TL;DR
- The silence is real: Your competitors get AI recommendations. You get vague acknowledgment, or nothing.
- SEO helps, but it's not enough: Rankings and backlinks give you a foundation, but LLMs also weigh mentions across multiple trusted sources. Ranking alone won't get you cited.
- Your website alone won't convince AI: Your website saying you're great is noise. Multiple sources agreeing is signal.
- The fix exists: Find your Trust Hub, build consensus, write for extraction, connect your entity graph.
- Window is closing: AI visibility is being claimed now. Wait, and the gap becomes harder to close.
Try it right now. Open ChatGPT. Ask: "What's the best [your category] tool?" Watch your competitors get recommended. Then ask about your company specifically. Notice the hesitation. The vague response. The silence.
This is happening to SaaS companies everywhere. And most don't even know it.
- Datadog Security Monitoring - Great for teams already using Datadog
- Sumo Logic - Generous free tier, cloud-native
- Panther - Built for modern security teams
Each offers different strengths depending on your stack and team size.
Good question. I didn't include them earlier simply because the most commonly referenced sources (Gartner, G2, industry reports, and overall industry sentiment) tend to list other tools as the highest-reviewed and most widely adopted.
[Your Company] didn't appear in the top rankings from those sources at the time I reviewed them.
Every recommendation you're missing is a deal your competitor is closing.
The Numbers Worth Knowing
Your marketing dashboard looks great. But it's measuring a different game.
You won the SEO game. Congratulations. But there's a new game now. And you're not even on the board.
The Shift Happening Right Now
When a VP of Engineering asks ChatGPT for recommendations, they get an answer. They trust that answer. They shortlist based on that answer. Your #1 Google ranking? They never saw it. They never searched.
Why ChatGPT Doesn't Know You
AI doesn't work like Google. Different system, different rules. Here's why you're invisible:
You optimized for rankings, not citations
Google counts backlinks. AI weighs mentions across trusted sources. Your 200 backlinks from directories help with rankings, but they don't build the cross-platform consensus AI looks for. Meanwhile, your competitor showing up in Reddit threads, G2 reviews, and industry blogs creates the signal AI needs.
Your content is comprehensive, not quotable
You wrote 3,000-word guides optimized for time-on-page. AI needs 40-word blocks it can extract and cite. Your content ranks. It doesn't get quoted.
You exist in one place
Your website says you're great. That's marketing. AI needs consensus: G2, Reddit, industry blogs, case studies. Multiple sources saying the same thing. You have one source. Competitors have several.
Your entity graph is broken
AI doesn't know your G2 profile, your website, and your LinkedIn are the same company. Your competitors connected the dots. You didn't.
You're not in the Trust Hub
For every category, AI has a handful of sources it returns to repeatedly. These get cited over and over. You're not on any of them. Your competitors are.
The Test You Need to Run Today
5-Minute AI Visibility Audit
- 1. Open ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity
- 2. Ask: "What's the best [your category] for [your target persona]?"
- 3. Write down every company mentioned
- 4. Ask: "What do you know about [your company]?"
- 5. Compare the depth of response to your competitors
If your competitors get detailed recommendations and you get vague acknowledgment (or nothing), you have an AI visibility problem.
Run this test for 10 different queries in your space. Count how many times you appear vs. competitors. That's your citation rate. Most companies we audit are below 10%.
What Your Competitors Did (That You Didn't)
The companies getting cited didn't stumble into it. They built for it.
The Uncomfortable Math
Let's say 20% of your potential buyers now start with AI instead of Google. (Conservative estimate. It's probably higher.)
If you're invisible to AI, you're invisible to 20% of your market. Not "less visible." Invisible. They don't know you exist.
That percentage is growing every quarter.
Every day you're not cited in AI, your competitors are. They're building AI presence while you're building backlinks. The gap widens. And unlike SEO rankings, there's no page 2. You're either in the answer or you're not.
What To Do About It
You can't SEO your way into AI visibility. Different problem, different solution.
Find Your Trust Hub
Run 50 queries in your category. Track every source that gets cited. The domains that appear repeatedly? That's your Trust Hub. Get mentioned on those specific sites.
Reverse search Reddit. Find threads in your niche that rank #1 on Google or appear in AI Overviews. Comment on those posts with genuine value. If your comment rises to the top, you've hacked your way into the AI Overview, because the AI is pulling from that exact Reddit thread.
Build Consensus
One source is marketing. Multiple sources is truth. Pick 3-5 specific facts about your product. Seed them across Trust Hub sources with natural variation. Reddit, G2, case studies, industry coverage. Same facts, different words.
Write for Extraction
AI doesn't read your 3,000-word guide. It extracts 40-word chunks. Put quotable claims at the start of every section. Specific numbers. Clear value props. Write as if AI will copy-paste directly.
Connect Your Entity
Add sameAs schema linking your website to G2, LinkedIn, Crunchbase. Tell AI these are all the same company. Without this, your presence is fragmented.
Create Citable Data
If you're the only source for a stat, AI must cite you. Survey your customers. Publish benchmarks. Release original research. Own facts that don't exist elsewhere.
The Window Is Closing
AI visibility is where SEO was in 2010. The rules are being written. The positions are being claimed. The companies that move now will own their categories.
The companies that wait will wonder why their Google rankings stopped converting.
The Bottom Line
That silence when you asked ChatGPT about your company? It's not a bug. It's a signal. You built for one game while the rules changed.
Your competitors get recommended because they built consensus across trusted sources. They write content AI can extract. They connected their entity graph. They showed up where AI looks.
You can keep winning at SEO. But if you're not in the AI answer, you're not in the conversation. And increasingly, the conversation is the only thing that matters.
The question isn't whether to fix this. It's whether you fix it before your competitors make the gap permanent.
Yuval Halevi
Yuval, an expert in SEO with over a decade of experience, helps startups simplify their digital marketing strategies. With a focus on practical solutions and a track record of success as a digital nomad and successful company builder, he drives growth through effective SEO, growth hacking, and creative marketing.