Use this directory to assemble a practical workflow for consulting, accounting, law, and engineering consulting. Entries describe documented product functions and advertised service scopes. Establish suitability through a small, approved pilot, and confirm current coverage, terms, costs, and export options before committing.
Use Part B to select research questions, Part C to define measurements and preserve evidence, and Part G to approve information use and suppliers. Connect findings to the firm facts in Part D, technical checks in Part E, content work in Part F, and improvement decisions in Part H.
I.1 Monitoring tools
Begin with a manual baseline: run an approved set of client and referrer questions and retain complete answers, cited sources, dates, settings, and available platform or model details in Part C. Use that baseline to evaluate automated monitoring. A selected prompt panel supports conclusions about that panel; wider claims require evidence that it represents the intended audience.
Keep platform exposure, sampled answer observations, website visits, inquiries, and revenue as separate measures.
Resource | Purpose and selection check |
Google Search Console | Its Generative AI performance report shows impressions for pages appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode, with page, country, device, and date views. Record the property, period, filters, and aggregation used. Keep impressions separate from the inquiry and revenue measures in Part H. Search Console Help. |
Bing Webmaster Tools: AI Performance | Provides citation visibility across Microsoft Copilot, Bing, and selected partner experiences. Preview features include intents, topics, citation share, and period comparisons. Use them to investigate where content is being cited. Citation share describes observed citations within the report’s query context; it does not establish traffic share or quality. blogs.bing.com |
Profound: Answer Engine Insights | Tracks selected prompts, brand visibility, citations, and competitors across configured answer engines, with filters and underlying answer or citation exports. Test its brand matching and any sentiment or fact-check labels against human review. Verify relevant platforms, markets, historical access, and export scope in the proposed plan. Profound. |
Peec AI | Runs selected prompts daily through web interfaces and reports visibility, position, sentiment, and sources. Use it to follow changes within a defined prompt panel. Confirm collection coverage, treatment of failed runs and brand variants, and whether available exports preserve the answer context needed for your evidence log. Peec.ai Docs. |
Shared pilot questions: Which interface or API produces the answers? Which locations, languages, and modes are covered? What is the denominator of each score? How are missing runs reported? Can a reviewer inspect full answers and citations? How are collection changes recorded? Use public or synthetic prompts unless Part G authorises additional information.
Use existing website analytics and the firm’s customer relationship management system to record visits and commercial outcomes. Carry their attribution limitations into Part H; a rise in a monitoring score alone cannot establish its contribution to revenue.
I.2 Content and Technical tools
Choose tools for specific editorial or diagnostic tasks. Assign a named reviewer to substantive professional claims and record technical findings against the affected page or document.
Resource | Purpose and selection check |
Zotero | Organises research sources, metadata, notes, attachments, and citations. Use collections for service pages, case studies, and research projects in Part F. Check the original source and bibliographic details before publication; apply Part G’s permissions to shared libraries, attachments, and synchronisation. Zotero Documentation. |
Microsoft Word: tracked changes and Accessibility Checker | Support review of biographies, service copy, and publications, alongside checks for specified accessibility issues. Resolve changes and retain the approved version: hiding markup does not remove revisions. The checker can miss issues, so include manual review and verify the final exported document separately. Microsoft Support. |
Screaming Frog SEO Spider | Crawls websites to inspect links, redirects, directives, canonical tags, and other technical elements; JavaScript rendering is available. Confirm the edition and crawl configuration needed for the site. Use findings to diagnose access and consistency problems; a successful crawl alone does not establish search-engine indexing. screamingfrog.co.uk. |
Google Rich Results Test | Tests structured data for Google’s supported rich-result features. Use it when implementing relevant markup, then check Google’s structured-data policies. Passing the test does not guarantee display. Validate the accuracy of the underlying claims against Part D as well as the markup’s syntax. developers.google.com. |
Schema Markup Validator | Checks Schema.org markup generally, without Google-specific feature requirements. Use it alongside the Rich Results Test where appropriate; Google’s testing guidance explains the distinction. Confirm that the selected types and properties describe visible, verified information. developers.google.com. |
PageSpeed Insights | Provides performance diagnostics and, where available, real-user measurements. Its measurement guidance explains laboratory data, field data, and URL or origin coverage. Record the device view and data source before comparing results, and use findings to define specific improvements in Part E. developers.google.com. |
WAVE | Helps inspect web accessibility problems and features. Use its findings to direct remediation and human evaluation, including keyboard and assistive-technology checks as appropriate. WAVE does not certify accessibility; an absence of detected errors does not establish conformance. Record both automated and manual evidence in Part E. wave.webaim.org. |
For each fix, retain the affected asset, test configuration, finding, owner, change, and verification result. Recheck live pages and exported documents after publication so that the evidence reflects what clients and referrers actually receive.
I.3 Service providers
Select suppliers against a defined assignment. These examples illustrate different published service scopes; assess the proposed team, methods, and sample deliverables before appointment.
