Guilherme Hortinha is the co-founder of Index Lab, an answer-engine-optimisation (AEO) and generative-engine-optimisation (GEO) agency. He leads the agency's AI-visibility work, from technical foundations and structured content to off-site authority, helping brands become the answer AI gives across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI.
Combining over a decade of global marketing with hands-on AI-search research, he has taken clients from zero AI visibility to top recommendations, doubling a Dubai restaurant's delivery orders, ranking an express-facial brand #1 on ChatGPT before it even opened, and landing a marketplace its first AI-sourced customer in under six weeks.
He writes about how large language models decide which brands to recommend, the technical signals that make a site citable, and the strategy shifts every brand needs as search becomes conversation.
[ Articles by Guilherme ]
Similarweb finds AI-influenced visits arrive through search more often than other visits
Similarweb reports that 55.9% of AI-influenced visits came through search, against 40.4% of visits without AI influence. Analytics will usually log those visits as ordinary search traffic.
Read →NewsGemini now adds UTM parameters to outbound links, and Google has not documented when
Gemini links now carry a UTM tag, so visits the missing referrer used to push into Direct can be attributed to Gemini. Google has not said which links get tagged, so read the early numbers as a minimum.
Read →NewsChatGPT Ads Splits Your Brand Name From Your Legal Name, and Opens Up Non-Goal Conversions
OpenAI's 30 September 2026 advertiser update: an Ads Manager account now carries three separate names, changing the public one pauses ad serving, and the API will finally report conversions your campaign is not bidding on.
Read →NewsHow ChatGPT Ads Budgets Really Spend
OpenAI documented the rules behind ChatGPT Ads budgets in late September 2026: a daily budget is a weekly average that can double on a day, and an open-ended campaign is paced to 60 days.
Read →NewsOpenAI DevDay 2026 adds ranked plugin recommendations inside ChatGPT conversations
More than 20 announcements, and the recap describes no change to how ChatGPT searches, browses or cites. The new visibility slot goes to plugins, so software companies can compete for it and websites cannot.
Read →NewsMore links inside AI Overviews do not mean more clicks to your site
Peec AI logged a jump in the share of AI Overviews carrying links this week, but Search Console counts a click to your site and a link into AI Mode differently, and one of them may not register at all.
Read →NewsChatGPT Ads Opens Across Southeast Asia and Taiwan
OpenAI opened self-serve ChatGPT Ads to seven more markets on 23 September 2026, taking the advertiser list to 63 countries. Vietnam now has the cheapest minimum daily budget in the world.
Read →NewsOne vendor's data says Google AI Overviews are linking out more often
Peec AI data shared on X claims external links in Google's AI Overviews jumped from close to 0% to over 25%. The reporter who wrote it up disclosed a stake in the vendor, and no sample size or timeframe was given.
Read →NewsGoogle turns on native checkout in AI Mode and Gemini by default for Shopify merchants
Merchant Center is emailing Shopify merchants that their products can now be bought directly on Google. Nobody has to set anything up. To keep the sale on your own site, you have to switch it off in Shopify.
Read →NewsChatGPT Ads Update: Sponsored Agents, Shopify and HubSpot, and Conversion Optimization Billed on Impressions
OpenAI's mid-September 2026 wave adds Sponsored Agents in a US test, Shopify and HubSpot integrations, AI help writing ads, opt-in text customization and translation, oCPM, adjustable attribution windows, app and web platform targeting, and an event quality check.
Read →NewsChatGPT Ads Opens to the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey
OpenAI's Ads Manager availability table now lists 56 countries. The four new ones are the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey, and ads are expanding to users across nine markets in the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey.
Read →NewsChatGPT Ads Update: an Ads Manager Plugin, Looser Custom Audiences, and a Euro Minimum
OpenAI's 4 September product email adds a plugin that builds campaigns from ChatGPT or Codex, loosens custom audiences, widens conversion matching, reports carousel cards and paces total budgets. The same week its Help Center quietly published a 15 EUR daily minimum.
