Sightline Academy
Field notes on being the answer.
The playbooks we run, written down. Practical, current, and free of fluff, because this is also how we earn our own AI visibility.
Featured · AI Search Optimization
What a Good AI Visibility Score Looks Like (and How to Read Yours)
A 0–100 score is only useful if you know what's behind it. Here's how to read the categories and what to fix first.
Read the articleAn AI visibility score answers one question: when your buyers ask an AI assistant who to hire, how often is it you? A single number hides the story behind that answer. This guide breaks down the five categories behind the score, what each one measures, what a good number looks like at your stage, and which gap to fix first.
AI Search Optimization
How to Get Your Business Cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity
Citations aren't random. They follow signals you can build. Here's the practical playbook.
AI Search Optimization
AEO vs SEO: What Actually Changes When Buyers Ask AI
The fundamentals overlap, but the signals that win an AI answer aren't the same ones that win a ranking.
AI Search Optimization
Entity Authority: Why AI Trusts Some Businesses and Ignores Others
How AI builds a model of who you are, and how to make that model complete and credible.
AI Search Optimization
llms.txt, Explained: The File That Tells AI How to Read You
What llms.txt is, what it can and can't do for your visibility, and how to set one up properly in under an hour.
Paid Ads Strategy
Google Ads for Local Service Businesses: The Conversion-First Setup
Most local accounts leak money before launch. Here's the setup that makes every dollar measurable.
Paid Ads Strategy
The Conversion Tracking Checklist We Run Before Spending a Dollar
The exact pre-launch checklist that prevents the most common money leaks in paid search.
Paid Ads Strategy
Quality Score Is Costing You: How to Diagnose and Fix It
What Quality Score really reflects, and the levers that actually move it.
Paid Ads Strategy
Performance Max for Service Businesses: When It Works, When It Wastes
PMax can be powerful or a black box. How to decide, and how to keep control.
Paid Ads Strategy
Dynamic Search Ads Are Changing in 2026: What to Do Now
Google is retiring Dynamic Search Ads and auto-migrating campaigns to AI Max in February 2027. The calm, control-keeping migration plan for service businesses.
Local Visibility
Google Business Profile: The Signals That Actually Move Rankings
Beyond filling in the fields: the GBP signals that influence both Maps and AI answers.
Local Visibility
How Reviews Shape Which Business AI Recommends
Why review quantity, recency, and responses are among the strongest AI-recommendation signals.
Local Visibility
Multi-Location Visibility Without Cannibalizing Yourself
How to structure pages and profiles so your locations win their markets instead of competing.
Local Visibility
Local Citations in 2026: Which Ones Still Matter
Citation building has changed. Where to spend effort and what to ignore.
Local Visibility
NAP Consistency: The Boring Fix That Quietly Wins Answers
Name, address, phone consistency is unglamorous and disproportionately effective.
Platform How-Tos
How to Read Your Sightline Visibility Report
A walkthrough of every section of your monthly report and what to act on.
Platform How-Tos
Share of Voice: Tracking Whether You're Gaining or Losing Ground
What share of voice means in AI answers and how to use it to set priorities.
Platform How-Tos
Inside the Prompt Panel: How We Test What Buyers Ask
How we build and run the buyer-prompt panel that produces your score.
Platform How-Tos
Turning Your Audit's Fix List Into a 90-Day Plan
How to sequence your recommendations into a realistic, high-impact quarter.
Platform How-Tos
Setting Up White-Label Reporting for Your Clients
For agencies on Full-Funnel: configuring branded reports your clients will read.
New articles are added regularly. Outlines marked “in progress” are next in the queue. We publish when an article is genuinely useful, not to hit a number.
Why this page exists
The Academy is a working demo of what we sell.
Answer-ready, well-structured, genuinely useful content is exactly what AI assistants cite, so publishing it here does double duty: it helps you, and it’s part of how Sightline itself shows up when people ask AI about AI search. We’d rather prove the method in public than describe it.
Reading is good. Knowing your score is better.
Run the free Visibility Check and see where you actually stand.