Why Your Brand Is Invisible in AI Search and What Marketers Must Fix

As AI generated answers increasingly replace traditional search results, brands are facing a new visibility challenge. In this CX Today interview, Francesca Roche speaks with Peter Sloterdyk, Chief Marketing Officer at Gist, about the launch of Gist Geo and what AI driven discovery means for modern marketing teams. The conversation explores why traditional SEO metrics are no longer enough, how brands can measure visibility inside AI answers, and why sentiment, structured content, and actionable insights are becoming critical as search evolves into a zero click experience.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Hello everyone and welcome back to CX Today. My name is Francesca Roche. I'm a technology journalist today discussing the launch of GIST Geo. Now, GIST has recently launched its new AI intelligence platform, which shows brands how they appear across AI-generated answers in ChatGBT, Google AI overviews, and other AI assistants. In this context, visibility refers to whether a brand appears inside AI-generated answers when users ask questions that involve recommendations, comparisons, or decision making. Now, GISGEO platform aims to give marketers a clearer view of their visibility in AI-driven discovery, combining monitoring with actionable recommendations. It shows where brands are appearing in AI answers, where they are missing, and how they compare against competitors, while also suggesting specific content and optimization opportunities to improve presence. Today I'm joined by Peter Slaughterdyke, the Chief Marketing Officer at GIS, to explore what this shift means for marketers, how brands should think about visibility in an AI-first world, and why closing the gap between insight and action is becoming critical as online search continues to evolve. Before we get into the discussion, Peter, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00 1:21

I'm so well. Thank you so much for having me, Francesca. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Yeah, it's lovely to meet you. Now, firstly, I want to get into the actual shift itself. Why is it no longer enough for brands to rely on traditional search performance metrics?

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Absolutely. As I think is probably very clear across the board today, um, we are in the middle of a seismic shift. The the change happening in our practice of marketing, in the practice of marketing, um, is pretty significant, perhaps in looking back, we'll say one of the most significant in the last uh 25 or 30 years. And from my perspective, the reason it's no longer enough, and that's I think that is a key phrase that you used there. We're not saying no to traditional search, we're not putting SEO away, we're not replacing it, we're inviting GEO to the party. Um, and I think the reason it's not enough, from my perspective, is because the landscape has changed. We now have to contend with the fact that we are operating in a zero-click atmosphere where consumers are getting so much more of their contextually relevant information from an AI search engine, whether it be AI overviews or one of the specific LLMs, that it has changed the way brands, publishers, content creators, et cetera, can reach their desired audience. Um, the mechanisms are different, the technology is different, uh, the tactics we use have to be different.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Absolutely. I think um, especially going on to your point there, even though um some brands may see tremendous results from still using those traditional SEO um sort of tools, there is like obviously no um scarcity mindset, obviously, in going in towards that discovery is now happening before a user even reaches a brand's website. So it's very important that um we respond to these AI-generated responses.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Agreed, the ecosystem is expanding, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

That's all right. Um now, what is the core problem that brands are facing today with visibility inside AI-generated answers? You know, what tends to cause a brand to be excluded from AI-generated recommendations altogether?