Read →NewsListicles still dominate Google's top 10, but the winners keep turning over
New research on 3,000 ranking listicles finds the format never left. What changed is which URL wins, and what makes one listicle outrank another.
Read →NewsGoogle AI Mode picks different sellers than the shopping carousel
New tracking data finds AI Mode overlaps with Google's own product carousel only 1.28% of the time, and swaps in a different top seller for 49.6% of the matches it does find.
Read →NewsProduct pages beat Reddit for AI citations, but the data is B2B only
Ten Speed's study found product pages draw 24.1% of AI citations against 4.2% for Reddit, YouTube and forums combined, and the number survived six fact-check questions. The dataset behind it is B2B SaaS and professional services clients only.
Read →Strategy & InsightsWhich Agencies in Portugal Help Brands Appear in ChatGPT Answers?
We put the question to five AI engines, twice each, and collected 59 answers. Five Portuguese agencies are named by four engines out of five. Our own company is named by three, and is the fourth most cited source in the study.
Read →NewsOrganic search still sends more traffic than AI platforms combined, Shopify data shows
A Search Engine Land outlook on 2027 SEO cites Shopify's Q2 analysis: AI-referred storefront sessions grew 197% year over year, but organic search stayed bigger and grew 12% on its own larger base.
Read →NewsGoogle's John Mueller calls the daily-crawl sitemap trick a bad idea
A technique that appends a changing timestamp to sitemap URLs to force daily recrawling gets a warning from Google's search advocate, because it destabilizes the canonical URL a page needs to be tracked and cited.
Read →NewsAI Answers Put the UAE on ChatGPT Ads Two Weeks Early
A Google AI Overview said ChatGPT Ads launched in the United Arab Emirates with self-service access for local businesses. OpenAI's own availability page lists 52 countries and the UAE is not one. Here is how the answer got there.
Read →NewsChatGPT Ads Opens Self-Serve in India, the Middle East and North Africa
OpenAI's 31 August announcement named regions and no countries. Its availability table now lists 52, twelve more than a week ago: India plus eleven markets across MENA. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are not among them.
Read →NewsEU classifies ChatGPT as a very large online search engine under the DSA
The European Commission put ChatGPT, Reddit and Roblox in the Digital Services Act's highest scrutiny tier, with compliance due by the end of December 2026. The transparency rules that come with it don't yet say anything about how ChatGPT sources or cites answers.
Read →NewsGoogle's AI Search Console reports and opt-out toggle are now global
The AI performance report and its opt-out toggle, previously limited to a handful of markets, are now available to every Search Console property worldwide. Our own data shows global availability does not guarantee the report has anything to show.
Read →Strategy & InsightsWrite the Ad for the Situation, Not the Product
VistaPrint rewrote its ChatGPT ads from product messaging to use-case messaging and click-through rate went up, according to OpenAI's stat pack. That is the context-hints method stated by an advertiser. How to do it, with a worked example.
Read →AI Search EcosystemChatGPT Ads for Local Services: 90 Million Weekly Requests and a Gap Worth Knowing
OpenAI's exploratory estimate puts requests for nearby businesses and service providers at over 90 million ChatGPT messages a week. Why local demand on ChatGPT is a fraction of what it is on Google, and when that gap works in a local business's favour.
Read →AI Search EcosystemChatGPT Ads for B2B Software: 490 Million Weekly Messages and What a Client Account Shows
OpenAI counts over 490 million weekly ChatGPT messages categorised as B2B or B2B-adjacent, and a further 90 million on small-business operations. How the demand reads, what the published B2B cases show, and what we have seen on a client account.
Read →AI Search EcosystemChatGPT Ads for Healthcare and Clinics: 2.4 Billion Weekly Messages, With a Policy Gate
OpenAI counts over 2.4 billion weekly ChatGPT messages about care, fitness, nutrition, test results and symptoms, up 31% since January. Health advertisers have been admitted since August 2026. What the number covers, and what the review requires.
