How to Improve Brand Visibility in AI Search: Six Practical Tips

In this post I explain the different types of AI visibility you can achieve for your brand, and give you practical tips on how to ensure your content is performing as well as it can in AI search experiences.

In recent years, there has been a massive shift in how people discover information, research products, and make purchasing decisions online.

Instead of browsing multiple websites to find answers, an increasing number of users are now relying on AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews for advice — receiving immediate (and detailed) answers to their queries rather than a long list of websites to visit.

This means that appearing in AI-generated answers is becoming an increasingly important way for businesses to reach customers. If an AI tool recommends your product, mentions your brand, or cites your publication, you can gain:

Conversely, if your brand is consistently absent from these answers — or is misrepresented in them — you stand to miss out on these opportunities.

So, how do you make sure your content gets noticed?

Well, in this guide, I’ll show you how to check whether your website is appearing in AI-generated answers, explore key ways to improve its visibility in AI search experiences, and look at how to measure the results.

But first, a look at the different types of AI search visibility.

Understanding the different types of AI search visibility

Broadly speaking, AI search visibility refers to how often your website, content, or brand appears in AI-generated answers.

But there are actually quite a few different types of visibility to consider. These are:

Each can benefit your business in different ways.

Source citations can generate traffic and build credibility (but don’t expect large numbers of clicks from them).

For example, if ChatGPT cites an independent review of an iPhone when explaining the benefits of the device, users might click through to the original article to learn more. This can lead to advertising revenue or affiliate commissions.

However, research suggests that clickthroughs from AI-generated answers are relatively rare. A 2025 Pew Research Center study found that users clicked a source link within Google’s AI Overviews in just 1% of searches where an AI Overview appeared.

Citations can still be useful, however: they can introduce publications and brands to new audiences and potentially strengthen their credibility — but publishers shouldn’t assume that being referenced by AI systems will translate into significant increases in website traffic. If anything, the reverse is true, particularly where Google searches are concerned.

Brand mentions are arguably more useful, because they can significantly increase awareness of your business. For example, if someone asks Gemini about email marketing platforms, it might mention Omnisend alongside several competitors. Even if Omnisend isn’t explicitly recommended, the mention introduces the brand to someone researching email marketing software. That person might subsequently investigate Omnisend further — or include it in a shortlist of products to consider.

Recommendations can influence purchasing decisions. For example, someone might ask Perplexity to recommend an email marketing platform for a small Shopify store. If Perplexity recommends Omnisend and explains why it’s a good fit, this could encourage the user to sign up for a trial or purchase a subscription.

(Recommendations can be particularly valuable when they appear in answers to questions from users who are close to making a purchase.)

Indirect influence can shape purchasing decisions, but its commercial benefits to content creators are less clear. For example, an AI tool might produce a software comparison that incorporates findings originally published by an independent review website, without citing or mentioning that website. The comparison could influence which product a user buys, but the publication supplying the information won’t get any traffic — or even any brand awareness — as a result.

(It’s also difficult to establish whether an AI system has actually relied on a particular source when that source isn’t acknowledged!)

Now that we’ve discussed the different types of AI visibility, let’s establish how to measure them.

How to check whether your content appears in AI-generated answers

There are several ways to check whether AI systems are referencing your content, ranging from simple manual searches to using dedicated AI visibility monitoring tools.

Let’s look at these.

1. Check visibility manually using AI search tools

The simplest way to determine the extent of your AI visibility is to ask AI tools questions related to your website.

For example, if you sell or review camping equipment, you could try entering prompts like these:

In the responses you get, look for citations of your articles, mentions of your brand, and references to competing websites.

The problem here is that AI-generated answers aren’t consistent. Results can vary based on location, previous interactions, the AI model being used, and other factors.

For this reason, I wouldn’t draw too many conclusions from a single test. You’ll need to run multiple queries across multiple systems to get a proper sense of your brand’s visibility in AI-generated answers. This can be done manually, but realistically, you’re better off using a dedicated tool to establish the AI visibility of your brand.

And this brings me to…

2. Use an AI visibility tracking tool

For a more systematic approach to monitoring your content’s performance in AI search, I’d recommend using a dedicated AI visibility tracking tool. There is an increasing number of these available, but at Style Factory, we use Semrush — this combines conventional SEO functionality with tools specifically designed to measure visibility in AI-generated answers.

Its AI Visibility Toolkit lets you investigate how often your brand is mentioned, which pages on your website are being cited, and how your visibility compares with that of competitors.

A good place to start is its Visibility Overview report.

To access this, open Semrush, select AI Visibility → Visibility Overview, and enter your website’s domain.

