How Do You Know If Your Law Firm’s AIO/GEO Strategy is Actually Working?

AI optimisation has quickly become one of the biggest talking points in legal marketing. Law firms are being told they need AIO, GEO, AEO, AI search optimisation and any number of other variations if they want to remain visible as the way people search changes.

But there is a fairly obvious question that firms should be asking their marketing agencies:

How do we know whether any of it is actually working?

At BSD Legal Marketing, we think this is particularly important. It is relatively easy for an agency to tell a law firm that it is “optimising for AI”. It is much more useful to demonstrate whether the firm’s website is actually appearing within AI search experiences and whether people are reaching the website through AI assistants.

Until recently, measuring this was difficult. However, this is beginning to change thanks to new Google reporting tools.

Google has introduced dedicated Generative AI reporting within Search Console, while Google Analytics can now identify website traffic coming from AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Copilot.

For law firms investing in AIO or GEO, these are becoming some of the most useful places to look for evidence that the strategy is working.

First, what are we actually trying to achieve with AIO and GEO?

There is already plenty of debate about what to call this area of marketing.

You might hear:

• AIO – AI Optimisation
• GEO – Generative Engine Optimisation
• AEO – Answer Engine Optimisation
• AI Search Optimisation

The terminology is less important than the objective. We want to increase the likelihood that a law firm’s content, expertise and website are discovered when someone uses AI-powered search to research a legal problem or find legal assistance.

That could mean appearing within Google’s AI Overviews or AI Mode. It could also mean someone discovering the firm through ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or another AI assistant.

For example, instead of searching Google for:

“employment solicitor Manchester”

someone might ask an AI assistant:

“I’ve been offered a settlement agreement by my employer in Manchester. Do I need a solicitor to review it and how much should that normally cost?”

The way people search is becoming more conversational, so the challenge for law firms is making sure their digital marketing strategy evolves with it.

The challenge for marketers is proving whether that work is producing results.

Google Search Console can now show your AI search visibility

This is probably the most significant development for anyone working on law firm GEO.

Google Search Console now has a dedicated Generative AI performance report.

Google says the report includes appearances within AI Overviews and AI Mode and shows how frequently links to your website are displayed within these generative AI search features.

Previously, much of this activity was incorporated into wider Google Search performance data, making it difficult to separate conventional organic visibility from appearances within Google’s AI features.

The new report gives us a much clearer view.

You can see:

Impressions – how often URLs from your website have appeared within Google’s generative AI features.

Pages – which pages Google is displaying.

Countries – where that visibility is occurring.

Devices – whether those impressions are occurring on desktop, mobile or tablet.

Dates – allowing you to see whether visibility is increasing or decreasing over time.

This makes the report particularly useful when assessing an ongoing GEO strategy.

What does successful AI visibility actually look like?

Above is an example from work we have been carrying out for one of our clients.

Over a three-month period, the client’s website generated:

7,210 generative AI impressions

More importantly, the graph shows a clear change in visibility over time.

At the beginning of June, AI impressions were relatively low. Through July and August, the website increasingly appeared within Google’s generative AI search experiences, with individual days approaching or exceeding 150–200 impressions.

We would not look at the 7,210 figure in isolation. The trend is arguably more useful.

If we are actively improving a website’s content, authority, structure and relevance for the subjects the firm wants to be known for, we want to see whether its visibility within AI search is moving in the right direction.

In this example, it clearly is. This gives us something considerably more meaningful to discuss with the client than simply saying:

“We’ve optimised your website for AI.”

We can actually see Google displaying it.

But impressions aren’t enquiries

This distinction is extremely important. 7,000 AI impressions do not mean 7,000 people visited the website. They mean links from the website were displayed within Google’s generative AI features.

Google applies specific impression rules to AI Overviews and AI Mode. A click is then recorded when someone actually follows a link from those experiences to the external website.

This is why we would never judge an AIO/GEO strategy using one metric.

Visibility is the first part and traffic is the next, and ultimately we want to know whether that visibility contributes to enquiries and instructions.

Google Analytics now identifies AI Assistant traffic

This is where GA4 becomes particularly useful. In May 2026, Google Analytics introduced a dedicated AI Assistant channel.

Rather than AI referrals simply disappearing amongst other referral traffic, GA4 can now automatically identify visits originating from recognised AI assistants. Google says this can include sources such as:

• ChatGPT
• Gemini
• Claude
• Microsoft Copilot
• DeepSeek
• Grok

and other recognised AI platforms.  This means law firms can start answering the question “Are people actually reaching our website through AI?”

What AI traffic looks like for one of our clients

In the screenshot above is another example from a BSD Legal Marketing client.

Across the period shown, the website recorded 1,774 users.

Of those:

• Direct accounted for 1,072;
• Organic Search generated 560;
• Organic Social generated 53;
• AI Assistant generated 27;
• Referral generated 25.