SPEAKER_00 3:32

So you'll hear the phrase structured data quite a lot in the conversation around GEO. And the easiest way to think about structured data without getting too technical, but the easiest way to think about structured data is ensuring that your content, your brand explanation, your brand identity, the internet's understanding of your brand, your product, your category, um, it's the way that the LLMs read that content, consume that content. Um, it has to be structured in a particular way, or should be structured in a particular way, um, to reach the LLMs effectively. One of the biggest pain points, the biggest challenges we're facing is that we all, myself included, have been building our ecosystems for a completely different world instead of building for LLMs. We didn't know this was coming, or at least we didn't know it was coming this fast. I'll say it that way. Um, and I think what we've found is with the exception of two really important platforms, YouTube and Reddit, we'll talk about those in a second, uh, most of our infrastructure, most of our content, et cetera, was built for different ecosystems and not for LLMs. So our biggest pain point is that we are starting, uh, let's see, we are starting behind the starting line, way behind the starting line of this race, because we've got a lot of catching up to do. Now, you can see that as a challenge or as an opportunity because we're also talking about some pretty blank slates. The LLMs don't know what we haven't told them. They are not uh what we haven't trained them on, so on and so forth. And so if you're uh I the phrase that I use a lot is legacy versus challenger brands. Legacy brands have long enjoyed this always-on knowledge of their products and brand identities. Um, I'll Tide is a decent example. Tide is well known as a laundry detergent. It's been around for a long time, it's very included in the conversation. But LLMs actually don't have any reason to know that Tide exists. It's a pretty blank slate at the moment because Tide's content hasn't been structured for the LLMs to know who they are. And so all of a sudden, we're in this level playing field between challenger brands and legacy brands, where it's not about how much money you have or how big your budget is or how long you've been around. It is about how quickly you can train, can you tell the LLMs about your business, your category, your brand.

SPEAKER_01 5:59

Absolutely. I really like the point that you made there that, you know, you are starting, markets are starting behind the finish line there. And that's kind of it's almost been the case for every single sort of evolution that we've had just in what we call traditional search now, which is um, you know, Google search. Um, we were behind then, and I think we'll always be behind. But um, so we're always strong in traditional search, but um the the new ones we can't always. So thank you very much for explaining that.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

And how does just how does GIS Geo define and measure visibility inside AI-generated answers across different platforms?

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Absolutely. Um so platform agnostic, yes, we do track um among um all of the platforms, but the reason I'm saying platform agnostic is because the measurement is the same. Um, the way that we consider the way that we talk about uh and help folks understand their visibility in AI is on a hundred-point scale. It's pretty straightforward. Um, we try to keep it as rooted in the principles we as marketers understand as possible. Um, and so visibility is kind of akin to brand awareness, but it's instead of it being brand awareness among your consumer audience, it's brand awareness among the LLMs. It's a it's a new target audience for you. Um, and so our system helps you understand what queries you are, or conversely, are not showing up for that are relevant to your category, your product, vertical, um, a couple of different ways to slice that. And when you know, you have to have the baseline. So when you know where you're starting from, then you're able to take a look at our recommendations that are very, very detailed. One of the things that sets our tool apart from a few others is that instead of saying, go create content, period, you need more content structured this way. Um, we talk about what kinds of content, in what formats, when, how to publish it, where it should live, how to distribute it. We have really specific recommendations because all of that really does quite matter to the LLMs. The other piece to consider that I think is really, really important for marketers and kind of exciting for me personally, is that sentiment now matters much more than it ever has before, right? We used to talk about keywords being the most important, keywords being king, right? That we really had to think about keywords all of the time. We have transitioned now. Keywords are still important from an SEO perspective, but for GEO, we are now talking keywords to questions. And that is a much richer playing field that is full of the opportunity to augment sentiment. And we as marketers, that that's to that to me is very exciting from a marketing point of view and truly from a customer experience point of view, not to um be pedantic, but when thinking about the total customer experience and the reason that marketing and customer experience are so closely connected, um, is because we are always talking about driving sentiment. How does someone feel about our brand, our business, our product? Um, and that is really important to the LLMs. They are reading Reddit, for example, YouTube, reading all the comments, the upvotes, the downvotes, the Redditor comments, et cetera, to understand the sentiment around your brand, uh, which is just wildly important. And so those are some of the components. Um, it it is more detailed. We could talk about it for hours. Um, there's a lot of information to gather in the system, but that's uh scratching the surface.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Thank you very much. Um, it's great to see um that sentiment is very clear at the core, um, considering now it's obviously so um important to marketers and for CX. Um now the platform also combines insight with recommendations. Why is it important to move beyond just monitoring alone?

