Joe Ashta

[Photo — professional portrait, landscape crop, neutral background]

Joe Ashta is an AI search visibility researcher in Vancouver, BC. He measures how ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and Google's AI surfaces cite and recommend businesses, and publishes the results here — named firms, monthly re-pulls, methods anyone can check.

His background is machine learning and data science. Before turning to search, he designed recommendation systems in ad tech — the algorithms that decide what gets shown — for national brands with $10–25 million annual ad budgets and the data that kind of spend throws off. AI search is a recommendation problem. He has built the machinery most people are guessing at from outside.

The BigLaw AEO Leaderboard tracks how often AI platforms cite 116 US law firms — the Am Law 100, global firms, mid-law, and elite boutiques — refreshed monthly from Ahrefs data. The AI Visibility Index, a measured ranking built from a frozen buyer-query set run weekly across four AI platforms, is in build. His writing on AI search has appeared in BarTalk, the magazine of the Canadian Bar Association's BC Branch.

Client engagements — local SEO, Google Ads, and AI search visibility for law firms — run through NearMe Marketing, the Vancouver consultancy Joe founded. This site is the research.