Read →AI Search EcosystemChatGPT Ads for Travel: 330 Million Weekly Trip Questions and One Published Case
OpenAI counts over 330 million weekly ChatGPT messages about travel planning, booking, accommodation and logistics. What that number is, what it is not, and how a travel brand would bid on it.
Read →Strategy & InsightsThe ChatGPT Shopping Calendar: What 2025 Says About Your Q4 Budget
OpenAI has published the first seasonality curve for shopping inside ChatGPT. Back-to-school builds for five weeks, Black Friday peaks at +94%, and it is over by 3 December. The week-by-week plan for a D2C brand.
Read →NewsOpenAI Publishes Its First ChatGPT Ads Benchmarks
Conversion Optimization is generally available, conversion bidding shows a median 44% lower CPA on a sample of 27, the Conversions API adds 57% to measured conversions, and a footnote counts more than 10,000 active advertisers. What the numbers say, what the small print takes back, and what Best Buy, VistaPrint, HubSpot, Figma and Canva say on record.
Read →NewsChatGPT Ads Self-Serve Is Live Across Europe
OpenAI opened beta self-serve Ads Manager access to advertisers in the 31 European markets on 31 August 2026, taking the advertiser list from nine countries to forty. What it means and what it does not.
Read →NewsAI search engines now grade the image before the alt text
A Google patent shows the picture, not the caption, deciding which page gets cited. Search Engine Land lays out how to check whether your images actually hold up.
Read →NewsGoogle Ads reveals when AI rewrites your product titles
A new Product titles report lets advertisers see the AI-generated title Google served instead of theirs, and compare its performance. It does not let them turn the swap off.
Read →NewsGoogle auto-expands AI Overviews for some queries, pushing organic results further down
Google confirms AI Overviews can now skip the "Show more" click and expand straight to a full answer, closer to how AI Mode looks. It will not say how many queries this hits.
Read →NewsAI Overviews Cut YMYL Traffic While B2B Tech Content Grows
A Semrush-based study of 30 top publishers found top-of-funnel content declined across finance, healthcare, legal and consumer tech, while cybersecurity, marketing/sales software and cloud infrastructure content grew over the same year.
Read →NewsA 60,000-query study measures Google's listicle demotion
Search Engine Land ran the numbers on the listicle crackdown SEOs have suspected since January. The measured drop is real but far smaller than the anecdotal SaaS losses that started the alarm, and most brand listicles are still gaining traffic.
Read →NewsReddit's ChatGPT citation share falls 86% in days, cause still unconfirmed
Promptwatch clocked Reddit's ChatGPT citation share falling from 3.8% to 0.5% between August 14 and 17. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode saw much smaller declines over the same window, and OpenAI says it hasn't changed how it treats the site.
Read →NewsGoogle tests Gemini logo on sponsored search results
A spotted loading animation shows the Google and Gemini logos before sponsored results appear on mobile, with copy reading "evaluating sponsored results." Google says the branding is cosmetic and Gemini is not involved in loading the ads.
Read →NewsChatGPT's rebuilt search tool gives Reddit a year, others a month
OpenAI replaced ChatGPT's JSON search calls with a pipe-delimited query language between August 16 and 20, 2026. The rebuilt tool assigns Reddit-scoped searches a 365-day freshness window, against 30 days for brand-comparison queries in the same sample.
Read →NewsGoogle's crawler skips JSON. Its indexer still reads it
Gary Illyes confirmed Googlebot only downloads JSON files, structured markup included, and leaves the parsing to a later indexing step. He said the same applies to Merchant Center.
Read →NewsOpenAI Roadmap 2027: What Is Confirmed, What Is Likely, What Is Noise
Predictions for OpenAI's 2027 scored against its own 2026 delivery record: the device, GPT-6, ads beyond the free tier, and commerce. A dated record, updated as each item resolves.
Read →NewsReddit's ChatGPT Search citation share fell 86.4% in August
New data shows Reddit's share of ChatGPT Search citations dropped from 3.83% in late July to 0.52% by mid-August. The first move lines up with a change in how ChatGPT Search queries sites, the second doesn't have a stated cause.
