B2B buyers are increasingly using ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and other AI tools to evaluate companies. Marketri’s AI Visibility Engine combines GEO, SEO, authority-building PR, and LLM tracking to help your brand get understood, cited, and recommended where modern buyer research happens.
In one recent B2B client program, Marketri tracked the shift from AI visibility to attributable website action across a five-month period.
513
Cumulative AI referral sessions
April-August 2026
8
ChatGPT-attributed website form submissions in August
Up from 3 in July, +167% month over month
11%
Share of all August website form submissions attributed to AI platforms
5 of 5
August earned-media placements classified as high AI visibility
The same program grew the client's ranking-keyword footprint to 476 terms, up 27% since March, while visibility expanded into Google AI Overviews and higher-intent search topics.
These numbers matter for another reason: AI referral sessions fell in August while AI-attributed form submissions rose sharply. That is why we do not judge AI search by referral clicks alone. The better measurement model looks at visibility, attributable conversions, and downstream brand demand together.
AI visibility is how often - and how accurately - your company appears when buyers use AI tools to research a problem, compare vendors, understand a category, or build a shortlist.
Traditional SEO asks whether you rank. AI visibility asks a broader set of questions:
If the answer is no, a buyer can complete a meaningful part of the decision journey without ever seeing you.
That is the problem generative engine optimization is designed to solve.
Search results are no longer the only place where discovery happens.
Buyers can ask an AI system to summarize a market, compare approaches, recommend providers, identify specialists, explain tradeoffs, and narrow a long list to a short one - all before they visit a company website.
That changes the job of marketing.
Ranking still matters. But ranking alone is not enough. Your brand also has to be understood, corroborated, and trusted across the sources AI systems use to build an answer.
Your website is one signal. Thought leadership is another. Third-party media coverage, expert commentary, structured information, reviews, citations, and the broader context around your brand all shape what a model can confidently say about you.
The new question is not simply, "Can prospects find us?"
It is: "When AI helps a prospect decide who belongs on the shortlist, are we part of the answer?"
Improving AI search visibility requires three workstreams running together.
We rebuild the content that matters most around clear definitions, direct answers, structured summaries, question-and-answer patterns, internal linking, schema, entity clarity, and stronger evidence.
This is not about stuffing pages with AI keywords. It is about reducing ambiguity and giving search engines and language models cleaner, more useful information to work with.
Client Result
In a recent client program, this integrated SEO and GEO work coincided with a rise to 476 ranking keywords, up 27% from March to August, including multiple new #1 and #2 positions and expanding visibility in Google AI Overviews.
AI systems do not learn your credibility from your website alone. They also look to sources outside your domain.
Marketri develops the PR and earned-authority footprint around the topics you need to own: targeted media outreach, bylined content, expert commentary, source relationships, and placements in publications that influence both buyers and AI systems.
Client Result
For one client, Marketri secured 25 PR placements from April through August against a goal pace of 10. In August, all five placements were classified as high AI visibility, strengthening the third-party authority surrounding priority topics.
We monitor the prompts, topics, competitors, citations, and answer patterns that matter to your market.
That includes where your brand appears, how often competitors appear instead, which sources are shaping responses, and what measurable behavior follows when people click or convert from AI platforms.
Client Result
In the same recent client program, Marketri tracked 513 cumulative AI referral sessions from April through August, with 8 ChatGPT-attributed form submissions in August alone.
AI can influence a buyer without producing a clean referral click. A prospect might see your company in an AI-generated answer, remember the name, search for you later, click a branded result, visit directly, or encounter a third-party article the model surfaced first. That is why Marketri measures AI visibility through three connected signals.
| Signal | What We Ask |
|---|---|
| AI visibility and citations | Where do you appear? For which commercially important prompts? Which sources and entities shape the answer? |
| AI-attributed conversions | When AI platforms do pass referral data, what happens next? Are those visitors submitting forms, registering, or taking other high-intent actions? |
| Branded search and direct demand | As visibility grows, are more people seeking out the brand by name or arriving through channels where the original discovery source is no longer visible? |
A recent client report made the point clearly: AI referral sessions declined 24% month over month, but ChatGPT-attributed form submissions increased 167%. If we had measured the channel only by sessions, we would have missed the more important change.
Most companies still treat their website like a brochure they pay someone to update. In the age of AI, that is a liability. Here is what actually separates a high-performing B2B website now, drawn from rebuilding Marketri's own site from the ground up in about a month.
Read the ArticleHow ChatGPT, AI Overviews, and other AI tools are changing the way B2B buyers research vendors — and what your company can actually do about it.
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Take the AssessmentThe strongest AI visibility programs do not chase mentions for their own sake. They create a connected footprint around the topics that drive real buyer intent.
In one Marketri client engagement, the pattern looked like this:
The client's broader inbound inquiry volume was also 30% ahead year over year through August. We treat that as an important demand signal, but not as a clean AI-attribution claim. The reporting systems are still being improved to connect visibility to inquiry, opportunity, signed engagement, and revenue.
That distinction matters. Good GEO reporting should be ambitious about outcomes and conservative about attribution.
We identify the pages and topics that matter most commercially, then improve them for both human clarity and machine interpretation. Work can include structured summaries, direct-answer sections, FAQs, schema, entity clarity, evidence, internal linking, and content architecture.
We map the questions buyers ask AI systems, evaluate whether your company appears in the answers, and improve the content and authority signals that influence those responses.
