AI Search Visibility

The Client

An established B2B product supplier serving the healthcare, cruise and hospitality sectors. Strong Google rankings, a well-structured website and a recognised brand within their industry — but almost entirely absent from AI-generated answers in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini.

The Challenge

When we ran their brand through the major AI engines, a clear pattern emerged. Despite appearing in Google's top results, competitors were being cited in their place — not because their products were inferior, but because their content wasn't structured in the way AI engines needed to interpret and retrieve it. Their buyers were increasingly consulting AI before ever reaching a search results page. The client was invisible at exactly the moment it mattered most.

Our Approach

We ran a full Ascend AI Audit — tracking the brand across 48 prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. We pulled every source URL AI engines retrieved when answering those prompts and analysed them systematically to identify why competitors were being cited and what needed to change.

What We Found

Seven content clusters were driving AI citations in this sector. The client was absent or underperforming in every one.

Technical Specifications — AI engines consistently retrieved pages that answered performance questions with specific standards and numeric data. The client's pages described products rather than specifying them.

Healthcare & Infection Control — AI engines pulled content using clinical procurement language. The client's healthcare content wasn't using this language and was being ignored despite being retrieved.

Cruise & IMO Compliance — A single competitor page dedicated to IMO certification dominated cruise queries across all three engines. The client supplied IMO-compliant products but lacked dedicated content explaining the standard and their certified range.

Sector Buyer Guides — Competing pages were written as specification guides answering "what is best for this environment?" The client's sector pages were brand-focused rather than question-answering.

Sustainability Credentials, Editorial Coverage and Sector Disambiguation — Three further clusters where targeted content changes were identified.

The Roadmap

The Ascend AI Audit delivered a 14-point prioritised content roadmap — from immediate quick wins (adding technical specification data to product pages, updating page titles, adding compliance status to metadata) through to longer-term content development across healthcare, cruise and hospitality sectors.

Ongoing Monitoring

The client moved onto monthly Ascend AI monitoring following the audit. Citation rates, visibility scores and brand mention frequency are tracked across all 48 prompts as content changes go live. Most clients see measurable improvement within 60 to 90 days.