You’ll then be shown an AI Visibility Score, along with information about your brand mentions, citations and cited pages (see screenshot below)

This gives you an idea of which parts of your website are already gaining traction in AI search. For example, if you run a website that reviews ecommerce software, you might discover that your Shopify content receives citations regularly, while your articles about email marketing don’t.

You can also use Semrush’s Competitor Research report to identify topics where other businesses are appearing but yours isn’t.

And its Prompt Tracking tool lets you monitor specific questions over time.

It’s important to note, however, that Semrush doesn’t have access to every conversation taking place in ChatGPT, Gemini, or other AI platforms. Its reports are based on its own datasets of AI prompts and responses, while its prompt tracking features monitor a defined collection of questions.

So, if Semrush reports that your website isn’t being cited much, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s absent from AI search altogether. Treat the data as a useful indicator of visibility rather than a complete record of every AI-generated answer.

3. Check Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools

You can also obtain useful AI visibility information directly from Google and Bing.

Google Search Console provides a dedicated Generative AI performance report, which shows impressions associated with AI Overviews and AI Mode. This lets you investigate which pages are appearing in Google’s AI-powered search features, and how their visibility changes over time.

Meanwhile, Bing Webmaster Tools provides an AI Performance report covering supported Microsoft AI experiences, including Copilot.

This shows which pages on your website are being cited, how citation activity is changing, and which phrases are associated with the retrieval of your content.

(These phrases are called grounding queries. They’re not necessarily the exact questions users typed into an AI tool.)

Both Google and Bing’s tools are worth making use of, mainly because they provide first-party information rather than relying entirely on third-party estimates.

4. Check your AI referral traffic

Finally, take a look at your website analytics. These should let you identify some traffic arriving from services like ChatGPT and Perplexity.

In Google Analytics 4, you can find this information under Reports → Acquisition → Traffic acquisition, by selecting the AI Assistant channel.

Bear in mind, however, that not all AI-generated traffic is identifiable. Some visits may be recorded as direct traffic, while clicks from Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode are typically grouped with conventional Google organic search traffic.

But in general, your web analytics let you get a sense of whether AI search is generating actual visits — and, importantly, whether those visits are leading to inquiries, purchases, or other conversions.

Now that we’ve covered how to check your visibility, let’s look at how to improve it.

The six key ways to improve your visibility in AI search

1. Get the fundamentals of SEO right

If you want your content to appear in AI-generated answers, the first thing to do is ensure your conventional SEO is in good shape. This is because many AI-powered search experiences rely on systems that discover, index, and retrieve conventional web pages.

Google is particularly clear about the importance of this. In its official guidance on optimizing for generative AI search, it recommends following established SEO practices rather than trying to deploy special “AI optimization” tricks.

So, make sure that you:

It’s also important to publish the right sort of content. For example, if your website focuses on personal finance, publishing a well-connected collection of guides to budgeting, saving, investing, and managing debt is more desirable than hosting a bunch of unrelated articles on your site.

Essentially, you want to become a “topical authority” on your subject; doing this can bring SEO rewards, and by extension, better AI visibility.

(For a comprehensive guide to improving SEO, I’d suggest watching our video on how to make your site more visible in search results.)

2. Publish original, experience-led content

This is probably the recommendation I’d place the most emphasis on.

AI systems are already very good at summarizing information that’s widely available online. So, if your article simply repeats what dozens of other websites are saying, what reason is there for an AI search system to reference it over the alternatives?

One way to make your content more valuable is to include information that can’t easily be obtained elsewhere.

Google makes a similar point in its AI search guidance, specifically encouraging publishers to focus on original, “non-commodity” content when trying to achieve more visibility in AI search.

Let’s look at an example.

Say you’re writing a comparison of Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace. You could produce an article explaining that Shopify is particularly strong for ecommerce, Wix provides considerable design flexibility, and Squarespace offers attractive templates.

All fair points — but they’re also things that an AI tool could explain without much difficulty.

Now consider a comparison that includes:

This second article is much more interesting. It introduces evidence and observations that aren’t necessarily available in other publications, giving readers a reason to consult it rather than relying entirely on an AI-generated summary.

And it gives AI systems original information that they may find useful to reference.

3. Make your content easy to understand

Another way to improve your AI search visibility is to make your content easy for AI systems to understand and extract information from.

One way to do this is by structuring articles around the questions your audience is asking — and providing clear, direct answers to those questions.

For example, instead of simply searching for “best electric bikes,” someone might ask ChatGPT or Google AI Mode, “What’s the best electric bike for a 10-mile commute involving steep hills, with a budget of $1,500?”

Your content needs to factor in this new way of searching for things — and provide the sort of information that could realistically inform answers to these more specific questions.

