What Is Relevance Engineering?
GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) and AI SEO help your content appear in AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
At Harton Works, we call this Relevance Engineering. It’s our Retrieval-First™ approach that focuses on how AI systems extract and display information. We align your content with how modern engines find and use it.
Relevance Engineering vs Traditional SEO
Traditional SEO focused on ranking signals and basic search functionality. Modern search engines now use AI systems to understand user intent and deliver direct answers in search results.
Unlike traditional SEO, relevance engineering treats visibility as an information retrieval challenge. Search engines today employ cognitive search and semantic search to extract relevant content from millions of documents. This shift from traditional search to AI-driven search requires a fundamentally different content strategy.
Who needs Relevance Engineering?
→ Marketing teams watching their content get zero AI mentions while competitors dominate ChatGPT responses
→ SEO professionals whose clients are asking “Why isn’t our content showing up when people ask AI about our industry?”
→ Content managers realising their expertise-packed blogs are invisible to the AI tools their customers actually use
→ Brands discovering their competitors are being recommended by Claude and cited by Perplexity—but they’re nowhere to be found
The competitive advantage is shifting from ranking high to being the source AI systems trust and reference.
How It Works
We offer three flexible entry points, each built to align your site with how modern search engines actually work.
→ Relevance Audit
A diagnostic assessment of how your content performs across AI platforms. We identify why AI systems aren't citing your expertise and provide a clear roadmap of changes that will get you visible in AI responses.
→ Relevance Strategy
A complete optimisation program that optimises your content for AI extraction and citation. We implement our Retrieval-First™ framework across your site, ensuring your expertise gets found and referenced by AI platforms when users ask relevant questions.
→ Relevance Tuning & Optimisation
Ongoing monitoring and optimisation of your AI platform performance. We track your citations across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and other AI systems, adapting your content strategy as platforms evolve to maintain and grow your visibility.
We integrate with your existing SEO and content workflows, or build the strategy from the ground up.
Why Modern Search Requires Relevance Engineering
We’re in the middle of a massive shift. Search engines are abandoning the old ranking-and-links model for AI systems that understand context and generate direct answers.
This isn’t a gradual change—it’s happening now. Google’s AI Overviews, ChatGPT’s web integration, and Perplexity’s citation engine are already changing how people find information.
Your content needs to work in both worlds: the traditional SEO strategy that still matters, and the emerging AI landscape where being cited is the new ranking. Brands that adapt early capture the visibility advantage.
Why Choose Harton Works?
Because we've been here before. And we're not guessing.
We’ve led SEO through every evolution. From blue links and keyword density to semantic search, entity-based indexing, and now AI-driven retrieval. Harton Works is built by practitioners with 25+ years in the SEO game. People who’ve earned trust by delivering long-term visibility, not chasing shortcuts.
That same rigour shapes our Retrieval-First™ approach. We don’t just optimise content for algorithms. We engineer it for citation, clarity, and contextual relevance across AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Mode.
We’re not trying to reinvent SEO. We’re adapting it. Structurally. Semantically. Strategically. For the future that’s already here.
Ready to Lead in the Retrieval Era?
Harton Works specialises in Retrieval-First™ marketing and Relevance Engineering — aligning SEO, GEO, and AI search to keep brands visible in the Retrieval Era.