Provider | Published scope and questions for a brief |
Hinge | Offers professional-services content creation and research, including expert interviews, articles, guides, and research reports. Ask how it will verify specialist claims, document research methods, secure permissions, and obtain the firm’s approval. Request a sample brief, evidence trail, and review schedule. Hinge Marketing. |
iPullRank | Lists generative engine optimisation, content strategy, and technical SEO services. Ask which outputs are research, recommendations, implementation, or ongoing monitoring; who performs each; and how changes will be verified. Require clear measurement definitions, access to supporting evidence, and a usable handover. iPullRank. |
Deque | Offers accessibility audits combining automated and manual testing, with remediation support and coverage that can include documents. Specify the assets, standard and conformance level, test methods, prioritisation, remediation responsibilities, and retesting required. Ask for a sample findings report and the evidence supplied when issues are closed. Deque. |
Supplier brief: [Problem and affected assets; intended users; deliverables; named team; methods; information access; subcontractors; ownership and reuse rights; fees and continuing costs; acceptance criteria; remediation and retesting; handover; retention and exit arrangements.]
Confirm that Part G’s supplier approval covers the proposed information and access; reuse valid approvals within their scope. Assign a firm professional to approve claims, credentials, client references, and engagement statements. Connect supplier deliverables to Part H’s change log and scorecard.
I.4 Official guidance
Resource | How to use it |
Google Search Central: AI features and your website | Explains eligibility and established search practices for AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google states that no additional AI-specific optimisation or special markup is required for these features. Use the guidance to review crawling, indexability, textual content, internal links, and consistency between structured data and visible content. developers.google.com. |
Schema.org: Getting Started | Introduces the vocabulary of types and properties used to describe entities. The guide’s examples focus on Microdata; the underlying concepts also apply to other supported formats. Use it with current type definitions and Part D’s approved facts when planning organisation, professional, service, and publication descriptions. schema.org. |
W3C Web Accessibility Initiative tutorials | Provides practical guidance for content authors, designers, and developers, including images, tables, forms, and page structure. Use the tutorials to prepare and review pages and publications in Parts E and F. Check the linked success criteria and intended conformance level when defining acceptance requirements. W3C. |
NIST AI Risk Management Framework and Generative AI Profile | Provide a voluntary framework and a companion profile for considering AI risks and controls. Use them to clarify responsibilities, evaluation, information handling, and escalation in Parts C and G. Record the edition used and review changes before updating the firm’s procedures. NIST. |
Add a jurisdiction-specific guidance record for each profession: [Responsible regulator or professional body; official URL; applicable activity; current edition or effective date; reviewing professional; implications for advertising, credentials, confidentiality, and client permissions.] Keep this record with Parts D and G.
I.5 Further study
Resource | Learning objective and practical output |
Aggarwal and colleagues, “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization” | This KDD 2024 paper introduces GEO visibility measures and a benchmark for studying optimisation approaches. Read it to understand the research framing. Prepare a short note on the systems, tasks, measures, and limitations studied, and identify which questions merit local testing. Treat reported experimental gains as results of the studied setting. arxiv.org. |
Microsoft Research: Patterns of Trustworthy Experimentation—Pre-Experiment Stage | Develops principles for hypotheses, metrics, guardrails, and experimental design. Use it to strengthen Part H’s experiment brief. State the comparison, observation period, practical decision threshold, and conditions that would stop the experiment. Explain how your design handles factors it cannot control. |
Turn reading into a reviewed output: a source register, corrected biography, accessible publication, reproducible monitoring sample, or completed experiment brief. This gives the firm something concrete to inspect and reuse.
Learning record: [Learner and role; question to resolve; resource and version; completion date; relevant findings; limits on application; practical output; reviewer; next action.]
I.6 Directory selection and maintenance record
Maintain one entry per adopted or trialled resource:
Field | Record |
Identity and ownership | [Resource or provider; category; official URL; internal owner; date checked.] |
Intended use | [Decision or task supported; related appendix; users; required coverage and capabilities.] |
Evaluation | [Approved pilot sample; comparison or expected result; required exports; human review; acceptance criteria; observed limitations.] |
Information and access | [Approved information classes; access scope; applicable Part G review; retention and reuse terms.] |
Commercial terms | [Plan or service scope; subscription and staff costs; training, implementation, and maintenance time; renewal and exit arrangements.] |
Decision and review | [Adopt, limited pilot, defer, or retire; evidence and rationale; approver; next review date; triggers for earlier review.] |
Start with a manageable workflow: platform reports, an approved prompt panel, source and review records, technical diagnostics, and existing inquiry tracking. Add paid monitoring or specialist support when the pilot shows a specific evidence or capacity gap that it can address.
Assign the owner to recheck links, coverage, score definitions, exports, and terms before renewal and after material product or service changes. Record approved changes in Part H and update Part C’s measurement documentation whenever comparability is affected.
