FAQ
GEO and AI visibility, answered plainly
The questions we hear most — about what Generative Engine Optimization is, how we measure it, and how to begin.
GEO, explained
- (01)What is GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)?
- GEO is the discipline of measuring and improving how generative AI engines represent your brand when someone asks. It is the AI-era counterpart to SEO, but instead of ranking a link you are optimizing to be mentioned, cited and described accurately inside a synthesized answer.
- (02)How is GEO different from SEO?
- Three ways. Ask an AI the same question five times and you can get five different answers — so what matters is how often you show up, not where one link ranks. There's no public leaderboard either: if you're not in the answer, you may never know. And engines disagree across languages, so you can be prominent on ChatGPT and invisible on DeepSeek at the same time.
What Besaid does
- (03)What does Besaid actually do?
- We get universities and education brands mentioned and recommended in AI answers — we do the work end to end, then prove every result with the AI's own words. We measure where you stand across engines, do the optimization ourselves, and re-measure to show what actually moved — the delivery a pure tool leaves for you to figure out.
- (04)Can you really influence what an AI says about us?
- There is no button that makes an AI recommend you, and we don't sell tricks. But answers aren't arbitrary: making sure AI systems can actually read your site, that your programs are described clearly and consistently everywhere, and that the rankings, forums and media AIs trust really do mention you — all of this reliably shapes what they say. We do that work patiently and measure honestly whether it moved.
- (05)Is Besaid a tool, or a service?
- We are a service first. The platform is simply where you watch us work — conversation replay and analytics you can open any time — but the point is the delivery: we do the optimization work and show each action against the result. Measurement that no one acts on is a report that gathers dust.
Engines & coverage
- (06)Which AI engines do you cover?
- We follow your future students wherever they ask — 13+ assistants, each measured with equal care: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Claude and Copilot alongside DeepSeek, Doubao, Qwen, Kimi, Yuanbao, RedNote DianDian and Zhihu Zhida. DeepSeek we test per interface (official app, Tencent Yuanbao, Baidu) because the same AI gives different answers inside different apps — so we check each one students actually open. And beyond the big-name apps, we also work on the open-web sources every AI learns from — so whichever assistant a family opens, you're not a blind spot.
- (07)Do you only cover the big-name engines?
- No — coverage follows your students. Besaid began in cross-border education, where the same institution gets asked about in different languages, on different engines. Whichever market an engine serves, we measure it the same way and put the answers side by side.
Measurement & proof
- (08)How long until the numbers actually move?
- Honestly, it depends on the lever. Fixes to how your own site and pages are read — the part you control — can start showing up in international engines within a few weeks. Earning your way into the third-party sources AI trusts — rankings, forums, media — takes longer, because that's the wider web changing, not a setting we flip. We won't promise a fixed score by a fixed date; anyone who does is guessing. What we do promise is that you'll see the trend forming, sampled continuously, so you can act ahead of your application window instead of after the intake is decided.
- (09)How do we know your numbers are real?
- Every figure links back to the actual AI answer behind it — the exact question, engine, model and date — so you can read word-for-word what the AI said about you, and when. And every percentage shows how many answers it came from: a report claiming you appear in 40% of AI answers means nothing if it never says how many were checked, so we always show the count. (Internally we track that visibility rate as a figure we label θ; you never have to think about the symbol.)
- (10)How do you prove a result rather than just report a score?
- Behind every number is the AI's actual answer — the exact question, engine, model and date — kept in a tamper-evident record no one, including us, can quietly edit afterwards. We replay the same question before and after our work, so what you get is an evidence file your board or a procurement team can verify line by line, not a black-box score.
- (11)Do you have real case studies?
- We are early, and we say so plainly. Rather than dress up illustrative numbers as client results, we label representative scenarios as illustrative and are building a library of real before-and-after evidence packets to publish as engagements complete.
Working with us
- (12)How does an engagement work, and what does it cost?
- It starts with a free diagnostic — no commitment. From there we agree a scope: which brands and programs, which engines, which languages and markets, and how often we sample and report. You don't buy seats or a subscription; you get a managed engagement priced to that scope, and we deliver evidence on a set cadence — typically a baseline first, then regular before-and-after reporting. We talk pricing through plainly once we've seen your diagnostic. There's no public price list because no two institutions share the same engines, languages and competitive set.
- (13)Is there a minimum term? Can we stop?
- Engagements run in measurement cycles, not annual contracts. At the end of any cycle you can renew, adjust scope, or stop — your call. We'd rather earn the next cycle with evidence than hold you with a clause. If you stop, we close out cleanly: you get the final report and the full evidence package, and we tell you which changes will keep working on their own and which need upkeep.
- (14)If we stop, what do we keep?
- Everything we delivered. Every report, every captured AI answer, every evidence package is yours permanently — they don't sit behind a subscription that goes dark when you leave. The on-site improvements we made stay live on your properties, and the third-party presence we earned doesn't get taken back. The only thing that stops is the ongoing measurement and the next round of work.
- (15)How is our data handled?
- Your data is encrypted in transit and at rest, kept fully separate from every other client's, and sampled through clean, terms-compliant channels — not scraped credentials or grey-market proxies. We state per engagement where evidence is stored and how long it is kept.
- (16)How do we get started?
- Request a free diagnostic. Give us your brand and website — one URL is enough, nothing technical to install — and we sample where you stand across engines and languages, then walk you through the evidence.
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