Marco Lobo

Founder, Schmitdy

Marco builds AI search growth systems that turn prompts, sources, content, and agents into revenue.

Articles by Marco Lobo

A UK tradesperson sits in a work van checking a handheld device, with a paper A-Z map, an old mobile phone and a notepad listing jobs on the dashboard, terraced houses visible outside the window.

How a UK Trades Platform Grew AI Search Visibility 40% in Four Weeks

Visibility up roughly 40% relative in four weeks, mentions from 1,285 to 2,265, in a category that started carrying paid AI search placements for the first time.

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Case Study8 min read

How a B2B Entity Resolution Platform Grew AI Search Visibility 5.4x in Nine Weeks

Visibility up 5.4x, mentions from 147 to 666, average position from 4.3 to 2.4. The single biggest fix was technical: the platform's best content sat behind a login wall no AI crawler could read.

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AI Search8 min read

London Hospitality's AI Ad Window Is Still Wide Open

Only 11 of 585 tracked answers in London hospitality carried an ad, and just one restaurant is bidding for any of it. Meanwhile organic citation is the most concentrated thing we track: Time Out alone builds about 64% of London's ChatGPT dining answers.

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Flat riso harbour laboratory on ecru paper, with the cobalt Schmitdy dolphin comparing two balanced lighthouses, one overlaid by a connected schema blueprint, as both signal to answer buoys, standing in for the crowded, fast churning mix of advertisers bidding on team chat questions.

AI Search8 min read

Team Collaboration's AI Ads: 18 Advertisers, and Almost None of Them Sell Chat Software

326 ad bearing answers, 18 distinct advertisers, and almost none of them sell a team chat product. Compliance app builders, VoIP platforms and project management lead generation are harvesting team chat intent and redirecting it elsewhere.

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Flat riso chart-room scene on ecru paper, with the cobalt Schmitdy dolphin sorting a net of source cards through retrieval trays, a magnifying glass, corroboration seals and a final open answer book, standing in for who actually buys the ad slots in finance automation search.

AI Search10 min read

Finance Automation's AI Ad Auction Is Being Won by Lead Generation, Not Software

Finance automation carries real buyer intent and almost no advertisers to meet it. Expert Market, a lead generation aggregator, took more ad slots than every genuine software competitor combined, and just two category vendors bid at all.

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AI Search13 min read

Entity Resolution's AI Ad Problem: 73% Coverage and Every Ad-Bearing Prompt Is Unbranded

We tracked 73.0% ad coverage in entity resolution, one of the most heavily monetised categories we measure, and every single ad-bearing prompt was unbranded. Buyers are not waiting for someone to type a brand name. They are buying the research question itself.

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AI Search9 min read

Waste and Hauling Software Is the Most Monetised Category We Track: Nearly Four in Five ChatGPT Answers Carry an Ad

In our tracking, 77.8% of waste and hauling software AI answers carry an ad, the highest coverage of any category we measure. Jobber dominates the inventory and runs explicit 'Jobber vs. ServiceTitan' conquest creative, including on prompts asking for a ServiceTitan alternative.

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A UK tradesperson sits in a work van checking a handheld device, with a paper A-Z map, an old mobile phone and a notepad listing jobs in Herne Hill, Bermondsey and Peckham on the dashboard, terraced houses visible outside the window.

AI Search9 min read

The UK Trades Software Category Had No ChatGPT Ads for Two Weeks. Then It Had Almost Half a Month's Worth in Three Days

Zero ads for two weeks, then a step change: the final three days of our tracking window carried 29 of the month's 60 ad-bearing answers. Powered Now, Tradify, Commusoft, Joblogic and Jobber are the names actually bidding on UK trades queries.

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AI Search14 min read

Which Categories Does ChatGPT Actually Monetise? A 40x Ad Coverage Spread

Sponsored placements now appear inside ChatGPT's own answers, and we measured how unevenly that inventory gets bought. A 40x spread separates the most and least monetised categories we tracked, and the gap follows the value of a click, not the size of the market.

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AI Search11 min read

Restaurant AI Visibility Platforms Compared: Uberall vs Bloom vs Malou vs Marqii vs SOCi vs Yext

Six restaurant listings and AI-visibility vendors, checked against their own pricing pages and press releases. Only two publish anything that measures whether AI engines actually name you.

