Frequently Asked Questions

Straight forward answers about getting your business found in Google and recommended by AI search engines.

Getting found in AI search and Google

  • AI engines recommend businesses based on what they can verify about you across the web. You can't pay for it, you have to earn it!

    • Entity clarity, consistency across all platforms on the internet.

    • Google Business Profile that’s live, accurate and regularly updated.

    • Third-party mentions, this can be reviews, press and industry mentions, these matter because ChatGPT leans hard on what others say about you.

    • Structured data, this means machine-readable code (JSON-LD) that tells AI exactly who you are and what you do.

    • Answer-first content, pages that directly answer the questions your customers actually ask.

    • Staying active, fresh content and recent reviews signal you are a live, trusted operation.

  • Structure your content so each important question is answered directly under it in plain simple language. Google's AI pulls these ‘answers’ into clear, self-contained passages on its Overview.

    You don't need to rank number one on Google to be cited.

  • You get found organically by becoming the clearest, most trustworthy answer to what your customers are already searching.

    In practice that means:

    • a complete and active Google Business Profile

    • a steady flow of genuine reviews

    • website pages that directly answer your customers' real questions

    • consistent business details everywhere you appear online.

    Organic visibility is slower than ads, but it compounds. The goal is that organic visibility keeps bringing customers month after month.

  • No, visibility in AI search engines is earned, not bought.

    In our opinion, this is fortunate as this is where we get to be creative and authentic, this will look different for every business. Becoming recommended by AI engines is an opportunity to amplify your voice, be yourself.

    A common misconception is that we should allow AI to take over to get visible to AI. NO, be you!

    And be wary of anyone who tells you that you can pay to be recommended by AI search engines, see our question below on agency scams.

  • Yes, partly, you could! Especially with AI these days, finding information is very easy. But there are a few factors to consider if you do it yourself:

    • You will have to filter through a lot of conflicting information. We do this all the time and we know what works. This is also why we use AI intentionally, to amplify rather than take the place of the work that we do. It will always be a real human overseeing our work.

    • You will have to learn how to add code, restructure your website, keep up to date with keyword research and many more layers

    • you wont have the industry knowledge that we have acquired.

    • to learn how to run checks to ensure that your website is visible.

    Understandably we do recommend employing someone (us!) to implement the technical side of things. For this we offer a one off ‘Build’ service. For $4,000.

    Click hereto see our services.

Why is this happening to my website?

  • From a technical perspective, the most common cause right now could be that when people are searching and asking questions on Google, an AI overview is coming up first. This means people don’t need to go to your actual website. People are getting the answers without visiting any sites. Equating to less visitors to your website.

    Other potential causes:

    • lost rankings after a Google algorithm update

    • a technical problem (slow loading, broken pages etc.)

    • normal seasonal dips in your industry.

  • It's usually one of four things: your site is new or not yet indexed by Google, you don't have a verified Google Business Profile, another business shares your name and has stronger signals, or a technical setting on your website is accidentally telling Google not to list it.

    This is exactly the kind of thing our initial site audit will pick up on.

  • It is likely that the settings have not been changed on your domain host platform.

    This is part of our Audit & Foundations Build. We ensure your DMARC settings are correct, so that you know your emails are landing in inboxes.

For instagram & intentional businesses

  • Why you should have a website for your business:

    • It’s another layer of safety. On instagram it’s that algorithm decides who sees you, your reach could fluctuate. It’s amazing and it can be inconsistent. If your account disappeared tomorrow, so would your main connection to your clients/customers.

    • There is a current shift happening in the way that people ask the internet for recommendations. When someone asks ChatGPT or Google "best [what you do] near me", AI engines can't recommend an Instagram grid. (There are some caveats here which depending on your business goals we can do everything we can to support this, but nothing is guaranteed here! It is changing frequently.)

    • It’s something that you own, that builds credibility over time, creating trust with your customers as well.

