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 ]
OpenAI Confirms ChatGPT Ads Across Europe from 24 August
OpenAI announced on 19 August 2026 that ChatGPT Ads reaches 31 European countries from 24 August. We published the country list from inside the ads platform the day before.
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, and OpenAI confirmed the European rollout for 24 August. What Portuguese brands can do now, and who can run the campaigns.
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 and confirmed for Europe on 19 August, plus who can actually run the ads.
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, one day before OpenAI confirmed 31 European markets from 24 August. The full country list, and what it changes for European brands.
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 →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 →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 & FrameworksWhat Are the Best AI SEO Tracking Tools for Small Businesses?
The direct answer to the question people actually ask, plus the tools worth knowing and the measurement caveat nobody sells you.
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 →AI Visibility FoundationsAI Search Ranking: Why It Matters for Brands
How AI search ranking works, the signals that influence which content gets cited, the common AI SEO mistakes, and what to do to raise brand visibility.
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
How LLMs decide which brands to recommend: the signals ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity weigh, from training data and entity clarity to retrieved sources.
Read →Strategy & InsightsAI traffic converting at 3 to 5x better rate than Google
AI referral traffic is small in volume and high in intent. In our own client data it converted about 6x better than Google organic, at 0.5% of sessions.
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 →Strategy & InsightsWhy Traditional SEO Is No Longer Enough: How AI Search is Changing B2B Buyer Decision-Making
Why traditional SEO no longer covers B2B buying: how AI search reshapes the research journey, and what marketing teams need to change to stay part of it.
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 →Strategy & InsightsReal Estate’s Impact on AI
How real estate data shapes AI systems, and how generative search changes the way buyers find listings: fewer clicks, more weight on being the cited source.
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 Visibility FoundationsHow to win in this new era of AI search?
How to win in AI search: the pillars that decide whether assistants name you, from AI visibility and entity authority to content built to be cited.
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 →Strategy & InsightsWhat Will Be My ROI for AI SEO?
The four areas where AI SEO returns tend to show up, from traffic recovered to citations in ChatGPT and Gemini, and how to measure each one honestly.
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 →AI Search EcosystemWhy Do 90% of Businesses Fear Losing SEO Visibility?
Search Engine Land's survey found 87.8% of businesses fear losing SEO visibility. What it shows about budgets, priorities and presence inside AI answers.
Read →Strategy & InsightsWhat Is the Future of AI Commerce?
What AI commerce looks like next: personal agents doing the buying, machine-first websites, and brands competing to be the one ChatGPT names and cites.
Read →Strategy & InsightsWhich Form Could AI Browsers Take in the Future?
Three possible futures for AI browsers, from AI-enhanced browsing to fully agentic. What each model would mean for your content and who controls the view.
Read →AI Visibility FoundationsWhat Is EEAT and Why Does It Matter for AI Visibility and AI SEO?
What E-E-A-T is and why it matters for AI visibility: how experience, expertise and transparent authorship raise your odds of being cited in AI answers.
Read →Strategy & InsightsHow to Decide Which Questions to Optimise for in AI SEO?
A framework for choosing which AI search questions to optimise for: the six prompt areas, how to judge whether you can realistically win a question, and where to start.
Read →Technical AEOHow Many AI Search Friendly Blog Articles Should You Post Per Week?
How many AI-search-friendly articles to publish per week, and why depth and coverage of your topic matter more than raw volume when it comes to citations.
Read →Technical AEOWhat Is the Difference Between Being Visible on ChatGPT and Being Present in GPT’s Training Data?
Being visible on ChatGPT and being present in its training data are two different things. What separates them, and which one you can actually influence.
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 →Technical AEOWhat Happens if you Stop Blogging on your Website?
What happens when you stop blogging: fewer indexable entry points, weaker topical signals, and less material for AI assistants to cite you from.
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 →AI Visibility FoundationsHow to Rank Your Brand in AI Overviews (2026 guide)
What the 2026 evidence shows about getting cited in AI Overviews, including what Google says you do not need to do.
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 →AI Search EcosystemAre my Customers Using ChatGPT to Search?
How to tell whether your customers are searching on ChatGPT, what the behaviour shift looks like by audience, and how to measure it for your own brand.
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 October 2025)
Does llms.txt actually work? It is a proposed standard that acts as a content map, no major model fully supports it yet, and it takes minutes to add.
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 →Strategy & InsightsWill AI Search Optimisation Give Me an Advantage Over My Competitors?
Whether AI search optimisation gives you an edge on competitors, why early mentions compound into more mentions, and how the picture changes by company size.
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 →Tools & FrameworksThe 3 Pillars of AI SEO (2026 guide)
Accessibility, answer design and third-party corroboration, updated with the 2026 evidence on what actually drives AI citation.
Read →AI Visibility FoundationsHow to Recover Traffic Lost to AI Search (2026 guide)
AI Overviews now cut clicks by 58%, not the 30% reported in 2025. What the current research shows about recovering that traffic, and what Google says does not work.
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 get real-time, transparent access to the specialists doing the work, not a 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.