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AI Search13 min read

The New York Dining AI Visibility Study (2026): A 15% Ceiling and the Sources That Build the Answer

We tracked 24 of New York's most famous restaurants across 830 AI answers. Even the most visible name, Gramercy Tavern, tops out at 15.1%. Here's the concentrated source list that builds the city's AI dining answer, and the Carbone paradox hiding inside it.

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Flat riso illustration of a Berlin harbour street at dusk: a cobalt dolphin captain holds up a ranked leaderboard scroll beside a glowing city tourism-board signpost that outshines a row of restaurant shopfronts, banded candy-swirl lighthouse beam overhead, half-timbered shapes, warm ecru background, no text.

AI Search13 min read

The Berlin Restaurant AI Visibility Index (2026): A Tourism Board Runs the Answer

No one has published a German AI-visibility dataset before. Ours is the first: 22 Berlin restaurants, 823 scored answers, and the most-cited source isn't a magazine, it's the city's own tourism board.

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AI Search8 min read

Which Sources ChatGPT Cites for London Dining (Real Data)

If you want to be named by AI, you need to be in the sources it reads. We measured exactly which ones, for London dining, across two weeks. Time Out dominates, Reddit is quoted hardest, and there's a difference between being retrieved and being cited.

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Flat riso illustration of a UK harbour high street at dusk: a cobalt dolphin holding up a ranked leaderboard scroll outside a row of restaurant shopfronts, only the top few lit by a banded candy-swirl lighthouse beam, warm ecru background, no text.

AI Search9 min read

The UK Restaurant AI Visibility Index (2026): Who AI Actually Names

Every restaurant-invisibility study so far has been US data. This is the first UK read: 28 London groups, real diner questions, run daily across the major AI engines. The leader appears in one in eight answers. Here's the leaderboard and the sources AI cites.

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AI Search7 min read

Where AI Sends Diners in Berlin: How ChatGPT Builds Its Answers

Ask ChatGPT where to eat in Kreuzberg and it names three to five places. Those names come from a handful of Berlin sources, and almost none of them is your own site. Here's which sources feed the answer, and how to get in. Fully in German.

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Flat riso harbour-town scene: a cobalt dolphin captain guiding a German wine-bar shopfront with a glowing wine glass motif onto a lit new dock while half-timbered neighbours sit in shadow, banded candy-swirl sun, ecru background, no text.

AI Search7 min read

Wine Bars in Germany: Making Drinks-Led Venues Visible on ChatGPT

Berlin's natural wine scene is thriving in the room and invisible in AI answers. Drinks-led venues sit in a blind spot food-first advice ignores, and the German market adds gates. Here's the fix, fully in German.

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Flat riso harbour-town scene: a cobalt dolphin captain guiding several near identical German restaurant shopfronts under one shared sign, one lit and the others in shadow, half-timbered shapes, banded candy-swirl sun, ecru background, no text.

AI Search8 min read

How to Make a Restaurant Group Visible on ChatGPT in Germany

A single restaurant has one entity to get right. A German group has one brand across many venues, in a market where AI Overviews only reaches signed-in adults. Here's why groups vanish from AI answers in Germany, and the fix.

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Flat riso illustration of a UK harbour high street at dusk: a cluster of diners chatting in speech bubbles that a banded candy-swirl lighthouse beam gathers and shines onto one restaurant shopfront, a cobalt dolphin listening in, warm ecru background, no text.

AI Search8 min read

Reddit and Local Forums: The Hidden Source Behind Restaurant AI Answers

The best-of shortlist an AI engine gives a diner is built as much from community consensus as from your own site. Reddit and local forums are a hidden source behind restaurant AI answers, and you cannot buy your way in. Here's how they work.

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Flat riso illustration of a UK harbour high street at dusk: a restaurant shopfront with a bright all-green dashboard in the window while the shopfront itself sits unlit outside the banded candy-swirl lighthouse beam, a puzzled cobalt dolphin checking a clipboard, warm ecru background, no text.

AI Search8 min read

Why Your Local SEO Tools Miss Your Restaurant's AI Visibility

Rankings strong, reviews clean, citations tidy, and still no bookings from AI. Local SEO tools and Search Console were built for a world of blue links, and they cannot see whether ChatGPT names your restaurant. Here's the blind spot.

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Flat riso illustration of a UK harbour high street at dusk: a restaurant shopfront with a curtained private upstairs room left in shadow while neighbouring shopfronts glow under a banded candy-swirl lighthouse beam, a cobalt dolphin holding an event invitation, warm ecru background, no text.

