The visibility playbook

Tactics that move AI visibility, organized by leverage. Pick 1–3 a quarter — these compound over months, not days.

Tier 1 — Highest leverage, do these first

1. Get fresh citations on the platforms AI uses most for your category

Open the Citations page. Note the top 3–5 domains AI cites when answering your prompts.

For each:

• G2 / Capterra / TrustRadius (B2B SaaS): ask 5 customers per quarter to leave a review. Refresh outdated ones. Reply to negative reviews publicly.
• Trustpilot / Yelp / Google reviews (B2C, local services): same — get fresh reviews flowing.
• Reddit: harder to influence directly. Be a good participant in relevant subreddits over time. Don't astroturf.
• News / industry publications: pitch a story tied to data, customer wins, or category insight. One placement on a frequently-cited domain can move multiple prompts.

Why this works: AI weights citations heavily. A fresh review on a top-cited platform is one of the highest-leverage moves available.

2. Publish content that matches customer-prompt language

Open your Prompts page. Take the top 5 prompts where you're absent or weak. For each, audit your own site:

• Do you have a page that directly answers the prompt's question?
• Does your page use the same language a customer would use?
• Is the page recent (updated in the last 6–12 months)?

If the answer to any is no, fix it. Comparison pages ("X vs Y"), use-case pages ("X for [audience]"), and direct-answer pages ("What's the best X for Y?") tend to surface in AI answers.

Why this works: AI does pull from your own domain when content matches the question. Generic homepage copy doesn't surface; specific, prompt-matched content does.

3. Earn placements in third-party comparison content

Search for "best [your category]" or "[competitor] alternatives". Read the top 5 results — these are the comparison posts AI is most likely to cite.

For each post you're not in, contact the author. Most editors will add credible vendors on request, especially if you can show why you fit. Some require a paid placement; some don't.

Why this works: Comparison content is heavily cited. Being absent from the major comparison posts is a near-certain reason for low visibility.

Tier 2 — Medium leverage, do these next

4. Refresh stale citations

If AI keeps citing a 2019 review or a 3-year-old news story, the source is outdated but still influential. Get something fresher published.

Tactics:

• Pitch a follow-up story to a publication that wrote about you years ago.
• Publish a customer case study with a specific metric and date.
• Run a small survey or report that gives publications something fresh to cite.

5. Address consistently-cited negative mentions

Open the Sentiment page. Find the negative mentions that recur across multiple prompts.

If they're rooted in:

• A specific old review — respond publicly to the review, with empathy and a fix; reach out to the author privately if appropriate.
• An old news story — publish a follow-up with updated information. Many publications will update old articles on request.
• A factual inaccuracy — politely contact the publication or platform with corrections.

You won't change AI's mind quickly. But over 1–2 quarters of fresher, positive signals, the ratio shifts.

6. Build category-specific presence on platforms AI surfaces

For B2B, that's usually G2, Capterra, TrustRadius. For B2C local, Google Maps and Trustpilot. For consumer brands, Reddit and Wikipedia (where appropriate).

A complete, fresh, well-rated profile on your category's main platforms is table-stakes. If you're not there, you're missing the most-cited surface.

Tier 3 — Slower compounding, do these continuously

7. Brand consistency across the web

Make sure your name, positioning, and key claims are consistent across:

• Your own site
• Your social profiles
• Review platforms
• Wikipedia (if you have a page)
• Press / about pages on partner sites

Inconsistent positioning across the web confuses AI's picture of you.

8. Schema markup on your own pages

For comparison pages and product pages, use:

• Product schema with description, brand, offers.
• FAQ schema for FAQ pages.
• Article schema with author, datePublished, dateModified.

Schema doesn't directly help AI like it helps Google, but it tends to correlate with cleaner, more structured pages — and AI prefers structured content.

9. Direct customer voice content

Customer stories, case studies, video testimonials — content where customers describe (in their own words) what your product does and who it's for.

This kind of content surfaces well in Claude and Perplexity especially, because it sounds different from marketing copy and reads as authentic.

Tactics that don't work

A few things people try that don't move AI visibility (and may damage your brand):

• Hidden text or "AI prompts" in your page source trying to instruct AI. Doesn't work. Looks bad.
• Paying for fake reviews. Detected by review platforms; if discovered, listings get removed entirely.
• Repeating your brand name 50 times in an article. AI doesn't reward keyword stuffing any more than Google does.
• One-off press hits that aren't repeated. A single mention from 2 years ago has minimal compound effect.

How long does this take?

Realistic timelines:

This is why monitoring weekly is enough. Daily noise is mostly noise. Quarterly trends tell the real story.

How to measure if it worked

For each action you take:

1. Note the date in Recommendations or your own log.
2. Check the affected prompts in Trends every 2 weeks for the next quarter.
3. If visibility climbs by 5+ points over 6–8 weeks, the action probably worked. Repeat the pattern.
4. If nothing moves in 8 weeks, it probably didn't matter. Try something else.

Don't skip step 1. AEO compounds slowly enough that without a log, you'll forget what you did and lose the chance to learn.

What's next

• Interpreting your results
• How SimplyRank helps
• Citations and sources