I’m Prageeth, an AI SEO consultant working with businesses in Dubai and across the UAE. I’ve been doing SEO for over 16 years, long before anyone put “AI” in front of it, and these days most of my work sits at the point where traditional Google SEO meets AI search: Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot.
Here’s the shift I see in client data every week. A customer lands on a website, GA4 says the source is chatgpt.com, and there’s no keyword, no ad, no ranking behind that visit. Someone simply asked an AI which company to use, and the AI answered with a name. If that name is never yours, you’re losing customers you never even knew existed. That’s the problem I fix.
Honestly, about 70 percent of it is still proper SEO. Crawling, indexation, site speed, internal links, content that genuinely answers what people ask. AI systems learn about your brand from the same web Google crawls, so a technically broken site is invisible to both. The other 30 percent is newer: making sure AI models can identify who you are, what you do, and why you’re credible, which comes down to entity consistency, structured data, and mentions on sources those models trust.
I usually split it into three layers when I explain it to clients:
The foundation is technical and traditional SEO. If Google can’t crawl your Shopify collection pages properly or your canonicals point to the wrong place, nothing built on top matters. I’ve seen a store lose rankings purely because paginated pages were canonicalizing to page one, and fixing that one thing moved more than any content ever would have.
Then there’s GEO, Generative Engine Optimization, which is about getting cited inside AI answers on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and the rest. These systems favor brands with a clean, consistent footprint: same business name, same services, same facts everywhere, backed by third-party sources they can verify.
And AEO, Answer Engine Optimization, which targets Google’s own AI surfaces, AI Overviews and AI Mode. That’s mostly about structure. A clear question, a direct answer in the first couple of sentences, then depth underneath. Google’s AI lifts answers from pages built that way, and it skips pages that make it dig.
Because the UAE adopted AI search faster than almost any market I work in. There’s a national AI strategy, smartphone penetration is near total, and buyers here research in two languages. I watch the referral data across my client accounts, and AI-sourced sessions have gone from a rounding error to a channel worth its own GA4 channel group in about a year. I actually had to build custom channel definitions because GA4 was scattering ChatGPT traffic across multiple referrer rows.
The other reason: most agencies in Dubai are still selling 2019 SEO with the word AI sprinkled on the proposal. Very few are doing real entity work. That gap won’t stay open long, and the brands that build authority now will be the ones AI recommends by default in their category.
An AI visibility audit comes first. I test how ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews currently describe your business and who they recommend instead of you, in English and Arabic. Then I trace why. Sometimes it’s technical, sometimes your brand information contradicts itself across the web, sometimes there’s simply nothing credible for an AI to cite.
Technical SEO is where I’ve spent most of my career. Crawl diagnostics, indexation problems, log analysis, schema, Core Web Vitals, and platform-specific messes. Shopify pagination and checkout cross-domain tracking, WordPress theme bloat, single-page apps that render nothing for crawlers. I do this work myself rather than passing it to a junior, which is increasingly rare and, frankly, the main reason clients stay.
Entity and schema work: Organization, LocalBusiness, Person, Service, FAQ and Product markup, all matching what’s visibly on the page. I don’t do hidden schema tricks. They get caught, and AI systems cross-check markup against visible content anyway.
Content built around real questions. Not “10 benefits of SEO” filler. I map the actual prompts your buyers type into AI tools and build pages that answer them directly, with numbers and context a language model can’t invent. In my experience a page with one genuine data point outperforms three pages of generic copy.
Arabic and English optimization for brands targeting Arabic-speaking customers. Arabic AI answers are far less competitive than English right now, and I’ve seen faster citation wins there than anything on the English side.
Measurement that tells the truth. GA4 set up so AI traffic is attributed correctly, monthly tracking of where your brand appears in AI answers, and reporting tied to leads and revenue. If something isn’t working, the report says so. Clients don’t pay me to read them good news.
Two recent examples from my own client work:
A UAE pet supplies e-commerce store came to me with flat organic growth and a GA4 setup that was misattributing checkout sessions. I fixed cross-domain tracking across the Shopify checkout, corrected pagination canonicals, and ran a long-term entity-rich product content program across their brand catalogue. Organic sessions grew 100 percent and organic revenue now runs at 50000 AED relative to their paid spend.
A GCC trademark services firm was competing against itself with three domains targeting the same keywords. I consolidated the strategy, rebuilt their country pages with direct answers and FAQ schema, and they now rank on page one for trademark registration terms across six Gulf countries and show up in AI answers for the same queries.
I’ll show full case studies on a call. What I won’t do is guarantee a ranking or an AI citation, because nobody can, and anyone who promises that is telling you what you want to hear. What I guarantee is the process, the transparency, and methods that survive algorithm updates instead of getting caught by them.
E-commerce stores, clinics, law firms, real estate brokerages, business setup consultancies, hotels and restaurants, logistics companies, and B2B services. A clinic in Jumeirah, a law firm in DIFC and an online store shipping UAE-wide need completely different strategies, and I build each one around how that specific buyer searches and what they ask AI tools.
I’m based in Dubai and work across the city, from Downtown and Business Bay to Marina, Deira and Karama, plus Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and the wider GCC. Clients outside the region include businesses in India, Ireland and Canada.
First, the audit. Then a roadmap ordered by impact, not by what’s easiest to invoice. Then implementation: technical fixes, schema, content, and authority building, in English and Arabic where needed. Every month you get a report covering rankings, AI citations, AI-referred traffic, leads and revenue, plus what changed in the algorithms and what I’m adjusting because of it. SEO isn’t a project you finish, it’s a position you hold, and holding it is most of the work.
How much does an AI SEO expert cost in Dubai?
It depends on your competition and how much needs fixing. My retainers for Dubai businesses start from AED 1000 AED per month for consulting-led engagements and scale up with content volume, digital PR and Arabic requirements. After the audit you get a proposal with defined deliverables, and if I think SEO is the wrong spend for your situation, I’ll say that too.
How long until I see results?
Technical fixes can move things within weeks, and AI answers sometimes update surprisingly fast because these systems pull from the live web. Real, defensible growth takes three to six months, longer in brutal sectors like Dubai real estate. Anyone quoting faster is guessing or lying.
How do I get ChatGPT to recommend my business?
You can’t pay for it or trick it. AI assistants recommend brands they can verify: consistent information everywhere, mentions on sources they trust, and content that clearly answers the questions people ask. I build exactly that footprint, then track which prompts start returning your name.
Do you handle Arabic SEO?
Yes, Arabic entity content, Arabic schema and Arabic citations. If your customers search in Arabic, this is currently the cheapest visibility win in the UAE market.
Can you guarantee number one on Google?
No. Google doesn’t sell organic positions and neither do I. Sixteen-plus years in this industry has taught me that the consultants making guarantees are the ones gone in two years.
Do you work with businesses outside Dubai?
Yes. UAE-wide, Saudi Arabia and the GCC, plus international clients. Everything runs remotely without any drop in communication, and calls happen in your timezone.
How do I start?
Ask me for a free AI visibility check. You’ll get a short, honest report on how AI platforms currently present your brand versus your competitors, and the three things I’d fix first. If it’s useful, we talk. If not, you keep the report.