Read →NewsGoogle Says No Special Work Is Needed For Its Own AI Search Results
John Mueller says Google's AI-generated answers come straight from the regular index, so there is no separate ranking system to chase there. Google's own optimization guide points to a different lever for getting cited: original content, not rank position.
Read →NewsNvidia in talks to invest in Perplexity above $30 billion
Nvidia is negotiating a stake in Perplexity above a $30 billion valuation, more than 50 percent above last year's round, as the company's annualized revenue triples on the back of its AI agent product.
Read →NewsAI authorship markers are rising fast across the web, Pew finds
Pew found signs of AI authorship or editing on about 10% of sampled webpages, and 35% of pages published after ChatGPT's launch. Its own data says a detector score can't tell you whether a page is worth citing.
Read →NewsChatGPT Ads Open to European Advertisers Next Week
OpenAI confirmed on 21 August 2026 that businesses registered in the 31 European markets can open their own advertiser accounts in the week of 24 August, the same week ads begin serving there.
Read →NewsChatGPT Ads Adds Automated Bidding, Platform Targeting and View-Through Conversions
OpenAI's 21 August 2026 product update brings the Maximize results bid strategy, an eligible-platforms picker across iOS, Android and web, one-day view-through conversion reporting and a WorkMagic integration.
Read →NewsOpenAI Confirms ChatGPT Ads Across Europe from 24 August
OpenAI announced on 19 August 2026 that ChatGPT Ads reaches 31 European countries from 24 August, and confirmed on 21 August that self-serve advertiser accounts open the same week. We published the country list from inside the ads platform first.
Read →NewsChatGPT draws more paid clicks from Google than any other top destination
New research from iPullRank finds ChatGPT pulls a higher share of paid Google clicks than any other leading destination, and Google's zero-click features barely touch it because most of those searches are navigational.
Read →AI Search EcosystemEvery Country ChatGPT Ads Can Now Target: The Full List
The complete list of countries ChatGPT ad campaigns can target, observed inside OpenAI's ads platform in August 2026, plus who can run the ads now that the advertiser list runs to 63 countries.
Read →NewsChatGPT Ads Can Now Target Every EU Country
All 27 EU member states appeared in OpenAI's campaign location picker on 18 August 2026. OpenAI confirmed 31 European markets a day later, and on 21 August confirmed advertiser accounts open there in the week of 24 August.
Read →AI Search EcosystemChatGPT Ads in Portugal: Targeting Is Now Available
Portugal appeared as a targetable campaign location in OpenAI's ads platform on 18 August 2026, ads serve to Portuguese users from 24 August, and Portuguese businesses can open their own advertiser accounts the same week.
Read →NewsSearch Console's ordinary report is quietly logging your AI Mode conversations
Google confirmed that follow-up turns inside AI Mode get logged as brand new queries in the classic performance report. The dedicated AI report that went live for everyone on August 11 still won't show you the queries, the clicks, or give you API access.
Read →NewsGoogle confirms Search Console AI-report drop was a logging bug
Google Search Console's Generative AI and Discover performance reports broke from a logging bug starting August 13, 2026. Google confirmed the cause, but the numbers only appeared to recover on August 20, and Google has not officially closed the incident.
Read →NewsOpenAI Opens ChatGPT Ads to Health and Finance Advertisers
Health insurance, dental, supplements and medical testing are in, on manual review. The pilot also reached five new markets on 11 August.
Read →NewsGemini's Share Fell From 12% to 1.9%, on One Dataset That Counts Text
Three datasets measured three different things this month. None of them answers which assistant people actually use.
Read →NewsGoogle's Generative AI Report Just Expanded to Many More Properties
Google has still not announced a full rollout. Here is what the report counts, what it holds back, and how to tell whether you have it.
Read →NewsChatGPT Ads update: carousels, oCPC, and pixel tracking opt-out ends
OpenAI bundled a multi-product carousel test and conversion-optimized bidding into this week's ChatGPT Ads Manager update. It also set August 17 as the date existing pixels switch to automatic advanced matching by default, unless advertisers opted out first.
