Your brand may not exist in AI search

Run this test: open ChatGPT or Perplexity and ask “what are the best tools for [your category]?” Then ask the same question with five different framings. “Top platforms for”, “what do companies use for”, “alternatives to [your main competitor]”.

Note whether your product appears. Note which competitors appear consistently. Note the specific framing that gets you mentioned vs. excluded.

That test is your GEO audit.

Generative Engine Optimization is new enough that most B2B companies haven’t thought about it systematically. The ones that have are building sustainable advantages now, before it becomes competitive.

The signals that drive AI citation are different from the signals that drive Google rankings. Page authority and backlinks matter less. Structured, factual, quotable content matters more. AI models cite sources that clearly answer specific questions, have consistent brand presence across multiple credible sources, and are mentioned in contexts that match the user’s query framing.

What I’m building to address this:

A citation monitoring workflow. Weekly queries to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude across a set of category keywords and competitor comparison queries. Outputs a log of which queries return citations and which don’t. Tracked over time to measure trend.

A content gap analysis. For queries where competitors appear and you don’t, reverse-engineer what they’re doing differently. Usually it’s structured comparison content, specific use case documentation, or third-party review coverage that AI models are pulling from.

A structured data layer on existing content. FAQ schema, clear H2 question-answer structures, specific feature comparison tables. The kind of content AI models extract cleanly.

This is GTM infrastructure for the next two years, not a nice-to-have. The search behaviour shift is real and it’s accelerating.