- 1 List 30 prompts buyers ask AI assistants
- 2 Record who gets mentioned today
- 3 Publish clear answer pages on your site
- 4 Earn mentions on sources AI tools cite
- 5 Re-run the prompts every month
More buyers now ask an AI assistant “what’s the best tool for X” or “which running shoes are good for flat feet” instead of scrolling search results. The assistant answers with a short list, and the brands on that list get a head start. AI search visibility is the work of making your product easy for these systems to understand, quote and recommend. It fits any business whose buyers research before they buy, especially B2B software and considered consumer purchases.
Why it works
Assistants build answers from what they can find and trust: pages they can crawl, and the opinions repeated across reviews, comparison articles, forums and documentation. If the web describes your product clearly and consistently, and if credible third parties mention you for a specific use case, you are more likely to be named when someone asks about that use case.
Google itself says no special optimisation is needed for its AI Overviews and AI Mode beyond SEO fundamentals. So the work is mostly about being the clearest, best-cited answer for a specific need.
How to do it
- Write down the prompts buyers ask. Pull them from sales calls, support chats and search queries. Include category prompts (“best CRM for small agencies”), comparison prompts (“X vs Y”) and problem prompts (“how do I stop clients paying late”).
- Audit the answers today. Run each prompt in the assistants your buyers use. Note who gets mentioned, how each brand is described, and which pages are cited.
- State plainly who you are for. Add a clear sentence near the top of your homepage and key pages: what the product is, who it suits, and what makes it different. Assistants and people both struggle with vague taglines.
- Publish answer pages. Write pages that answer the prompts directly: use-case pages, honest comparisons, pricing explained, and how-to guides. Lead with the answer, then the detail.
- Make facts easy to extract. Use descriptive headings, short paragraphs, tables for specs and prices, and FAQ sections. Keep pricing and feature pages current and public.
- Earn mentions where assistants look. Find the sources cited in your audit, such as review sites, listicles, forums and industry publications. Get listed, contribute genuinely helpful answers, and pitch writers who cover your category.
- Keep crawlers able to read you. Check that your robots rules and any bot protection do not block the crawlers of assistants you want to appear in, and that key content is in the HTML, not hidden behind scripts.
- Re-run the audit monthly. Track mentions and descriptions over time, and fix wrong facts at the source pages assistants cite.
Example
A hypothetical B2B time-tracking tool built for law firms finds that assistants recommend three general tools when asked about time tracking for lawyers, and never mention it. Its homepage tagline reads “Time, reimagined”. The team rewrites it to say the product is time tracking and billing for small law firms, publishes a guide to billable hour tracking with a comparison table, gets listed on two legal-tech review sites the assistants cite, and answers questions in a lawyers’ forum. Over the next few audits, the tool starts to appear in answers to its tracked prompts, described in words that match its new positioning.
Metrics to track
- Mention rate across your prompt list. The share of prompts where your brand appears should climb over successive audits.
- Accuracy of descriptions. Count answers that describe your product, pricing or audience wrongly, and aim to drive that number down.
- Citations of your own pages. Track how often assistants link to your site as a source.
- Referral traffic from AI assistants. Watch analytics for visits from assistant domains and how those visitors convert.
When it backfires
- Writing for machines. Pages stuffed with repeated phrases read badly for humans and add nothing an assistant would want to cite.
- Planted reviews or fake forum posts. Astroturfing breaks platform rules, damages trust when exposed, and can be removed at any time.
- Inconsistent facts. Old pricing on one page and new pricing on another gives assistants conflicting signals and confuses buyers.
- Chasing every prompt. Trying to appear for broad categories you do not serve dilutes your positioning. Focus on the use cases you win.
Growth Marketing Academy
Learn the framework behind this tactic
These lessons explain the math and the mental model, so you can adapt the tactic instead of copying it.
- Track 2 · Acquisition Content and SEO Loops: Pages That Keep Bringing Users Build content, UGC and programmatic SEO loops, organise them into topic clusters, and measure throughput from page published to customer won.
- Track 2 · Acquisition Growth Loops: Build Acquisition That Compounds Funnels describe how users leak. Loops describe how users create more users. Learn to map, quantify and choose the loop that fits your product.
Questions people ask
Is there a special markup that gets me into AI answers?
Google says no specific optimisation is required for its AI Overviews and AI Mode, and that normal SEO fundamentals still apply. Clear, crawlable, well-structured pages are the base for other assistants too.
How do I measure something this unpredictable?
Keep a fixed list of prompts and run them on a schedule across the assistants your buyers use. Record whether you are mentioned, how you are described, and which sources are cited. Trends across many prompts matter more than any single answer.
Should I block AI crawlers?
That is a business decision. Blocking them can keep your content out of answers where buyers might discover you. If discovery matters more to you than control of the content, let reputable crawlers in.