Insights · AI search
What AI assistants say when asked for a Japan SEO vendor: what we measured, and what decides the answer
If a buyer in Chicago asks an AI assistant which Japan SEO agency to use, what decides the answer? We wanted to know badly enough to measure it on ourselves, three times, with the conditions written down so anyone can repeat it. Here is what came back, and what it says about how these answers are built.
Published 2 September 2026. Measurements by SuzuLabo on 6 August, 16 August and 2 September 2026 using Perplexity, signed out, eight fixed English questions. Google's statement on AI features from Google Search Central, confirmed 2 September 2026. We do not name the other companies that appeared; the point is the pattern.
How we measured, so you can repeat it
Eight questions, written once in August 2026 and never edited, phrased the way an overseas B2B buyer might ask them: which agencies to consider, who can localize a site and research Japanese keywords, whether a written assessment exists without a sales call, how to test an agency before a retainer, what to change for Google and Yahoo! JAPAN, who can assess visibility in AI tools, who can build a bilingual site, who can help with Google Business Profile.
Each run: the same eight questions, in the same order, on the same day, on one AI search engine, signed out of any account with no chat history. That last condition is not a detail. In our first attempt we were signed in, and the assistant's sidebar was showing our own earlier searches. A signed-in measurement of your own brand is contaminated by your own behavior. Every answer was saved in full, and the counts below come from those files, not from memory.
| Measurement | Date | Answers that named us | Answers that cited our site | Factual errors about us |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| T0 (baseline) | 6 August 2026 | 1 of 8 | 1 of 8 | 0 |
| Interim | 16 August 2026 | 1 of 8 | 1 of 8 | 0 |
| T1 | 2 September 2026 | 3 of 8 | 3 of 8 | 1 (our city was guessed wrong) |
Perplexity, eight fixed English questions, run in order on the same day, signed out, no history. Counts from saved answer files. A small company measuring itself; the point is the method and the shape of the change, not the numbers.
What decided the answers
The counts are less interesting than the sources. Every answer cites what it was built from, and across 24 answers the pattern was consistent enough to draw.
| Question type | What the answer was built from | Did a small company appear? |
|---|---|---|
| "Which agencies should a US B2B company consider?" | Roundup articles and agency-blog rankings | No. The same three or four names recur; the answer is a copy of the roundup. |
| "Who can localize a site and do Japanese keyword research?" | Provider pages plus one roundup | Yes, from 2 September: the service page wording was quoted back. |
| "Is there a written assessment without a sales call?" | Provider pages that state the condition explicitly | Yes, all three times, because the offer is stated in plain words on the page. |
| "What is a low-risk way to test an agency?" | Advice articles | Yes, from 2 September: a fixed-price offer was cited as an example, without naming us in the text. |
| "What should a company change for Google and Yahoo Japan?" | Advice articles | No provider was named at all. Advice questions do not produce vendor lists. |
| "Which agencies assess visibility in ChatGPT and AI Overviews?" | Tool press releases | No. The answer became a list of monitoring tools. |
| "Who can build a bilingual site and run SEO and ads?" | Press-release wires and provider pages | No. Same pattern as the first row. |
| "Who can help with Google Business Profile in Japan?" | Provider pages | No, and not a market we target. |
Two things follow for anyone selling into Japan from abroad, or buying. First, if the question is a list question, the answer is only as good as the roundup it copied, and a small specialist will not be in it no matter how good the work is. Second, if the question carries a condition, the assistant looks for pages that state the condition, and a page that says plainly "no introductory call is required" or "fixed price, delivered in writing" gets quoted back almost verbatim. Between 16 August and 2 September we changed nothing about the offer; what changed was that a sample of the deliverable and clearer wording on the service pages went live, and two more condition-type questions started returning us.
The one error, and what caused it
On 2 September the assistant described us as Tokyo-based. We are in Sapporo. The mistake was ours to prevent: our city was in the structured data on the page but not in any sentence a reader could see, so the assistant filled the gap with the most probable city. We added one visible sentence the same day. If an AI assistant is describing your company, the facts it needs must be on the page as text, not only in markup.
What Google says about its own AI features
Google's documentation for site owners on AI Overviews and AI Mode is short and worth quoting, because it removes a category of vendor claims: "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary." It adds that no new machine-readable files, AI text files, markup or special structured data are needed, and that appearing in these features is not guaranteed (Google Search Central, "AI features and your website", confirmed 2 September 2026).
Read together with the measurement above, the practical position is this: the same page that answers a specific question with checkable specifics, states its conditions in plain words, and carries its facts as visible text is what both a search engine and an AI assistant can use. There is no separate trick, and anyone selling one should be asked which of the three source types in the diagram it addresses.
How to check your own company in an hour
- Write five questions a buyer would actually ask, in the buyer's language, and freeze them. Do not tune them to your strengths.
- Sign out. Use a private window with no history. Run the five questions in order and save every answer as text with the date.
- For each answer, list the cited sources by type: roundup, directory, press wire, provider page, explainer. That list tells you which of the three question types you are looking at.
- Check every fact about your company. An error means a visible sentence is missing from your site.
- Repeat in four weeks, same questions, same conditions. One measurement is a snapshot. Two is the beginning of a signal. Do not act on one.
If your company does not appear in list questions, the fix is not on your site; it is on the roundups and directories the answer was copied from. If it does not appear in condition questions you should win, the fix is on your site, and it is usually one plain sentence.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Which AI assistant did you measure?
Perplexity, because it returns cited sources for every answer, which is what the analysis needs. We also ran a Japanese-language baseline across five assistants in August 2026, described on our case studies page. This article uses only the English series.
Why only eight questions?
Fixed questions are the point. Eight was enough to cover the ways a buyer phrases the search, and few enough to run by hand on the same day without changing conditions.
Can you guarantee a company will appear in AI answers?
No, and we do not sell that. Google states that appearing in its AI features is not guaranteed, and the measurement above shows list-type answers are copies of third-party pages. What can be done is to state conditions plainly and keep facts visible.
Does this replace search rankings?
No. Our Search Console data for the same period shows the ordinary search impressions and clicks continuing separately. AI answers are one more surface that draws on the same pages.
Why do you not name the other companies in the answers?
Because a list of competitors ranked by AI mentions would be exactly the kind of roundup this article says not to trust, and because the point is the source pattern, not the names.
How often should a company repeat this?
Monthly is enough. The answers change with what gets published elsewhere, so a single reading, good or bad, should not be acted on.
If you want your own visibility measured this way
Send your company URL and the market you are entering. We will reply in writing with whether a measurement makes sense for you yet, what five questions we would freeze, and a quote if you want it run and read. That reply is free.