How long does generative engine optimization take?
Two different clocks. Being readable by AI engines - clean structure, synced business profiles, crawlable pages - takes days to weeks. Being recommended for competitive queries takes longer: typically one to three months for specific local queries.
The reason is trust. AI engines verify reviews, profile consistency and answer pages before recommending a business, and those signals accumulate - they can't be faked in a week. Broad national queries ("best CRM") take far longer than specific local ones ("family dentist in Austin taking new patients"), which is why local businesses see results fastest.
This timeline is exactly why our AI Visibility Sprint runs 90 days - long enough to win agreed local queries, short enough to back with a refund.