    • AI and Google search engines can cite websites (for AI, it can cite once it has the right schema and JSON code for AI bots to be able to crawl your website to pull information from it) reviews and business profiles because they are verified.

    Why you should have ongoing SEO, GEO and AIO:
    This depends on your business goals.

    • Google runs thousands of algorithm changes a year, and the AI engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity) are updating how they choose and cite businesses almost monthly.

    • A really solid foundations build is great for a business in a low competition niche. For anyone who wants to grow, or who is in a field where others are competing for the same customers, ongoing optimisation is essential

    • Your business is always changing, so your digital presence changes with it. Ongoing means you are supported to effortlessly keep consistent!

    • Monthly reporting shows what is actually converting visits into enquiries and sales. Our partnership is where you find what works for your business as things change each month.

    • A website and GBP that is being regularly updated signals that you are a live, trusted organisation.

    • Your site authority builds over time.

    Your Instagram is where people fall in love with you. Which is important!

    While your website and search presence are how people who are looking for what you do specifically, find you. Both support each other. We don’t think it’s one or the other.

  • In our opinion; it is up to you to decide!

    We want to help business become a trusted answer. Trusted by Google and AI search engines. And importantly, trusted by the people that choose to engage with your business. The “is this AI?” question is on everyone’s minds now when we see content online. So it really depends on your brand and your values.

    When you partner with us we can assure you that this authenticity piece is the foundation of what we do at Luminera, we ask; how can we use AI to amplify rather than replace?

  • For us, this is how we work with AI:

    • We have brainstorming sessions before asking AI.

    • We use AI to help structure the ideas you/we already have, and spell check our words.

    • With the people we work with, it’s our priority to use your words, or write it ourselves (which is why we have our ongoing partnership service so that we really get to know your business). If that’s how you desire to work.

    • We use real photographs. Its us on this website! And our Visibility Partnership includes site visits to take photography of you, in your element.

    • We restructure and inject code, and do technical fixes. This is a combination of Peters own coding and computer science knowledge, and use of claude AI.

    • We use ClickUp AI to pull together the reports from work we have already done ourselves. For example with our audit, this is not something AI can do for us, but we can get AI to put it all into one pretty place for us!

    • We monitor our work and your website ourselves with our very own eyes, we are the ones looking at the bigger picture, getting creative and unique to your business. This is the fun part.

    If you have any questions around our use of AI please get in touch, transparency is important to us and we are happy to accommodate.

  • By answering the questions your clients/customers are asking, instead of pitching. Which is why we focus on answer-first content. And it is exactly what Google and AI search engines now reward! Marketing can be very effective when in your own voice, you educate and be useful to the people who are looking for you, your offerings or your products.

  • Yes, and transparently. We use AI as a research and structuring tool.

    NOT to fabricate reviews, invent expertise, or publish content across platforms pretending to be you.

    Anything that goes out under your name is grounded in your actual words (either written by you, or by us) and approved by you before it goes live.

    At your request, we'll always tell you where and how AI was involved in our work for you. (see our FAQ ‘How do you use AI at luminera question for more details)

    We are also aware that people may have different scopes on the ethical use of AI, so if this is something that is a question for you, get in touch to bring some ease for you in the way we approach supporting your business to become more visible, organically, online.

  • In short, no.

    When you partner with us, the goal of Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is to make it possible for AI to read and pull information from your website.

    AI does not have permissions to make any changes to your website. You are handing permissions over to us at Luminera, as with any digital marketing agency. You have the ability to revoke these permissions from us at anytime.

    The three most common permissions we will need are to:

    • your website

    • your Google Business Profile

    • your Google analytics profile, to help us do our job best!

    GEO is essentially an evolution of SEO. It’s a strategic and technical process (some aspects are more creative and about looking at your digital presence across platforms).

    We understand as well how unknown and how quickly the digital world is changing, which is why transparency, trust and authenticity are at the core of our values when we partner with businesses. So that you can focus on your business knowing that your digital visibility is in caring hands.