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Yeah. I I think anyone and everyone who's ever played in the search space, SEO, SEM, etc., would tell you that yes, you need a baseline, you need to know where you're starting, and you need the dashboard to understand how you're performing day-to-day. Um, but that's just the what. It's not the why, and it's not the how. Um, and there's very little action associated or change associated with just looking or paying attention to a dashboard. Measurement is wildly important. I'm not uh dis dismantling that at all. Um, but for me, I think one of the things I've always found so frustrating in a measurement conversation is answering the so what. So, you know, my visibility score is 35. So what do I do? What is the next thing that I need to pursue to change that to 40, to change it to 45, um, to incrementally improve my overall performance. So the insights plus actions, and again, those really detailed actions and recommendations, is so, so necessary so that you can start tracking the bell curve, going up or down, as it were. Um, you want to go up in sentiment, you want to um think about how and where your content is living, structured, etc. Um, and you need to see the impact of those. So the dashboard remains wildly important, uh, but the actions are are so, so, so necessary to feel like you're capable and have some control over moving the needle.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

That's very interesting. And how can brands maintain consistency in AI visibility when answers can change depending on the prompt?

SPEAKER_00 11:16

It's so funny. Um, you say when answers can change. I have found one of the it's sort of challenging me uh personally. When you think about a basic question, what face wash should I use? Which is a question people are asking the LLMs. There are 450 minimally uh versions of that question. What kind of face wash should I use today? What sort of face wash should I use on my skin? There's so many different versions of that question. That my my first question when I started this GEO journey was how do I optimize for everything? Like how how do I optimize for every version of that question? And what I then was able to calm down about, when I was instead of panicking, I was able to slow down a little bit and realize that the answers to that question, to the, sorry, the answers to the variations of the question don't change as much as the questions do. Um, and so just because I added the word today or talked about my skin or gave additional context, the answer that the LLM is providing relatively the same. It might contain a little bit more nuance, um, but it's still scraping and looking for the answer out in the world in the same places. And so it does feel a little unruly at times. It feels a little hard to wrap your head around or your arms around everything that's happening. Um but I do get uh a fair bit of confidence out of the fact that if I create content that answers that question about face wash, that I'm increasing my likelihood, my brand's likelihood of showing up in that answer. Yes, things are always changing. The way the uh uh LLMs are structured, are working, et cetera, is always changing. But that's one thing that I really like about our tool is that it's responding in real time to the changes within those LLMs and adjusting the recommendations accordingly.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

That's great to hear. And um I think it's quite a comfort to hear that um the answers are roughly changing, uh roughly staying the same, sorry, um regardless of what the prompt is given. So thank you very much. And just before we end our discussion today, how do you expect AI-driven discovery to change brand marketing tactics over perhaps the next few years?

SPEAKER_00 13:34

I think it will be so interesting to see how not only brand marketers, but all of the uh complementary services and uh practices around brand marketing continue to adjust. I have long felt and long believed that brand marketing is every touch point that a brand has with a customer, whether that be customer service, whether that be the product itself on shelf, uh, the retail experience, the marketing, content, so on and so forth. There's so many aspects. And for me, um, what I think will happen, it's a it's a prediction, but only that. It's a guess. Um, what I think will happen is that we will all see the requirement to double down on all customer touch points. Um, because sentiment will continue to be so important in the context of how brands show up in LLMs and the the context in which they show up in LLMs. Uh, I think the overall, the global customer experience, not again, not just customer service, but all pieces of the customer experience will be hugely important to maintain, to um refine and improve across the board. Uh, and so content will continue to be just so, so important. But I think where it lives, how it lives, and how it influences all the brand touch points will be what's so interesting to watch.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Absolutely. I think as we are starting to notice the customer journey sort of expanding, we're sort of sort of realizing that the journey is starting before a customer has even thought about a brand. I think marketers are going to need to sort of focus in on those points specifically and across the rest of the journey. Um, and now, unfortunately, that is all we have time for today, but I would like to thank Peter for being here. It's been really insightful to get an idea of how AI-generated search is reshaping brand visibility and what marketers need to do to stay discoverable. So, thank you so much for joining me.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Thank you, Francesca, really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 15:35

And from all of us at Six today, thanks for watching. Goodbye.