From invisible to cited: the 30-day playbook
A Parisian bistro invisible to AI engines: what we observed and how its score evolved over 30 days — Google listing, entity anchoring, structured data.
A Parisian bistro in the 11th arrondissement — excellent food, yet absent from AI responses: Visibility Index near zero, no structured data, menu as a PDF. Here is what we observed, week by week, as we applied restaurant AEO levers.
Week 1 — the entity anchor
- Google Business Profile completed: precise category, opening hours, 30+ HD photos, booking link.
- NAP consistency (name/address/phone) aligned across Google, TheFork, TripAdvisor and the website.
Observed: the entity becomes recognisable — the first prerequisite for being cited.
Week 2 — structure
- schema.org/Restaurant + Menu + FAQ deployed on the site (RestoRank generator).
- Menu in HTML (no more PDF that crawlers cannot read).
Observed: AI engines finally have reliable data to cite.
Week 3 — signals
- Stream of recent reviews on Google/TripAdvisor, with owner responses.
- Multi-source presence verified.
Observed: first appearances on long-tail queries (precise requests), initially on Perplexity (sensitive to freshness).
Week 4 — measure and iterate
- Measurement across 5 AI engines, tracking Visibility Index and ranking.
- Efforts doubled wherever fan-out is already surfacing the restaurant.
The key takeaway: entity recognition is the first lock to pick. Once removed, visibility builds quickly — and can be measured.
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