What Marketers Need to Know About Getting Found in AI Search
By now, most marketers have heard the headlines: generative AI is changing how people search.
What’s less clear is what to actually do about it.
On one hand, there’s panic. Organic traffic is down, click-throughs are falling, and Google’s AI Overviews are eating up the top of the page. On the other hand, there’s an opportunity. New tools, new platforms, new behaviors, and a new way to get discovered.
What’s emerging is not just a tweak to SEO.
It’s an entirely new layer of brand discovery powered by AI assistants, trained on web-scale data, delivering answers instead of links.
Marketers who understand how this shift works, particularly how large language models (LLMs) find and mention brands, are already building a new kind of visibility. One that doesn’t depend on rankings. One that’s invisible to your analytics dashboard. One that shapes perception before the first click ever happens.
If SEO were about being found on Google,
LLM SEO is about being included in the answer.
This is your guide to getting there.
From Ranking to Recalling: How AI Has Changed the Discovery Game
Search engines used to act like directories. You asked a question, they showed you a list. Brands fought for real estate on that list through keyword targeting, link-building, and technical optimization.
Today, LLMs act like expert assistants. You ask a question, they generate a synthesized response, and maybe cite a source or two. But often, they don’t.
The effect on marketers is subtle but significant. With tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google SGE, users are skipping search results entirely. They’re getting recommendations, summaries, and comparisons without ever visiting a website.
The implication:
You can no longer rely on being the most optimized page.
You must strive to be the most memorable source.
Unlike Google’s algorithm, which updates frequently but predictably, LLMs draw from a mix of:
- Pre-trained knowledge (web content, forums, documentation)
- Recent memory (browsing plugins, vector stores, retrieval layers)
- Confidence scores and content clarity (which determine what gets surfaced)
This brings to mind a concept Ethan Smith shared in the August 7 webinar “Owned vs. Earned AEO.”
There are two main types of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO):
- Owned AEO happens when your website is cited directly in an AI answer. This usually requires strong, structured content and good SEO on your site.
- Earned AEO happens when your brand is mentioned in multiple third-party sources the AI trusts, from review sites to YouTube videos. Even if the AI doesn’t link to your site, it may mention your brand based on those sources.
Both can land you in the AI’s answer but earned AEO is often faster because it doesn’t rely solely on your own site’s authority. It leverages your presence across the wider web.
“The next generation of marketing isn’t about hacking search,” says Smith. “It’s about influencing the model’s memory.”
Traffic from LLMs Is Small But Highly Intentional
Let’s deal with the objection up front:
You’re not getting millions of visitors from ChatGPT, yet.
Most marketers we talk to report that LLM-generated traffic is still in the low single digits, often just 1–3% of total sessions. But that’s more than zero, and growing monthly. One analysis found LLM-driven visits jumped 527% in five months.
But the more important story isn’t volume. It’s intent.
Because these visits, whether from a ChatGPT link, a Claude citation, or a Bing Copilot blurb, convert just as well, if not better, than paid search. Why? Because the AI is answering decision-stage questions.
Prompts like:
- “Best running shoes for flat feet under $150”
- “Which blender is quietest for early-morning smoothies?”
- “Top-rated sunscreen for sensitive skin”
When your brand gets included in that answer, you’re not just earning traffic. You’re earning trust. You’re arriving at the moment of consideration without needing to win a bid or ranking battle.
The shift isn’t just from clicks to citations. It’s from visibility to influence.
Why Traditional SEO Tactics Aren’t Enough
You can have the fastest-loading site. The cleanest sitemap. The best backlinks in your category.
And still be invisible in AI search.
That’s because LLMs don’t “rank” pages. They synthesize. They retrieve. They rephrase.
Instead of evaluating your content against others in real time, they often rely on:
- What’s already embedded in the model from previous training
- What’s been frequently mentioned or cited on high-trust domains
- What’s been structured in a way that makes it easy to extract
This is why Reddit shows up constantly. Why Wikipedia is overrepresented. Why your beautifully designed buying guide gets ignored while a two-year-old product review with clear specs gets quoted.
Traditional SEO rewards pages.
LLM SEO rewards concepts.
Well-structured, widely-validated, clearly-explained concepts that match the prompt and reduce model uncertainty.
What the Models Actually Cite
Across categories, the formats most likely to get cited include:
- Listicles and comparison tables. Perfect for “top X” prompts and easy for models to repackage.
- FAQs and How-Tos. Q&A formats map directly to conversational search.
- Support docs and product guides. Fact-rich, task-specific, authoritative.
- User-generated discussions. Reddit threads, Quora posts, YouTube walkthroughs.
And here’s one underutilized insight from the webinar: YouTube is a huge citation source in Perplexity and other LLMs, yet many consumer brands ignore it. Short, clear videos that show your product solving a specific problem can be just as influential as a high-ranking article.
What gets ignored?
- Fluffy thought leadership
- Keyword-stuffed “Ultimate Guides”
- Long intros that bury the answer
- Pages without concrete, citable facts
Bottom-of-Funnel Beats Top-of-Funnel (For Once)
Traditional SEO has long emphasized top-of-funnel awareness. AI search flips that.
Users go to ChatGPT or Perplexity when they want a specific recommendation, not a 101 explainer.
They ask:
- “Which cordless vacuum works best for pet hair?”
- “Best app for budgeting with multiple bank accounts”
- “Is Brand X stroller better than Brand Y for travel?”
These are high-intent, high-conversion prompts. And the model answers in one shot.
That’s why product comparison pages, detailed reviews, onboarding guides, and even help-center articles are often the real winners in AI search, even though they have historically been ignored for SEO.
It’s Not Just What You Publish, It’s Where You Show Up
You can’t win in LLM SEO from your site alone.
The model reads what’s being said about you across the web:
- Reviews on major consumer sites
- Mentions in roundup articles (“Best … for …”)
- Reddit threads where users recommend you
- YouTube videos showing your product in action
This is why “earned AEO” is such a lever. In some head-term answers, the AI simply tallies the brands mentioned most often across trusted sources and chooses those for the response.
If you’re not in those sources, you’re not in the answer.
Measurement in the Era of Zero-Click
Most LLM visibility is zero-click. The AI mentions your brand, the consumer keeps it in mind but never clicks.
That means the metrics shift to things like:
- Prompt-triggered visibility
- AI citation count
- Branded search lift over time
- Sentiment in AI responses
Many B2C brands track this with a simple post-purchase survey: “How did you hear about us?” When a buyer says “I saw you in ChatGPT,” even if analytics shows nothing, you’ve just measured the invisible.
How Skydeo Fits In
At Skydeo, we help consumer brands and the agencies that work with them build presence in AI models.
With Skydeo SAM, you can:
- See which audiences are most likely to discover you via AI search
- Enrich your audience data with lifestyle and behavioral insights
- Activate campaigns in the sources and formats LLMs cite most often
Make sure you’re mentioned in the conversation.
What to Do Next
Ask yourself:
“What would someone need to see for AI to recommend us?”
Then:
- Map the prompts in your category
- Build or update content to answer them directly
- Show up in multiple trusted, citable sources (owned + earned)
- Make your site technically easy for AI crawlers to process
- Track your presence, even without clicks
The future of search won’t be won with keywords.
It will be won with presence, precision, and persistence.👉 - Try Skydeo SAM for free