    If you have further questions around this please get in touch so that we can support you, we welcome any and all questions.

    AI is a great unknown in a lot of ways and at luminera our intention is to use it with integrity and support alongside of, not to replace the work and contributions of real people.

  • We have two services. No hidden fees, we are upfront with our pricing and what you will receive when you work with us. See our services page for the details.

    1. A Setup & Foundations Build. One off fee of $4,000 NZD

    2. An Ongoing Visibility Partnership. $1,800 NZD paid monthly.

  • Traditional SEO is what aims to get your website ranked/recommended high up the page when someone searches a key word that is on your website on Google. We do that too and why we say we are foundations first. These are the foundations that are still highly relevant and important.

    We also structure your content, code and online presence so that AI search engines like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity understand your business, trust it, and recommend it in their answers.

    The industry calls this GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) and Relevance Engineering.

    Our goal here, is for your business to have a website full of useful information. So when AI bots fan out and search the internet in response to the question your customer has typed into google search, your website has the answers. The bot lands on your page, it loads fast, they can read the code, and pull the code into the answer/recommendation your customer receives and reads in the AI overview.

  • When you ask Google's AI a question, it quietly runs dozens of related searches behind the scenes this is called a "query fan-out" and AI builds its answer from all of them. To be part of that answer, your website needs to cover those related questions too, not just your main keywords.

    We optimise for query-fan outs researching and understanding your business and your values. And we research your competitors. This gives us a thorough overview and full-picture comprehension of your offerings, so that we can select relvent phases to incorporate into your website. This is one of the things we are constantly fine-tuning and updating to keep relevant for these fan-outs.

    • Query fan-out is Google's own term, not industry jargon.

    Writing on Google's official blog on 6 May 2026, Hema Budaraju, Vice President of Product Management for Search, described Google's approach:

    "We're continuing to enhance how we show and rank links in our generative AI Search experiences and using techniques like query fan-out, which helps us dive deeper into the web to find the most relevant sites for your search."

    Source: Google, "5 new ways to explore the web with generative AI in Search", 6 May 2026.

    We have developed our own software to study relevant query fan-outs for what your customers are talking about.

    luminera is an independent agency. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or partnered with Google.

  • Yes. We use JSON-LD, structured data code that we add to your website so AI search engines can read and verify exactly who you are and what you offer. This can also involve us restructuring your content, bullet-pointing and adding headers. All with your permission before it goes live.

  • For everyone, there is an initial onboarding process to get the details we need do a website audit and begin making our visibility plan.

    For our Build and Partnership service we will have a call either in person or online to go over the finer details and allow site permissions, set up Google Business Profile and Google Analytics.

    If you choose our Ongoing Partnership, we meet at least once a month (online or in person) and there will be ongoing communication around approvals. You can choose how you would like to be communicated with for approvals. For example, via whatsapp, email, phone call, or in person.

    The kinds of things we may ask of you are; for a monthly update on what’s been happening in the business. This is for blogging, website and GBP updating purposes. We may come and take site photographs each month if you are local to Kerikeri, Bay of Islands. Depending on the type of business you operate, the more you keep us in the loop with things like promotions, the better we can do our job, especially when it comes to GEO/AIO.

    We will ask for information also and hopefully the questions we ask will prompt responses for ideas and getting creative together. So you don’t have to think about it necessarily as we will ask you for information.

  • For many of us, the digital world is a big question mark, and it makes sense that when something is unknown (the digital world) there can be a real need for transparency and trust. This is part of why we founded luminera. To bring some light into this rapidly changing online environment. And some simplicity.

    We believe that it is in keeping our authenticity that we become more magnetic, even to AI, as these are all clear signals of trust that build your online presence authority.

    We intend to be your grounded bridge to support your business to thrive and become visible online to the people who are actually looking for what you have to offer.

    At luminera you have

    • direct access to who you are working with

    • people to work in collaboration with, we are cheering you on!

