What brand awareness is and why AI changes everything
When a customer types "marketing agency in Porto" into Google, they get a list of links. When they ask ChatGPT the same question, they get a direct answer: "You could contact these companies: one specialises in social media, another does GEO and SEO." Your company's name is either in that answer or it is not. What the AI writes depends on what it finds about your brand online.
Brand awareness is the work of making sure that what is written about you is correct, consistent and in the right places. Brand protection makes sure that nobody else uses your name to attract your customers. The two always go together: a well-known brand attracts imitators, and a protected brand with no presence never really becomes known.
In our GEO consulting, we work on both dimensions as part of making your brand appear well in AI tools. If you want to understand what GEO is before continuing, we explain it in the article what is GEO. SEO consulting covers your website's visibility on Google, which is the foundation of everything.
The problem of contradictory information
Imagine your company's name appears in three different forms online: on one social network you use an abbreviation, in the Google Business Profile the full name, and in an old directory an outdated version. For a human being it is easy to see these are the same company. For an AI tool, each variation may look like a different entity.
According to Eurostat, in 2025, 38.7% of Portuguese people aged 16 to 74 used at least one generative AI tool in the previous three months, above the EU average of 32.7%. This number grows every year. The more customers use these tools to find businesses, the more it matters that the information about your brand is unambiguous.
The most common problems we find in Portuguese brands:
- Different address, phone number or opening hours on the website, the Google Business Profile and social media.
- Company name spelled differently on different platforms.
- Old and abandoned profiles with outdated information.
- Profiles created by third parties, in good faith or not, using the company's name.
- Unanswered negative reviews that remain as the last word on the brand.
The four fronts of online brand identity
1. Google Business Profile
The Google Business Profile is often the first contact between a company and a new customer. Gemini and Google's AI Overviews look at it when recommending local businesses. An incomplete or incorrect profile damages both the human and the AI recommendation.
What we check and correct:
- Company name exactly the same as the name used on the website and on social media.
- Main category chosen with precision.
- Short, clear description: what you do, for whom and where.
- Up-to-date address, phone, opening hours and website.
- Special opening hours for national and local holidays: in Lisbon, 13 June (Santo António); in Porto, 24 June (São João).
- Recent, representative photos of the business.
2. Website
The website is the company's digital identity document. For AI tools it is also one of the most authoritative sources, because it is the only place where the company speaks for itself.
What must be clear on the website:
- In the first sentence on the homepage: what you do, for whom and where.
- Visible legal information: company name, address, contact details and tax number.
- Visible access to the Livro de Reclamações Eletrónico on the website: a legal obligation in Portugal for businesses with an online presence (DL 74/2017 + Portaria 201-A/2017) and a trust signal to customers.
- Frequently asked questions answered in plain text: reference prices, how it works, who it is for.
- Structured data (schema) in the code: the machine-readable identity card with the name, address, phone, opening hours and links to the brand's other accounts.
3. Social media
In Portugal, Instagram and Facebook are often the first contact between a business and a customer; in the B2B market, LinkedIn. AI tools read these accounts.
What we check:
- The company name is exactly the same on every account.
- The biography uses the same positioning sentence as the website and the Google Business Profile.
- No old, abandoned accounts with contradictory information.
- The link to the website is up to date on every platform.
If there are accounts carrying the company's name that do not belong to you, we guide the claims process with each platform.
4. Reviews and responses
The most-written text about a brand online is often the collection of customer reviews. AI tools read them and extract from them the general perception of the brand.
In Portugal, the most relevant review platforms are:
- Google reviews: for every sector.
- TripAdvisor and TheFork: for restaurants and tourism.
- Booking.com: for accommodation.
- Portal da Queixa: Portuguese consumer complaint platform, with public visibility.
Responding to every review, including negative ones, is an opportunity to say, in your own words, what the company is. A calm and professional response to a complaint says more about the brand than the complaint itself.
Name protection: trademark, domain and company name
An online presence builds awareness; name protection stops others from taking advantage of it. In Portugal there are three distinct and complementary instruments.
Registered trademark (INPI)
The Instituto Nacional da Propriedade Industrial, INPI, is the body that in Portugal grants the exclusive right to use a trademark. According to the Justiça portal (justica.gov.pt), registration legally protects a trademark for the goods or services of the chosen class, gives the owner the exclusive right of use in Portugal and is valid for 10 years, renewable. Having the company name registered in the commercial register is not the same as having the trademark protected: another company can register the same name as a trademark for the same services.
To protect the trademark in all EU countries at once, the route is to register an EU trade mark at the EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office). For other territories, a separate application is needed in each country, or through the Madrid system managed by WIPO. We recommend discussing trademark registration with a lawyer or an official industrial property agent: it is a legal decision that goes beyond our scope of work.
.pt domain
The .pt domain is managed by .PT - Associação DNS.PT. It belongs to whoever registered it first: having a registered trademark or a company name does not automatically secure the domain. If the domain with your name already belongs to someone else, we guide the claims or negotiation process.
Company name (RNPC)
The company name (denominação social) is registered at the Registo Nacional de Pessoas Coletivas (RNPC) and gives exclusivity within the commercial register. It does not protect against the use of the name as a trademark and does not secure the domain.
The three registrations are independent. Full protection means having the three aligned and regularly monitoring for unauthorised use.
What AI sees when it searches for your brand
Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini do not collect real-time information on every company. They learn from large volumes of text and, when they search the web, prioritise sources they consider reliable and consistent.
What influences how AI describes your brand:
- Consistency: if the name, address and description are the same on every source, the AI describes the company with more confidence.
- Volume: the more relevant sources that mention your brand, the more likely the AI is to know it.
- Source quality: a mention in a national newspaper is worth more than ten entries in low-quality directories.
- Structured data: the schema on the website helps the AI identify the company name, address, opening hours and category.
- Robots.txt: the file that tells crawlers what they can and cannot read. Many websites unknowingly block AI search crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT) and PerplexityBot; blocking them prevents the site from appearing in those tools' answers.
We monitor your brand's score with MessGEO, our GEO analysis tool, and ask monthly questions to AI tools to check whether your brand's description has improved.
For which businesses
Brand awareness and protection is relevant for any business with online customers. In Portugal, it makes most difference for:
- Businesses with a strong local presence: restaurants, accommodation, clinics, beauty salons, where reviews and the Google Business Profile are decisive.
- Professional services firms: law, accountancy, real estate, consultancy, where trust in the brand precedes any contact.
- Growing brands: businesses that have invested in making their name known and need to ensure nobody else benefits from that recognition.
- Businesses with multi-channel presence: when there is a website, social media, marketplaces and directories, consistency deteriorates over time without monitoring.
- Exporters and international brands: companies that communicate in Portuguese and English and need to protect their name in both languages and across territories.
Why Messagency
- We are in Portugal. Our base is in Porto. Our team is made up of digital nomads, so meetings are held in English; content for your customers is written in European Portuguese.
- We work all four fronts at the same time. We do not separate brand work from GEO: a consistent brand is the foundation of everything AI says about you.
- We measure with our own tool. MessGEO was built by us to measure exactly what we sell, including brand visibility in AI tools.
- We show results on our own site before promising them on yours.
- Fixed and clear price. After the free 30-minute call, you receive a written plan with a fixed price; you know the cost before we start.