AI Search8 min read

Private Dining in London: Why AI Never Suggests Your Room

Someone types private dining room in London for 20 into ChatGPT. It is one of the most valuable queries in hospitality, and one of the hardest for an engine to answer, because your private-dining details are locked where no model can read them. Here's the fix.

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Flat riso illustration of a UK harbour high street at dusk: two signposts outside a restaurant shopfront, one pointing to a row of ranked link-boards and one to a glowing spoken answer bubble, a cobalt dolphin reading the bubble, banded candy-swirl lighthouse beam, warm ecru background, no text.

AI Search8 min read

GEO vs AEO vs SEO for Restaurants: What Each One Does

Three acronyms, one dinner booking. SEO ranks your pages, AEO and GEO get your restaurant named inside the AI answer. Here's the difference for a restaurant specifically, and why the work is not either-or.

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Flat riso illustration of a new UK harbour high street at dawn: a freshly built restaurant shopfront sits unlit at the end of a dock while established shopfronts glow under a banded candy-swirl lighthouse beam, a cobalt dolphin rowing the new venue in, warm ecru background, no text.

AI Search8 min read

Opening in a New City? Your Restaurant Starts Invisible on AI

Brand equity is a human thing. When you open in a new city, an AI engine sees a venue it cannot yet place, with no local proof, and it keeps recommending the incumbents. Here's how to close the AI cold start on a new opening.

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Flat riso illustration of a UK harbour high street at dusk: a cobalt dolphin studying a large notice board of numbers and charts outside restaurant shopfronts, banded candy-swirl lighthouse beam overhead, warm ecru background, no text.

AI Search7 min read

Restaurant AI Visibility Statistics (2026): The Numbers, Sourced

Every headline number on restaurants and AI search, in one place, with its source, date and market attached. Built to be cited, and honest about what is US data and what is UK.

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Flat riso illustration of a UK harbour high street at dusk: a wine-bar shopfront with a glowing glass of wine motif sits in shadow while neighbouring shopfronts are lit by a banded candy-swirl lighthouse beam, a cobalt dolphin holding a wine glass, warm ecru background, no text.

AI Search8 min read

GEO for Wine Bars: Why Drinks-Led Venues Vanish From AI Search

Almost every GEO guide is written for restaurants that serve food first. Wine bars, cocktail bars and drinks-led venues have a different, harder problem, and no one is writing about it. Here's why you vanish from AI answers and how to show up.

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AI Search9 min read

OpenAI and Anthropic Don't Need a Word for GEO. You Do. (2026)

A widely shared post argued that OpenAI and Anthropic don't care about GEO or AEO, so the whole category must be marketing. We sell GEO for a living, and we half agree. The acronyms are marketing. The work, and the way you now measure it, is not. And the job posting used as proof says so.

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Flat riso illustration of a UK harbour high street at dusk: several near identical restaurant shopfronts under one shared sign sit in shadow while a banded candy-swirl lighthouse beam picks out only one of them, a cobalt dolphin looking between them, warm ecru background, no text.

AI Search8 min read

Why Your Restaurant Group's Venues Cannibalise Each Other on ChatGPT

A single independent has one entity to get right. A group has one brand smeared across many venues, and AI engines routinely name the wrong branch, or none. Here's the multi-venue problem no one is writing about, and how to fix it.

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Flat riso illustration of a UK harbour high street at dusk: a glowing five pointed star hangs over a restaurant shopfront that stays in shadow while plainer neighbouring shopfronts are lit by a banded candy-swirl lighthouse beam, warm ecru background, no text.

AI Search7 min read

The Star Rating Trap: Why Your 5-Star Restaurant Is Still Invisible on ChatGPT

Restaurants rated 4.8 stars and above were hidden from Google's AI answers more often than solidly good ones. Stars are not the signal you think they are. Here's what the data shows and what actually earns the mention.

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AI Search9 min read

Does Schema Markup Improve AI Search Visibility? What the Evidence Shows

Schema remains good technical search hygiene, but no official source promises a direct ChatGPT citation boost. Here is what the evidence supports and how to test it properly.

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AI Search9 min read

How ChatGPT Chooses Sources to Cite: What OpenAI Confirms and What It Does Not

OpenAI documents search, crawlers, consulted sources and inline citations, but not a complete ranking formula. Here is the practical five-stage model publishers can actually test.

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AI Search11 min read

AI Search Agents for SMBs: What They Do in a 30-Day Operating Cycle

An AI search agent should run a measured publishing and citation cycle, not spray content. Here is the 30-day operating model, the human gates and the evidence an SMB should expect.