Read →NewsA US Appeals Court Let AI Shopping Agents Back Onto Amazon
The Ninth Circuit vacated the injunction against Perplexity's agent, holding that the user is the one accessing Amazon. The lawsuit itself continues.
Read →NewsReddit blocks 23 million spam views a day. Moderators are still catching the rest by hand.
Reddit says a new AI system catches 25,000 spammy posts and comments a day, but won't say how it works. Subreddit moderators are still the ones building ban lists and keyword filters by hand.
Read →Tools & FrameworksBest SEO Optimization Software: Expert Comparison for 2026
Eight SEO platforms compared, and where the category now splits between Google-ranking tools and AI-visibility tracking.
Read →Tools & FrameworksThe 10 Best AI SEO Tracking Tools in 2026
Ten trackers compared with prices checked this month, the five things any of them must do, and the measurement caveat none of them sell you.
Read →NewsThe OpenAI Roadmap in 2026: What Shipped and What Slipped
A dated record of what OpenAI promised against what actually launched, and what an ad-funded answer layer changes for your brand.
Read →NewsSearch Console's AI Overview Data Hides Clicks and Skews Position
Google's Search Console reports AI Overview impressions with no click data, and every URL inside an AI Overview block is logged at position one. The average position metric that blends the two is no longer a reliable signal.
Read →Tools & Frameworks5 AI Visibility Tools, Tested: What They Cost and What They Miss
Rankshift, Peec AI, Lua, Searchable and the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit, compared on price, engine coverage and the one question none of them answer.
Read →NewsBing's New AI Performance Data: What It Means for Your Brand's AI Visibility
AI performance reporting tools from Bing now show brands how often they appear in AI responses, here's how to use that data to improve your AI visibility.
Read →AI Visibility FoundationsHow to Get Your Brand Recommended by ChatGPT and Gemini
How to get your brand recommended by ChatGPT and Gemini, and how to measure whether it is working, from entity signals to the sources these models cite.
Read →Strategy & InsightsAEO vs SEO: Why Your Strategy Needs Both
AEO and SEO do different jobs: one wins the AI answer, the other wins the click. Why brands need both, and how to split effort sensibly between them.
Read →Tools & FrameworksWhat are the best AI SEO tools in Dubai in 2026?
The best AI visibility and AI SEO tools for Dubai brands in 2026, what each one measures, and how to pick based on the assistants your customers use.
Read →AI Visibility FoundationsHow LLMs Choose Which Brands to Recommend (2026)
Five factors decide which brands ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity recommend: mention frequency, source authority, review sentiment, query fit and structured data.
Read →AI Search EcosystemAI Visibility Through OpenAI Partnerships
How OpenAI's partnerships shape AI visibility: Reddit data access, news and publisher deals, and what each one means for where your brand gets surfaced.
Read →AI Search EcosystemWhat is Wikidata?
What Wikidata is, why ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity lean on it to understand brands, and how to make sure your own entity is defined there correctly.
Read →AI Visibility FoundationsThe Concept of a Topical Neighbourhood
What a topical neighbourhood is: clusters of content and entities that reinforce each other so LLMs can map your relevance and treat you as authoritative.
Read →AI Visibility FoundationsHow To Structure Content for AI Visibility
How to structure content so AI can read and quote it: modular formatting, clear headings, schema, and the answer-first shape that answer engines select.
Read →Strategy & InsightsWhy Companies Must Stay in Vogue
How to keep your company visible as AI picks which brands to recommend: the AI SEO pillars, citable content, entity authority and a regular visibility audit.
Read →AI Visibility FoundationsRank in AI Search: LLM Guide
How to rank in AI search: entity clarity, high-authority mentions, content built for generative retrieval, and the structured data LLMs use to pick sources.
Read →AI Search EcosystemMicrosoft’s Advice on Optimising Your Content for AI Search
Microsoft Advertising's own advice on optimising content for AI search: modular formatting, semantic heading structure, and schema that classifies pages.