AI Assistant traffic therefore represented approximately 1.52% of the total shown.

At first glance, 27 visitors might not sound particularly dramatic. But this isn’t how we look at it.

This is a completely new acquisition channel that barely existed in law firm analytics reports a short time ago, and it is already sending identifiable visitors to the website. The more interesting questions are:

• Which AI platforms are sending them?
• Which pages are they visiting?
• What legal subjects led them there?
• Are they engaging with the website?

And, most importantly, are any of them becoming enquiries?

Don’t confuse Google’s AI traffic with the AI Assistant channel

There is an important technical distinction here. Google Analytics says that its AI Assistant channel excludes Google’s own AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Clicks from Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode are classified as Organic Search in GA4. The separate AI Assistant category is intended for traffic arriving from external AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Claude.

So if you only open Google Analytics and look at “AI Assistant”, you are not seeing the complete picture of your AI visibility. This is why we recommend using Search Console and Analytics together.

Think of it roughly as:

Google Search Console Generative AI report

→ How visible are we within Google’s AI search features?

Google Analytics AI Assistant traffic

→ How many people are reaching us through external AI assistants?

GA4 conversions/enquiries

→ What do those visitors do when they reach us?

Together, these provide a much better picture.

Go beyond traffic and measure enquiries

For a law firm, this is ultimately where the measurement needs to go. Being mentioned by an AI platform is nice. Getting 10,000 AI impressions is interesting. Receiving 100 visits from ChatGPT is even more interesting.

But if none of it contributes to new business, we still need to question the commercial value.

This is why conversion tracking matters so much. If your website forms are properly configured, GA4 can track events such as generate_lead. Google also provides lead-acquisition reporting that can incorporate new leads, qualified leads and converted leads where the appropriate events are being supplied.

Over time, this could allow us to analyse a journey such as:

AI Assistant → Website → Employment Law Page → Enquiry → Qualified Lead → Client

That is considerably more useful than reporting a generic “AI visibility score”.

Look at which pages AI is choosing

Another useful feature of Google’s Generative AI report is the ability to view performance by page. This is something we will be paying close attention to for legal clients.

Imagine a family law firm discovers that Google repeatedly displays its article answering a detailed question about financial settlements within AI results.

Google appears to consider that page useful in the context of generative search.

We can then look at whether the page could be improved, whether it links effectively into the firm’s relevant service pages and whether it provides someone with a natural route to making an enquiry.

The objective isn’t simply:

Get mentioned by AI.

It is:

Get discovered → demonstrate expertise → create trust → generate an enquiry.

What should your legal marketing agency be reporting?

If you are paying an agency specifically for GEO, AIO or AI search optimisation, we think you should expect more than a report showing that your website is “AI optimised”. Ask to see the evidence.

Depending on the campaign and available data, we would increasingly look at:

Generative AI impressions in Search Console – is visibility increasing?

Pages appearing in generative search – what subjects is Google associating the firm with?

AI Assistant traffic in GA4 – are ChatGPT and other AI platforms actually sending visitors?

Landing pages – where do those visitors arrive?

Engagement – what happens after they arrive?

Conversions – do AI visitors make enquiries?

Lead quality – are those enquiries relevant to the work the firm wants?

That last measurement will become increasingly important.

We don’t ultimately want more AI traffic.

We want more of the right potential clients discovering the firm.

AIO/GEO shouldn’t replace SEO

There is also a danger that AI optimisation becomes treated as an entirely separate marketing discipline. We don’t think that makes sense.

The work required to improve a law firm’s visibility within AI search overlaps significantly with good SEO and good legal marketing.

You still need a technically sound website. You still need clear service pages. You still need genuine expertise. You still need useful content. You still need authority and trust signals. And you still need to understand what potential clients are actually searching for.

The difference is that we now need to consider how that information is discovered and interpreted across both conventional and generative search.

The Search Console data makes this relationship particularly clear because Google’s Generative AI performance report sits alongside its existing search performance reporting.

AI search is becoming measurable

This is the part of AIO/GEO that we find particularly interesting. The conversation is moving away from theory.

We can now open a client’s Search Console account and see thousands of impressions within Google’s generative AI features.

We can open Analytics and see people arriving from AI assistants. And, with the right conversion tracking in place, we can begin connecting that activity to enquiries.

For the client examples above, we can already see 7,210 generative AI impressions over three months and identifiable AI Assistant traffic appearing alongside established channels such as Organic Search and Referral.

That doesn’t mean traditional SEO is dead. Far from it. It means the search landscape has gained another measurable layer.

At BSD Legal Marketing, our approach to AIO and GEO is therefore the same as our approach to SEO, PPC and other forms of legal marketing: we want to know whether the work is actually contributing to the firm’s commercial objectives.

If your law firm is investing in AI optimisation but nobody can show you whether your AI visibility, traffic or enquiries are increasing, it may be time to start measuring it properly.