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AI Search11 min read

How to Track AI Crawler Traffic on Webflow: Native AEO, Cloudflare and Peec

Webflow can show AI bot visits, but the right setup depends on your plan and traffic route. This guide separates crawl permission, bot requests, retrieval, citations and conversions, then maps four practical tracking options.

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Flat riso harbour-town scene, cobalt dolphin captain guiding a German restaurant shopfront (pretzel, beer-stein and awning props, half-timbered shapes) onto a lit new dock, banded candy-swirl sun, ecru background, no text.

AI Search9 min read

How to Make Your Restaurant Visible on ChatGPT: A GEO Guide for German Hospitality

Google AI Overviews only launched in Germany in March 2025, Google AI Mode in October 2025, and ChatGPT needs no login at all. Around 70% of guests already search for restaurants digitally, while nearly 2,900 hospitality businesses filed for insolvency in Germany in 2025. A Germany-specific GEO guide for restaurants: what's actually live, and five levers that move visibility on ChatGPT.

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Flat riso illustration of a UK harbour high street at dusk: a cobalt dolphin harbourmaster stands outside a restaurant shopfront left in shadow while neighbouring shopfronts glow under a banded candy-swirl lighthouse beam, warm ecru background, no text.

AI Search9 min read

Why Your Restaurant Is Invisible on ChatGPT (and Google Won't Warn You)

UK diners are already asking AI where to eat, and Google can soon book the table for them. Here's why most restaurants never get mentioned, and five fixes that close the gap.

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AI Search9 min read

How to Get Your Brand Recommended by ChatGPT (and Claude, Gemini, Perplexity)

Getting named in an AI answer is not the same skill as ranking on Google, and most brands are invisible for reasons that have nothing to do with how good their product actually is. Here is how the recommendation actually happens, and what to change.

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AI Search8 min read

How Much Does an AI Search Agency Cost in 2026?

Before you sign a retainer, work out what you're actually paying for. Here is how AI search agencies price their work, what each level should include, and when the cheaper answer is to skip the agency entirely.

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Nine questions to ask before letting anyone build your website

Websites9 min read

9 Questions to Ask Before You Let Anyone Build Your Website (Most "Site in Minutes" Services Fail 6)

Two AI website builders collapsed in the past year, leaving customers scrambling to export their own sites. Here are nine questions to ask any provider before you hand over your domain, so you own your website instead of renting it.

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AI Search8 min read

Why Your Website Never Shows Up in ChatGPT (and How to Build One That Does)

Ranking on Google no longer means an AI assistant will ever recommend you. Here is why most business websites are invisible to ChatGPT and Perplexity, and what an AI-search-ready page actually looks like.

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Websites9 min read

Chat-to-Build Website Tools Compared: What Actually Happens After You Hit Send

Most chat-based website builders get you a live site fast, then hand you off to their own dashboard. A smaller group, including Schmitdy, keep you editing by message after launch, with checkout and AI-search structure built in.

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Get someone to build your website with a chat-first service

Websites8 min read

How to Get Someone to Build Your Website Without Touching a Builder (the Chat-First Way in 2026)

"Build my website for me" gets you five real routes in 2026, from DIY AI builders to full agencies. Here is an honest, priced comparison, including the chat-first model where you manage the whole site by message.

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AI Search11 min read

Otterly.AI Alternatives in 2026: 9 AI Search Monitoring Options Compared

Otterly.AI is the cheapest way into AI search monitoring, but not the only one. Nine verified alternatives compared on engines, cadence and price, plus the one thing no dashboard does: the work.

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AI Search9 min read

AirOps Alternatives in 2026: 9 Options by What You Actually Need

AirOps buyers want three different things: content workflows, AI visibility data, or the work done for them. Nine verified alternatives, priced and sorted by job.

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AI Search11 min read

7 Gushwork Alternatives for AI Search Growth in 2026

Gushwork is a credible, well-funded AI search partner for US SMBs. These seven verified alternatives cover done-for-you delivery, senior strategy, in-house tooling and pure measurement, with July 2026 pricing.

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AI Search11 min read

The 11 Best GEO Agencies in 2026 (AEO and AI Search, Compared Honestly)

An honest roundup of 11 real GEO and AEO agencies, including ours (disclosed upfront), with verified pricing and the questions that separate operators from list-sellers.