Read →NewsOpen AI announces ChatGPT shopping research
OpenAI's ChatGPT Shopping Research turns queries into personalised buyer's guides. What it pulls from, and what it changes for ecommerce visibility.
Read →Strategy & InsightsWhy AI SEO Is Really Not SEO
AI SEO and traditional SEO compared: different goals, different signals and different user behaviour, set side by side so you can see what actually changes.
Read →NewsHow to Prepare Your AI Visibility for Black Friday 2026
AI shopping traffic grew 693% last holiday season, beating the forecast. Agentic checkout then stalled. Here is what changed, and the three things to fix before 27 November 2026.
Read →Strategy & InsightsThe Dangers of Black Hat AI SEO Techniques
The black hat AI SEO tactics being sold right now, why they put your brand at risk with both search engines and answer engines, and what works long term.
Read →Strategy & InsightsAI SEO in the Travel Industry
AI search optimisation for travel and tourism: how OTAs and destination brands lose ground to AI answers, and what to fix to stay in the recommendation.
Read →NewsChatGPT Mentions Brands, Google AI Narrows Focus
ChatGPT names brands freely while Google AI Mode narrows to fewer sources. What that difference means if your organic traffic has started falling.
Read →AI Search EcosystemWhat is McKinsey saying about AI search?
What McKinsey says about AI search: how it frames the shift, what its research found on AI-assisted discovery, and what those findings mean for brands.
Read →Strategy & InsightsWhich industries need AI SEO optimisation the most right now?
Which industries are most affected by AI search right now, why research-heavy sectors feel it first, and how to tell whether yours needs AI SEO today.
Read →NewsHas ChatGPT stopped citing Reddit?
Has ChatGPT stopped citing Reddit? What the citation trackers showed, why Reddit was cited so heavily, and what the shift means for your own sources.
Read →AI Search EcosystemWhat Is Google Perspectives?
What Google Perspectives is, how the filter and carousel surface first-hand content from forums and social, and how to adapt your AI SEO strategy to it.
Read →AI Search EcosystemAI Impact on Wikipedia
How Wikipedia shapes AI answers, why models lean on it so heavily, and what brands can and cannot do about how they are represented there.
Read →Strategy & InsightsHow Will Google Search Evolve in the Age of AI?
How Google Search is evolving in the AI age: more conversational, more context-aware, and far more selective about which sources it cites in AI Overviews.
Read →Strategy & InsightsSEO and AI SEO Venn Diagram: Understanding the Overlaps and New Opportunities
SEO and AI SEO as a Venn diagram: the shared foundations of content quality, authority and technical structure, and where the two sets of goals diverge.
Read →Technical AEOHow to ensure Cloudflare is not blocking AI bots (October 2025 quick demo)
How to check whether Cloudflare is blocking AI bots, which crawlers matter such as GPTBot and Perplexity-User, and where to change the settings.
Read →Technical AEOLLMs.txt: Does It Actually Work? (Updated September 2026)
Google says it has no plans to use llms.txt. Anthropic and Perplexity say they read it. What the file is, who generates it, and where the return actually is.
Read →AI Visibility FoundationsWhat Does It Take to Be AEO and AI SEO-Optimised?
What it takes to be AEO and AI SEO optimised: the technical work, the authority building, and the ongoing ecosystem management behind real AI visibility.
Read →NewsChatGPT Instant Checkout: What Happened Next
OpenAI launched in-chat checkout in September 2025 and pulled back from it in March 2026. What that reversal means for retailers.
Read →AI Visibility FoundationsHow Long Does It Take to See Results of AI SEO Optimisation?
How long AI SEO takes to show results, stage by stage: crawlability and AI readiness first, then mentions in Google AI Mode, then citations in ChatGPT.
Read →[ FAQ ]
What is Index Lab?+
Index Lab is an AI-native visibility agency. We make brands the answer AI gives, getting you discovered, cited and recommended across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI.
Can I work directly with the team here?+
Yes. Our clients talk directly to the specialists doing the work, with no layer of account managers in between.
How do I get in touch or get started?+
Run a free visibility check to see where your brand stands, or contact us directly to talk through your goals.