Other useful techniques for helping AI systems understand your content more easily include:

These approaches can help AI retrieval systems identify relevant information in your content more easily – and potentially use it when generating answers.

However, I wouldn’t get too carried away with formatting everything specifically for AI. Google explicitly advises against unnecessary “content chunking” as a generative AI optimization tactic, and there’s no evidence that turning every heading into a question will automatically increase citations.

(It might put human readers off your content too, if done too aggressively.)

Ultimately, the goal is to make your content clear, well-organized and genuinely useful to readers. If you’re doing that already, you’re giving AI search systems a good foundation to work with too.

4. Publish YouTube videos

If you’re trying to improve your visibility in AI search, I’d strongly recommend using YouTube as part of your content strategy.

This has been one of the most effective tactics we’ve used to raise the visibility of Style Factory content. In the screenshot below, you’ll see that our Moz vs Semrush video comparison is featured prominently (twice!) in Google’s AI answer to a “Moz vs Semrush” query. This video appeared in that AI answer within a few hours of being published.

This is unsurprising — if you’ve Googled anything recently, you’ve probably noticed that YouTube videos are increasingly appearing as sources in Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode. A 2026 study by Tenpoint Labs found that 31% of the Google AI Overviews it analyzed contained at least one YouTube citation; research by Semrush has identified YouTube as one of the most frequently cited sources in Google’s AI Mode too.

You don’t necessarily need to create completely different content for YouTube — you can turn existing blog posts into videos, using them to better demonstrate products, explain complicated processes, or add first-hand observations.

When publishing videos, I’d recommend:

Google’s video SEO guidance confirms that YouTube timestamps can help it identify important moments within videos, while YouTube recommends descriptive titles, descriptions and captions to improve discoverability.

Of course, publishing videos doesn’t guarantee that they’ll appear in AI-generated answers. And some AI platforms cite YouTube videos much more frequently than others.

Nonetheless, it is increasingly clear that YouTube provides an excellent opportunity for your expertise to reach potential customers via AI search.

5. Get your brand mentioned on relevant third-party websites

Another way to potentially improve your AI visibility is to get your brand mentioned on relevant third-party websites. There’s some interesting research suggesting that these sorts of mentions may be particularly important for AI search.

For example, a 2025 study by Ahrefs involving 75,000 brands found that mentions across the web correlated much more strongly with brand visibility in ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, and AI Overviews than traditional backlink metrics did.

This study showed that:

These findings suggest that getting your brand discussed across the web — even without necessarily receiving a backlink — could be particularly useful for improving its visibility in AI-generated answers.

Now, there’s an important caveat here: correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation. The Ahrefs study doesn’t prove that securing additional brand mentions will automatically increase your visibility in AI search. Well-known brands may simply attract more mentions both across the web and in AI-generated answers.

Nevertheless, the findings provide a good reason to make genuine brand recognition part of your AI search strategy.

As ever, though, quality counts: avoid manufacturing brand mentions via low-quality sponsored articles, artificial forum discussions, or other schemes designed purely to influence AI-generated answers. And remember that the research discussed above primarily concerns brand mentions in AI answers, rather than citations of a website’s individual articles.

6. Make sure AI systems have accurate information about your products and business

If you sell products or services, make sure AI search systems have access to accurate information about what you offer.

This is because AI tools don’t just rely on blog posts and other editorial content when making recommendations. They can also use structured product data, merchant feeds and business listings to identify relevant products and services.

For example, Google recommends keeping your Merchant Center and Google Business Profile information up to date to support visibility in its AI search experiences.

And OpenAI confirms that ChatGPT uses product data supplied by merchants and third-party providers when generating shopping results.

So, I’d recommend:

It’s also worth looking into whether your store building tool supports AI shopping integrations; some ecommerce platforms support sharing product information directly with AI systems.

For example, Shopify’s agentic storefronts let eligible merchants make their products available through AI shopping platforms, including ChatGPT. OpenAI also supports direct product feeds from approved merchants.

Monitor your AI visibility — and act on what you find

The six recommendations above should give you a good starting point for improving your visibility in AI search. But it’s important to check whether your efforts are yielding results — and that’s where monitoring AI visibility comes in.

As mentioned earlier, we use Semrush at Style Factory for this kind of thing.

You can use its AI Visibility Toolkit to:

And don’t forget to compare your AI visibility with actual business outcomes. An increase in citations is encouraging, but an increase in relevant traffic, inquiries, or sales is ultimately more valuable.

Ultimately, your goal shouldn’t simply be to appear in as many AI-generated answers as possible. It should be to identify — and take advantage of — the opportunities that matter most to your business.