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AI Search11 min read

The 11 Best AI Search Visibility Tools in 2026 (And the One Thing None of Them Do)

We checked live pricing and engine coverage for 11 AI visibility tools in July 2026, split by buyer type. The honest bit: every single one stops at a dashboard.

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Handdrawn editorial illustration on a cream background splitting two worlds: on the left, a stack of classic search result pages with a search bar and ten blue ranked links labelled SEO; on the right, an AI answer speech bubble with a small robot, lines of generated text, and three cited-source chips labelled AEO / GEO, the shift from ranking links to being cited inside the AI answer

AI Search9 min read

AEO vs GEO vs SEO: The Difference, and Which One You Need in 2026

SEO ranks links in classic search. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) optimise to be cited inside the AI-generated answer in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Copilot. AEO and GEO are near-synonyms for the same goal; SEO is a separate, still-necessary discipline that feeds the retrieval pool. The practical answer in 2026 is that you do all three, but you measure AEO/GEO on citation share, not blue-link position, and the winning levers (off-site footprint, entity authority, content shape, freshness) sit mostly off your own site.

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Handdrawn editorial illustration on a cream background split into three panels: on the left, a dashboard with a gauge and bar chart labelled tool; in the middle, three people standing together labelled agency; on the right, a friendly robot wearing a headset talking with a person labelled agent — the three layers of improving AI search visibility

AI Search7 min read

AI Search Tool vs Agency vs Agent: Which Do You Actually Need in 2026?

There are three ways to improve your AI search visibility, and they're layers of the same stack, not rivals: a tool (Peec, Profound) measures where you stand; an agency executes the optimisation work with people; an agent — an AI-search agent — does the recurring volume under human review. A tool changes your understanding, not the answer. An agency changes the answer but costs the most and moves at human speed. An agent does the volume at mid-market cost with humans owning quality and strategy. In 2026 most teams keep a tool and add one execution layer — the real decision is which one.

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Handdrawn editorial illustration on a cream background showing the Peec MCP agent pipeline: a dashboard of charts on the left connected by an MCP USB-C cable to a friendly robot agent in the centre, which passes through a human-approval clipboard with a checkmark to shipped outputs on the right — a content document and a JSON-LD schema block

AI Search9 min read

How to Build AI Agents on the Peec AI MCP for AEO and GEO (2026)

In late 2025 Peec AI shipped an official MCP server, which makes its entire AI-search measurement layer — projects, prompts, per-engine brand visibility, full AI answer transcripts, the source/citation graph and scored Actions — directly callable by an LLM agent. That means you can wire a Claude or GPT agent straight to the ground truth of how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews answer your category, and have it reason over the data and draft the work to close the gaps. The defensible build pattern is a read-only, five-stage loop with a human ship gate: the agent triages and drafts; a person verifies and ships.

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Handdrawn editorial illustration on a cream background: an AI-search dashboard of charts and a magnifying glass on the left feeds through a funnel in the centre, which sorts into three citation chips — a review star, a community comment, and a reference source — that flow into an AI answer speech bubble on the right; the path from dashboard data to AI citations

AI Search7 min read

From Peec or Profound Data to AI Citations: A 5-Step Playbook (2026)

Your Peec or Profound dashboard tells you where you're invisible in AI answers, but a visibility score is an outcome, not an instruction. Turning the data into citations is a five-step job: read the gap reports rather than the vanity metric, turn the cited sources into a third-party target list, fix the pages that are retrieved but not cited, build the off-site footprint the data points to, then re-measure the delta on a cadence. The highest-leverage move is the source/domain gap report — the third-party sites citing your competitors but not you. Most of the work lands off your own domain and has to recur, which is the gap between owning a dashboard and moving its numbers.

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AI Search8 min read

You're Tracking AI Search Visibility. Who's Actually Fixing It?

AI search visibility tools tell you where your brand is missing from AI answers. They don't fix it. Here's why the number doesn't move when you only buy the dashboard — and what closing the gap actually takes in 2026.

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Riso-print illustration of the Schmitdy dolphin harbourmaster with a clipboard appraising three candidate pilot boats beside a large B2B cargo ship, with channel buoys and a candy-swirl sun.

AI Search Growth8 min read

Best AI Search Agencies for B2B Companies: GEO Audit, Content, and Agentic Execution

The best AI search agency for a B2B company is not just a content shop or a dashboard reseller. It should measure prompt-level visibility, explain why AI engines recommend competitors, and turn the source gaps into shipped work.

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