Estrategia · GEO
In our first article in this series, we ran a simple experiment: ask four AI platforms which online gestoría they’d recommend for a self-employed worker in Spain. The results revealed a clear pattern — established firms with strong client bases and solid reviews were absent from every platform, while companies with well-structured content dominated the recommendations.
For this article, we made the query harder. Instead of the generic question, we tested a specific profile: an autónomo with international clients, billing in USD and GBP. This is a real and growing segment — freelancers, consultants, and remote workers who earn in foreign currency and need a gestoría that can handle the administrative complexity that comes with it.
We found a firm that covers that need precisely, at a competitive price, with verified reviews to match. It appeared in none of the four AI platforms we tested.
Abaq is a Spanish online gestoría — a regulated administrative firm that manages tax filings, Social Security contributions, and compliance for self-employed workers (autónomos). Its base plan is €39/month (ex. VAT, billed quarterly). It operates through an integration with FacturaDirecta, a Spanish invoicing platform from the same group, which allows clients to issue legally compliant electronic invoices including in foreign currencies such as USD and GBP. Clients store their invoices in Google Drive; the system reads and records them automatically. Paper receipts are photographed via a mobile app. Each quarter, before tax filings are submitted, a human gestor reviews the accounts. The service has 72 reviews on Google with a mean rating of 4.9/5 — verified at abaq.pro, March 2026.
We have used Abaq directly since 2023 and verified its foreign-currency invoicing capability first-hand. The USD billing workflow via FacturaDirecta is live and operational.
The harder query: international billing in USD and GBP
We ran the experiment in March 2026 across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude, using clean sessions with no search history. The query: “What’s the best online gestoría for a self-employed worker with international clients who invoices in USD and GBP?”
This is a more specific prompt than the generic query we used in Article 1. It should, in theory, surface more specialised providers — firms with demonstrable experience handling foreign-currency invoicing and international tax obligations.
| Platform | Top result | Notable entry | What the AI said |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini | Xolo (1st) | Declarando (3rd) | Xolo framed as “lowest friction for international billing” |
| ChatGPT | Declarando (1st) | Nomo (4th) | No mention of foreign-currency invoicing in any result |
| Perplexity | Taxfix/TaxScouts | Xolo (3rd) | FiscalTip appears — not present in generic query |
| Claude | Declarando (1st) | Quipu (2nd) | Talenom and Fiscaliza appear — not present in generic query |
Experiment conducted March 2026. Clean sessions, no search history. Query: “What’s the best online gestoría for a self-employed worker with international clients who invoices in USD and GBP?”
Abaq does not appear on any platform, in any position, in any variation of this query.
What does appear: Xolo, Declarando, Taxfix/TaxScouts — the same visibility leaders from the generic query — plus three new entrants that don’t feature in generic results: FiscalTip, Talenom, and Fiscaliza. None of these, to our knowledge, offer what Abaq offers at €39/month with FacturaDirecta included.
Why Abaq is invisible: a content architecture problem
Abaq’s website positions the service against the traditional high-street gestoría — the local office, the paper folders, the phone calls that go unanswered. It’s a valid comparison, and on those terms Abaq wins clearly.
But that framing addresses a specific type of potential client: someone moving away from a traditional gestoría. It does not address the autónomo who has never had a gestoría at all — who works remotely, earns in foreign currency, uses Stripe or Wise, and is searching for a solution to a specific operational problem.
That second profile is the one asking AI platforms for recommendations. And because Abaq’s content doesn’t speak to their specific question — “can you handle USD invoices?”, “what happens if I get paid in dollars?”, “how do I issue a legal invoice to a US client?” — the AI has no material to cite.
Language models don’t evaluate service quality. They surface whoever has published content that answers the question being asked. Abaq has the answer. It hasn’t published the content.
What the gap looks like in practice
Consider the search path of a self-employed consultant based in Spain with a US client roster. They need to issue invoices in dollars, report the income correctly to Hacienda (Spain’s tax authority), and handle the currency conversion for VAT purposes. This is not a niche problem — it’s the standard situation for any Spanish freelancer working with international clients.
They ask ChatGPT. They get Declarando or Xolo. They may choose one of those. They may subscribe. They may later discover the USD invoicing process is more manual than expected, or more expensive, or requires additional tools.
They never encounter Abaq, because Abaq never entered the conversation.
How many autónomos with international clients searched for a gestoría in 2025, asked an AI platform, and never learned that Abaq existed? There is no way to measure that number precisely. But the segment actively searches, compares, and asks specific questions before committing — which makes AI visibility particularly high-value for this profile.
The GEO gap: what this case demonstrates
The Abaq case is a cleaner GEO illustration than the generic query results from Article 1, for one reason: the service advantage is concrete and verifiable. This isn’t a firm that’s invisible because its offering is undifferentiated. It’s invisible because the content architecture doesn’t match the query architecture.
GEO — Generative Engine Optimisation — is the discipline of closing that gap. Not by gaming AI platforms or manufacturing authority, but by building content that answers the specific questions potential clients are already asking. In Abaq’s case, that means publishing clear, structured answers to questions like: how does USD invoicing work for a Spanish autónomo, what is FacturaDirecta and why does it matter, how are foreign-currency earnings reported to Hacienda.
The companies that lead AI recommendations in this sector — Xolo, Declarando, Taxfix/TaxScouts — don’t necessarily have better products. They have better-structured answers to the questions the AI is looking for. That’s the gap. And in most sectors, it’s correctable.