#13: Test Your Brand Visibility–Simple AI Search Experiments for Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, and More

Want your brand to show up in AI search results on Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude? In this episode of Accelerated Velocity we share simple, hands-on search experiments you can run to test your current brand visibility across today’s top AI-powered discovery platforms. We’ll break down how to think like your customer at each stage of the buyer journey–awareness, consideration, and decision–and explore the types of searches people are making at each phase. You’ll learn how to identify visibility gaps and what kinds of content to create (think blogs, landing pages, and website updates) to improve your chances of showing up where it matters most. 

Whether you're a marketer, business owner, or SEO strategist, this episode gives you a practical playbook for navigating the shift to AI-driven search.

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Chapters

00:01:02 – Why Brand Visibility Testing Matters

00:01:55 – Start With the Basics: Think Like Your Customer

00:03:06 – Awareness Stage: Identifying Early-Stage Searches

00:06:37 – Consideration Stage: Comparing Solutions

00:08:24 – Content Iteration & Updating Old Assets

00:09:24 – Decision Stage: Build Trust and Social Proof

00:11:12 – Final Thoughts & Actionable Takeaways

Episode Transcript

(00:16):
GraceWelcome to Accelerated Velocity, the podcast that helps you move faster, smarter, and more strategically in the rapidly evolving world of AI. We'll break down the latest AI news and innovations and explore how they impact your marketing, sales, and business growth. We'll dive in the practical use cases, unpack new tools, and cut through the noise so you and your team can adapt with confidence.

(00:40):
GraceI'm Grace Mathews, director of content at InboundAV, a business development agency and HubSpot solutions partner dedicated to driving sustainable business growth. Each week, I'll be here with Peter Malick, our CEO and founder. Join us as we make sense of what's changing and what to do about it.

(01:02):
GraceEveryone. It's grace. If you've listened to this podcast before, you know we've talked a lot about AI driven search and AEO or answer engine optimization, and search is changing a lot. The trusted sources that different leads and Google is turning to is changing and overall visibility. Your brand visibility is changing on a weekly or monthly basis with with all of this evolution.

(01:31):
GraceSo today we wanted to offer some simple search experiments that you could run on your own to see how your brand is showing up across different discovery surfaces. On Google, on ChatGPT Gemini, explore all the different places where people might be looking for your services. Peter, I was wondering what your thoughts were on why it's helpful to get hands on with this kind of stuff.

(01:55):
GraceI know you've you've led some workshops along these lines before. Was it helpful to explore your own brand visibility from a first hand perspective?
PeterWell, I think, you know, one of the main reasons is that there really isn't any platform out there that's been built yet that's really effective at doing this. And, you know, there was a client we were working on with, who mentioned, hey, have you seen these platforms specifically around AI search visibility? And I checked them all out and they're interesting and they do interesting things, but they really don't address the main question, which is how do I keep and and also increase my company's visibility as search moves from traditional answer based ASR results search to this new, more sophisticated AI search model.

(02:49):
PeterAnd so there really isn't an out of the box solution. And so I think it's really incumbent on all of us, to really sort of at least get a little overview about what your challenges are. It's not that hard to do, but, I think, I think it's, super important.
GraceYeah. So the idea, I guess today is really to go back to pretty basic inbound marketing principles of getting in the head of your ideal customer persona and trying to think about what they might be searching for. I thought we could break down different types of search questions by buyer intent, and it might be a nice way to kind of hit on different common question formats that people might be asking.

(03:33):
GraceAnd then the type of content that you want to have to be answering those questions. So we could start with the awareness phase, since that's kind of the obvious starting point. Somebody knows they have a problem, but they're not quite sure what that solution looks like yet. So they're not specifically looking for a certain service at this point.

(03:53):
GraceWhat sort of questions could brands expect their buyers to be searching for during that awareness phase? That might help to kind of do some tests on these different discovery services?
PeterWell, I think there's a wide range of questions they could be asking if they know what general category is going to provide the answers and potentially provide services to them. It could be something as simple as a need to rent a sound system for a church event. Where where, where, where is the best place to do that in Brooklyn, New York or something?

(04:28):
PeterA little bit less wordy or that you get the idea. Or it could be, I have no idea how to, plan my church event. Do you have any suggestions?
GraceRight. So it's kind of that stage of like thinking about that initial problem that your services might be addressing. And another thing that I think is really important to remember is that at this point, you are not selling your product or pitching your service to people who are searching. You're just helping people name that problem. And so the content that you want to be creating to show up in AI responses to these awareness stage questions would be things like blog posts like thought pieces, your webpage content in general, making sure that solid also maybe some social content with informational pieces on there.

(05:21):
PeterYeah, and I think that the main point here is AI search is looking for answers. And so you have to pose your content as a question. So if somebody is searching for what's the best guitar store in Los Angeles, California, that article, it's saying like choosing the best guitarist or to get your next electric guitar or how do I choose the best guitar store would be something that I would pick up on.

