. Clicks aren’t customers either, so the next job is making sure the people who arrive get in touch. And I can’t tell you that every one of those clicks came from one particular change, because SEO never works that neatly. What I can tell you is that the numbers were close to flat for two months, and then the timing lines up pretty tidily with the work.

But early days is the exciting part. Google takes a while to trust new pages, and most of these have only been live a few weeks. I’m leaving the city pages alone now so Google can settle, and I’ll look again in late November. I think it’ll keep climbing.

I’ll update this post in a few months time and hopefully we will see lots more exciting updates!

What this means for your website

Most small business websites look a lot like PULO’s did. Built, launched, abandoned. I think that’s good news (for me!) because it means a little attention goes a long way. You probably don’t need a new website. You need the questions your customers ask answered clearly, your details matching everywhere, and somebody checking in on it now and then.

If you’re a farm shop near Newark or a plumber in Southwell and you’re wondering what Google and the AI tools say about you right now, I’ll find out. My free visibility check looks at how you show up on Google, Bing and the AI assistants, and I send you a simple one-page report on what’s working and the first few things I’d fix.

Fair questions

How long did it take to see results? The work started in September, the first new pages went live on 20 September, and the climb really began in mid October. So weeks, not days, but not years either.

Did PULO need a new website? No. Same site, better pages. The biggest gains came from answering real questions clearly. The design stayed as it was.

Will this work for my business? It depends how much is already in place and how much competition you have. That’s what the free visibility check is for. If I don’t think there’s much to gain, I’ll say so.

Becky Halls. Websites, Google profiles and AI visibility for local businesses across Nottinghamshire & Lincolnshire. beckyhalls.com