EXPLAINER · 6 MIN READ
Seamwire from zero: a public AI visibility log
By the Seamwire team · Updated
THE SHORT ANSWER
On 21 October 2026, a few weeks after launch, no AI engine named Seamwire for “best AEO or GEO agency”, globally, in India or in the UAE. Asked about us directly, ChatGPT said Seamwire “needs more independent verification”. This page records that baseline, every change we make, and a re-test each month with the same questions, so anyone can see whether our own methods work on us.
How did we test?
- Engines: ChatGPT on chatgpt.com (signed out, web search on), Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot (signed in, fresh chats).
- Runs: one per question on 21 October 2026, from Bengaluru. One run is a snapshot, not a ranking: AI answers change from run to run.
- From November we repeat every question several times, add Gemini and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, and report a share of runs, as described in our guide to measuring AEO and GEO.
What did the engines say on 21 October 2026?
- ChatGPT, “best GEO agencies in the world, top 10”: Intero Digital, First Page Sage, Siege Media, iPullRank, Graphite, Omniscient Digital, Animalz, Go Fish Digital, Kalicube, Directive. Seamwire not named.
- ChatGPT, “best AEO / GEO / AI SEO agency in India, Bengaluru”: Digipuush, Photon Media, OneCity Technologies, Qoulomb, SeekNext. Seamwire not named.
- ChatGPT, “best GEO / AEO agency in Dubai or the UAE”: SEO Sherpa, Digital Gravity, WAIM, Global Media Insight, SEO Tech Experts. Seamwire not named.
- Perplexity, “best AEO GEO agency in India, Bengaluru”: DigiMark Agency, Flowtrix, Spear Growth, Brandstory, Lemniscate Growth, Nico Digital. Seamwire not named.
- Copilot, “best AEO / GEO agency in India (Bengaluru)”: Growth Hackers Digital, NextWebi, Digimark Agency, BrandStory, VGODIGITAL. Seamwire not named.
- ChatGPT, “What is Seamwire? Is it a good AEO/GEO agency?”: known, not trusted. It marked named clients, third-party reviews, the team and AI visibility results as not verified.
What decides who gets named?
The engines told us, in their answers and their sources. For India, ChatGPT picked mostly small firms, each with something specific and checkable: a dedicated AEO or GEO page for the city, one case study with numbers, or a place in a partner directory. Perplexity and Copilot built their Bengaluru answers largely from “best agencies in Bangalore” articles and directories written by other people, and from agencies' own city pages.
When we asked ChatGPT how it decides, it described searching for candidates, then checking each for case studies, reviews, client confirmation and independent coverage. It trusts, roughly in order: client results anyone can check, with dates; independent coverage; reviews; the agency's own site; and lists and directories last, which it uses to find names rather than to trust them. For a new agency it asked for a published method, a documented experiment on its own brand with dates and failures, and an identifiable team. This page is the experiment.
What was wrong on our side?
- ChatGPT could not open the bare address seamwire.com. Its request never reached our server, and it reported an old error page, most likely a copy saved before launch. www.seamwire.com opened normally. Our own tests with AI crawler user agents all passed, which is the lesson: a check run only from your own network can miss what an engine sees. The bare address now redirects permanently (301) to www, and every profile links to www.
- Bing had indexed none of our pages. Its URL Inspection reported the home page as “Discovered but not crawled”: Bing knew the site existed but had not prioritised it, which is common for a new domain with few links. That matters because ChatGPT search and Copilot both draw on Bing.
- Our proof was hard to check. Client results on our site had no dates or method behind them.
What have we changed so far?
- 21 Oct: six market pages, AEO, GEO and SEO for India (Bengaluru) and the UAE, each written for its market. Six, not sixty: mass-produced city pages are spam under Google's policies, and AI engines are not fooled by them either.
- 21 Oct: client proof now carries the query, engine and date. AM Core Industries, a Bengaluru paper tube manufacturer we work with, was the first company named by both ChatGPT and Perplexity for “paper tube manufacturers in Bangalore” when we checked.
- 21 Oct: the same one-sentence description of Seamwire on our home page, About page, schema and every profile, and our Clutch profile linked from the site.
- 21 Oct: key pages submitted to Bing (URL Submission and IndexNow) and Google (URL Inspection).
- 22 Oct: published our first original study, how 200 of the largest companies in India and the UAE treat AI crawlers, with the full dataset free to use.
- In progress: verified client reviews on Clutch and GoodFirms, and a named head of research.
What are we deliberately not doing?
- Publishing a “best GEO agencies” list with ourselves at the top. Studies in 2026 found self-ranked lists mostly get cited while competitors get recommended.
- Buying placements on list sites or sponsored “best agency” posts.
- Fake reviews, review swaps, or planted Reddit posts.
When is the next re-test?
In November 2026: the same questions word for word, plus a wider set, repeated several times on each engine, from India and the UAE. If nothing moves, we will say so. Nobody we know of has got a new company into ChatGPT's “best agency” answers within weeks. Narrow questions such as “AEO agency in Bengaluru” are a realistic target over three to six months; “best GEO agency in the world” is a goal for a year or more.