    • we are looking at the bigger picture, brainstorming ideas on what you can do to market your business across platforms.

    A bit about you:

    • You want to be consistent in a way that feels good, unique to you, not pushing, and to build that authority online from this grounded place.

    • You want to feel supported on the technical aspects, knowing that bug fixes, email issues, website speed, code injection, plug ins and so on are working well and that you don’t have to think about that or try to figure it out yourself.

  • We offer monthly reporting. Focusing on:

    • AI citations

    • Google ranking

    We use Google Analytics to start gaining data when you join our partnership.

    This is relevant to our on going Partnership service.

  • Luminera. We specialise in AI search services, helping businesses get found in Ai and recommended and cited by AI search engines. In an ethical and sustainable way.

What luminera does

  • We offer our Ongoing Visibility Partnership for a monthly fee of $1,800 NZD. Cancel anytime. No extra fees.

    This is because we are as invested as you and consistency over time is what builds organic growth online.

    It usually takes 3 to 6 months to start seeing this visibility growth.

  • Because for most of our clients, one or two new customers a month covers our monthly fee.

    Unlike ads, this work compounds and the goal is that the visibility we build keeps working and keeps strengthening month after month in our Partnership.

    Because you can cancel anytime, we have to earn our fee every single month which keeps things exciting for us, we are constantly learning and keeping up with this rapidly changing digital environment!

    Also when you hire Luminera, you are hiring a small team who cares and understands and learns in depth the inter-workings of your business, so that we can really work for you to market your business online. To illuminate your digital presence, for your business to thrive.

    • Our foundation is authenticity.

    • We keep up to date with SEO, GEO & AIO changes to be at the forefront of business discoverability online.

    • We offer onsite photography at no extra cost if you are within our local area of Northland, New Zealand. We can be available to travel for an extra fee. Relevant custom photographs are important for ranking and an essential part of our visibility program.

    • In our reporting we track the total projected value of prospective leads who have been vetted and actively show strong intent to buy.

Pricing & Value

Choosing an agency you can trust

  • A reputable place to start is to compare what an agency is offering to Google’s spam policies. Google is regularly updating their spam policies to ensure they are recommending true and quality. You can keep up to date with it here. If a company is saying to do any of these things listed in their spam policies, it may be worth asking them more questions. As it can effect and change your Google ranking.

    A legitimate agency explains what it does in plain English, shows you exactly what changed on your site and why (if you request that) reports on business outcomes (leads and revenue, not just impressions), and doesn't need to lock you into a long contract.

    Walk away if you see any of these red flags:

    • Guaranteed rankings because nobody can guarantee a #1 spot in Google or a placement in ChatGPT's answers.

    • "We can pay to get you into AI results" you can not pay to get recommended by AI

    • Claims of a special relationship with Google as Google doesn't have partner shortcuts for rankings.

    • Cold calls or emails saying your site has "critical errors" this is a pressure tactic, almost never based on a real audit.

    • Secrecy about methods if they won't show you what they're doing, it could be outdated or spammy work that can get your site penalised.

    • Very cheap monthly fees as this may mean you are paying for automated spam links that could impact visibility long term.

    • Long lock-in contracts

  • Get started with our initial Audit and Foundations Build.
    Your greatest asset online is your website. It is something you own, and can grow with our AI visibility services, in a a way that feels good, through consistency over time. We take the guess work out of it for you. luminera is all about integrity, authenticity and trust. When you work with us you can rely on knowing exactly whats happening, and our reporting shows you whats changing. So we can see how what we are doing is making an impact on your business visibility.

    See more details on how our services work, services.

    1. A Setup & Foundations Build. One off fee of $4,00 NZD

    2. An Ongoing Visibility Partnership. $1,800 NZD paid monthly.

    Reach out through our contact form. We will schedule a call or meet in person.

  • You can reach us anytime via our contact page or email. We aim to respond quickly, usually within one business day.

    Phone us on +64 22 060 4967

    Email us at info@luminera.co.nz

Getting Started