ChatGPT recommends your competitors. Not you.
Buyers now ask AI for a vendor shortlist before they ever open Google. Three to five names make the answer — there is no page two. We run the prompts your market asks, log who gets cited, and engineer your brand into the answer set.
Logged across — ChatGPT · Perplexity · Gemini · Claude · Google AI Overviews
| Buyer prompt | Who gets cited | You |
|---|---|---|
| best [category] tools for startups | +2 | Absent |
| [competitor] alternatives | +4 | Absent |
| [category] pricing compared | +2 | Absent |
| is [your brand] legit? | thin / outdated | Wrong |
| top [category] platforms 2026 | +3 | Goal ✓ |
| Share of answer, this page: 0 / 4 prompts — the audit maps all 40+ | ||
This is not a forecast. It already happened.
The numbers below come from independent 2026 research, not from us. We keep them on file because most founders we audit are surprised by how far along this is.
94%
of B2B buyers used a large language model during their purchase process, per Forrester's 2026 buyer research.1
51%
of B2B software buyers now start research in an AI chatbot rather than a search engine — and 69% changed vendor choice based on what the AI said.2
5.1×
AI-referred visitors convert at roughly five times the rate of traditional organic traffic (14.2% vs 2.8%).3
Two details make this urgent for early-stage companies in particular. First, 37% of domains cited by AI engines never appear in classic search results4 — meaning a young brand can win citations long before it could ever win rankings. Second, roughly 70% of AI-referred traffic arrives with no referrer header,5 so most teams cannot see this channel in their analytics at all. Absence is invisible until a buyer shows up with a shortlist you are not on.
- Forrester, Buyers' Journey Survey, 2026 — 18,000+ business buyers; generative AI ranked the most meaningful vendor-research source. ↩
- G2, The Answer Economy, April 2026 — survey of 1,076 B2B software decision-makers. ↩
- Exposure Ninja conversion analysis, March 2026. ↩
- Zhang et al., arXiv, December 2025 — citation overlap study. ↩
- Digital Bloom AI-traffic referrer analysis, February 2026. ↩
The whole market fits in one paragraph.
When a buyer asks an answer engine for "the best X," the reply is a short, confident paragraph naming a handful of vendors. That paragraph is the market now. Our job is to move a brand from outside it to inside it — and to document every step so you can verify the change yourself.
The specimen on the right is illustrative (category and names generalized), but the structure is exactly what we log in every audit: which engines answer, who they name, which sources they lean on, and where the entry point is.
best session-replay tools for an early-stage SaaS
For an early-stage SaaS, the most commonly recommended options are:
- — generous free tier
- — strongest privacy controls
- — best replay-to-analytics link
Your brand: not mentioned. Not compared. Not considered.
sources leaned on: two listicles (2024), one community thread, one review site
best session-replay tools for an early-stage SaaS
For an early-stage SaaS, strong options include:
- — generous free tier
- Your brand — Cited ✓ positioned for small teams, with current pricing
- — best replay-to-analytics link
new sources in the mix: your comparison page, a review profile, one earned mention
Field work, not guesswork.
-
Build the prompt set
40+ real buyer prompts for your category — shortlists, comparisons, "alternatives to," and the question that decides deals: "is [your brand] legit?"
prompt log -
Run the engines
Every prompt across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews, with screenshots and source extraction for every answer.
visibility ledger, run 01 -
Trace the citations
We map which pages the engines actually lean on in your category — review sites, comparison posts, docs, communities — and where your entry points are.
source map -
Fix what blocks you
A prioritized worksheet: entity and schema corrections, citable comparison pages, llms.txt, review-profile gaps, and the two or three earned mentions that matter most.
fix worksheet, ranked -
Re-run and verify
Same prompts, same engines, weeks later. The delta in your share of answer is the report — verifiable by anyone with a chat window.
before/after delta
We publish what we learn.
Working notes from live audits — the same material we use internally. No gating, no email walls.
How ChatGPT decides which brands to cite (and which to skip)
Retrieval, the Bing index, authority thresholds, and why 65% of cited pages come from high-authority domains — with the early-brand workarounds.
The 27-point AI visibility audit checklist
The exact worksheet we run for clients — prompts, technical checks, entity checks, citation sources — free to copy.
AI search statistics 2026 — every number sourced
The reference sheet: adoption, shortlist behavior, conversion economics, citation mechanics. Free to cite with attribution.
Posted rates. No discovery-call theatre.
Visibility Audit
$1,200
one-time · 7–10 days- Prompts logged40+
- Engines5
- Fix worksheetranked
Citation Sprint
$1,800/mo
3 months · audit included- We implementyes
- Re-runsmonthly
- Delta reportverifiable
White-label desk
From $600
per audit · your brand on it- Turnaround7 days
- Resell margin2–3×
- Your logoyes
Founding-client terms: if run 01 doesn't surface at least ten prompts where competitors are cited and you aren't, the audit is free. Full rate card and guarantee →
Find out what the engines say when you're not in the room.
Four short sections, two minutes. We reply within one business day with scope and start date — findings arrive as a short recorded walkthrough. No call unless you ask for one.