Field notes on AI search visibility

We audited 5 household-name brands' AI visibility. They're missing from half the answers.

We pointed the same $39 audit we run for indie founders at five brands everyone knows. Recognizable name, clean website, and still absent from most of the questions their own buyers ask AI.

Notion sells an AI workspace. AI doesn't recommend it much.

One of five brand teardowns from our audit of household names. Notion scored 41 out of 100, showed up in a third of its own category's answers, and got its site cited zero times.

HubSpot is named in most CRM answers. Its own site is cited in 3%.

One of five brand teardowns from our audit of household names. HubSpot's mention rate is strong, but it rarely lands the top pick and its site almost never gets cited.

Mailchimp is the one household brand AI search actually rewards

One of five brand teardowns from our audit of household names. Mailchimp topped the group at 72, with a citation rate ten times Notion's and zero fixes flagged.

AI recommends Wix over Webflow, by a lot

One of five brand teardowns from our audit of household names. Webflow had the best positioning of the group when it appeared, and the worst appearance rate by far.

AI names LastPass more often than 1Password

One of five brand teardowns from our audit of household names. The premium pick got out-mentioned by a rival best known for its breaches.

We asked four AI engines to recommend products 96 times. They barely agreed.

An original test across 8 buyer categories and 4 AI engines. The headline: there is no single answer to hold a position in, and the same engine often contradicts itself minutes apart.

How to get your brand recommended by ChatGPT

Not tricks, and not a rank to game. The work is becoming the obvious answer across the sources these models actually read, then making your own pages trivial to crawl and quote.

ChatGPT says something wrong about your company. Here's how to fix it.

You cannot edit the model. You can edit what it reads. The fix is correcting the sources, in the right order, then re-checking across engines and giving it time to catch up.

AEO vs GEO vs SEO: what's actually different, and what to do about each

Three acronyms get thrown around like they mean the same thing. They don't. Here's the clean version, and the work each one actually asks of you.

How to Tell If ChatGPT Recommends Your Product: 5 Methods, Free to Paid

Buyers ask ChatGPT for recommendations before they ever Google you. Here is how to find out if you are on the list, and what to do if you are not.

Does llms.txt actually do anything? Google says no.

It costs ten minutes to ship and it cannot hurt. But it is not a visibility lever, the evidence is increasingly clear on that, and anyone selling it as one is overselling.

Is Your Site Blocking GPTBot? How to Check robots.txt for AI Crawlers

A single accidental Disallow can erase you from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini answers without any warning.

What is llms.txt? (And Do You Actually Need One?)

A plain-text file, a robots.txt-shaped idea, and a very early spec with a lot of hype around it. Here's what llms.txt actually is, how to write one in ten minutes, and the honest case for and against bothering.