GEO does not replace good SEO. We align the two so your technical foundation, high-intent search visibility, content, PR, and AI presence reinforce the same market position.
We build third-party credibility through targeted media outreach, contributed expertise, bylined articles, commentary, and placements in publications that matter to your buyers and to the information ecosystem AI systems rely on.
We monitor brand mentions, prompt-level visibility, competitor presence, citations, sources, and answer patterns across relevant AI platforms so you can see what is changing instead of guessing.
We configure reporting around the signals that can actually be measured: AI referrals, AI-attributed forms, branded search, direct demand, priority-query visibility, and the downstream CRM stages available in your stack.
Traditional SEO focuses on helping pages rank in search results and earn organic traffic.
AI visibility focuses on helping your company appear accurately in generated answers, comparisons, summaries, and recommendations.
The two overlap, but they are not the same.
A strong SEO page can still be ignored by an AI answer. An authoritative third-party source can influence an AI response even when it is not your own page. A buyer can be influenced by an AI-generated shortlist without ever creating an attributable website visit.
That is why our approach integrates SEO and GEO instead of choosing between them.
Depending on scope, an engagement can include:
The objective is not simply to "show up in ChatGPT." It is to build a durable, measurable presence across the AI-assisted discovery journey.
We are thrilled with the work that Marketri has done, and more importantly, the leads they have generated. From revamping our social strategies to building our website to producing media opportunities and brand videos, we’ve seen measurable results all around. We’re impressed with the team’s expertise, and we’ve really enjoyed working with them as well.
Gary Hutchinson
President, Modality
Scrubbed has worked with Deb Andrews, Trisha Gallagher, and the rest of the Marketri team for the past 3 years now. It won’t take much to research and compare what our brand looked like before Marketri, and how it looks like now. Spoiler Alert – a huge difference in look and feel. Marketri witnessed Scrubbed’s growth these past few years and it has been a fantastic experience working with them. I strongly recommend talking to Deb Andrews about your growth needs.
Vince De Leon
CEO, Scrubbed
B.F. Saul Insurance has worked with Deb Andrews, Katie Bergmann and the Marketri team for the last few years. Their expertise ranges from website/SEO, branding, ad campaigns, and events. I would highly recommend them – smart team with amazing ideas, proactive advice centered around the ROI, great listening skills, accountable, and a willingness to think outside of the box. Consummate professionals.
Jason Jones
President, B.F. Saul Insurance
It’s been a seamless integration, where we feel like the Marketri team is another department in our organization, and it’s not at all like a vendor-customer relationship. We’re working toward a common goal, side by side.
James Street
CEO, Epoch Solutions Group
If your buyers are using AI to decide who belongs on the shortlist, your company needs to be understandable, credible, and visible before the first sales conversation happens. Marketri can show you where you stand today, what the models are saying, which competitors are being surfaced, and what it will take to change the answer.
AI visibility is how often and how accurately your company appears when buyers use AI tools to research a market, compare providers, ask for recommendations, or build a shortlist. It includes whether the model understands your company, associates it with the right expertise, and cites or recommends it for commercially important questions.
Generative engine optimization, or GEO, is the practice of improving the information and authority signals that influence how generative AI systems understand, summarize, cite, and recommend a company or source. GEO can include content structure, direct answers, entity clarity, evidence, citations, schema, digital PR, and third-party authority.
No. SEO primarily focuses on search-engine rankings and organic traffic. GEO focuses on visibility inside AI-generated answers. The disciplines overlap, so Marketri integrates them: strong technical SEO, high-intent content, third-party authority, and clear brand signals all improve the information environment AI systems use.
Yes, and it can be tracked when AI platforms pass usable referral information. In one recent Marketri client program, ChatGPT-attributed website form submissions increased from 3 in July to 8 in August 2026, a 167% month-over-month increase. AI platforms represented 11% of all website form submissions that month. AI influence is broader than trackable referrals, however, so we also monitor visibility, citations, branded search, and direct demand.
Marketri measures three categories together: AI visibility and citations, AI-attributed conversions, and branded search/direct demand. We also track prompt-level competitor visibility, sources shaping the answers, AI referral sessions, and downstream CRM outcomes where the client's attribution setup supports it.
Because AI can influence a buyer without producing a referral click. In one client program, AI referral sessions fell in August while ChatGPT-attributed form submissions rose 167%. Referral traffic is useful, but it is only one part of the AI discovery journey.
AI systems use information from sources across the web, not only from your website. Credible third-party mentions can strengthen the evidence around your company, expertise, and category position. In one recent Marketri client program, all five August PR placements were classified as high AI visibility.
Timing depends on the client's starting point, category, content quality, existing authority, crawl/indexing behavior, and the prompts being measured. Some visibility signals can move relatively quickly, while durable authority generally requires sustained content, SEO, and earned-media work. We establish a baseline first so progress can be judged against the client's actual starting position.
We focus on the AI-assisted discovery experiences that matter to the client's buyers, which can include ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity, Claude, and other relevant answer engines. The exact tracking set should reflect where your market is actually researching.
That is the purpose of the baseline audit. We identify the commercially important questions, document where your company and competitors appear, trace the sources shaping those answers, and prioritize the content, authority, and technical changes most likely to improve your position.
Usually, yes - at least as an explicit workstream. Strong SEO is a valuable foundation, but AI systems can use different sources and signals when constructing answers. A GEO program adds prompt-level visibility tracking, answer analysis, third-party authority, and AI-attribution measurement that traditional SEO reporting often does not include.
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