(05:50):
PeterAnd to remind you again, the key factor in all of this is that Google and any search is moving to a zero click model, in other words, meaning that they want the user to come on the site on their site, do the search, and return enough information that they don't need to leave that search page. But with AI search results, I will reference the the source of of their response and I will often link to that response.

(06:21):
PeterSo the game for all of us as business people, as, as transitions going on, is to make sure that our content is one of those links, because that's essentially the only way that somebody is going to go from a search to your website.
GraceYeah. So I guess that brings us to consideration stage type searches. At this point, your potential buyers have defined their problem and they're exploring how to solve it. Comparing services. What are some examples of different searches that brands might want to play around with to see how results are showing up at that consideration? Fairs.

(07:03):
PeterWell, it might be something as simple as what is the best, platform for my business, Salesforce or HubSpot. And then possibly consider that that question goes into a little more detail, which if the question does the results are going to be better. But again, that's that's something that you can address with content through your site by asking the same question in a different way.

(07:28):
GraceYeah. And just like with that awareness fairs, this is a time to look at what sources are showing up in the sidebar of the AI overview or in the cited sources on the LLN that you're playing around with. Are they are they linking to blogs or different forums or directories and seeing those answers in the sources can inform the type of content that you want to be creating for that consideration phase.

(07:54):
PeterYeah. And I think the bottom line comes down to somebody is potentially going to be doing an initial search. They're going to dig in deeper, especially if they're familiar with with AI, and ask a more detailed question. And if your company can't appear in the results of multiple searches around this one subject, that's an incredibly powerful calling card.

(08:18):
PeterIt's going to be sort of a no brainer for whoever's doing the search to get to your site and see what you're about.
GraceYeah, and to your point, I think this is a great time to play around with iterating on content. So maybe that's having 3 or 4 different landing pages, answering some of these consideration stage questions, really showcasing what makes your brand stand out, and seeing which one of those pages is performing the best.

(08:42):
PeterYeah. And also, I think linking to knowledge base, a knowledge base on your site can be very, very powerful. And I think also it's worth mentioning that because this is all changing, it's really a great investment of your time to go back into your old blog posts and see which ones are totally out of date, because I guarantee you there's a bunch of them.

(09:03):
PeterIf you've been creating content around this subject and updating them and republishing them as new as new content with addressing the new reality that we're in.
GraceYeah, that's a great point. It doesn't have to be a super heavy lift to make some of these adjustments. All right. Should we look at that decision phase and the type of content that you might want to be hitting there?

(09:24):
PeterYeah, absolutely. And and I also think that, you know, we've already laid out this formula and the more different type of searches that you're going to end up in is going to push that decision phase towards you just by nature of your visibility within AI search. And I think, you know, we touched on this and other episodes, but now is the time to be able to do that.

(09:47):
PeterIt's it's similar to like Google Search in 2005 when it was just the Wild West and people were figuring out hacks that made them tons of money until Google caught up with the hacks eventually and changed the rules because the rules were skewed. And I think a lot of that is going on right now. But it's time to take advantage of it, and you can take advantage of it in a way that's not going to come back to bite you.

(10:13):
PeterAs, for instance, if we go back 20 years, people would just keyword stuffing on a site and they want to sell a Mercedes, and they just put the word Mercedes 50 times on the page, and then they'd come up top and search results. And so that came back to bite them, because Google changed that, change the rules and really started to to view that type of content as toxic.

(10:35):
PeterAnd I don't think that's what's happening here. I think if you're mindful about how to game the system a little bit, right, right now, it's not going to come back to bite you because what you're going to be doing is going to be very helpful going forward.
GraceYeah. And I think a great example of that asset decision is when people are narrowing down the brands that they might want to be working with is to target content that shows your credibility and your social proof. Because as you're experimenting with what works on these different AI discovery surfaces, having social proof is never going to hurt you.

(11:12):
GraceThere's literally nothing you can lose from that. So seeing how you can include testimonials and case studies across your website, across YouTube, different social media platforms, I think that's a great place to start at this stage of really converting prospects to customers.
PeterI agree.
GraceI think the bottom line is to just get in there and play around on all of these different platform. Start running questions on Google's different discovery searches. There now have AI mode, there's Gemini, there's the AI overview ChatGPT Claude, whatever lens you think might be relevant to your brand and how potential customers might be finding you and see what's showing up and take note.

(11:56):
GraceSo if you do end up trying this out, we would love to hear how it goes. If you get any interesting insights in terms of the different responses across different platforms, we're curious to hear what you find. Thanks for your time everybody.
PeterSee you next week.
GraceThanks for listening to Accelerated Velocity. A link to our website, newsletter and all that other good stuff can be found down in the show notes. If you like what you heard, we'd appreciate a five star review and make sure to subscribe for weekly episodes on the latest in AI for business.