Become visible where decision-makers conduct their research today

What happens when purchasing asks AI? 

Imagine the following scenario: An industrial company is looking for a supplier for a complex component solution. The purchasing manager opens an AI assistant, describes the requirement, and receives three supplier recommendations with source references. One of them is your company, including a link to your product page and a technical article by your engineering team. Your company is on the shortlist before the first personal contact has even taken place. 

This scenario is not a vision of the future. It describes what is already happening today. The question for commerce managers is: Is your company one of those that are visible in such moments? 

How is AI-powered search changing the customer journey? 

AI-powered search will not replace existing channels overnight. It complements them. But its share is growing rapidly: by 2025, AI platforms will have referred over a billion visits per month to websites, an increase of over 350% compared to the previous year. This traffic is proving to be particularly valuable. Visitors who arrive at a website via an AI recommendation spend an average of almost ten minutes there and convert significantly more often than visitors from traditional search engines. 

For commerce managers, this means that a channel is emerging that delivers qualified prospects. Not in the mass of traditional search engines, but with a quality that can make all the difference in B2B sales. 

What does it mean if my company doesn't appear there? 

If a decision-maker receives three AI recommendations and your company is not among them, the shortlist begins without you. That's not the end of the world. But it is a missed opportunity in a channel that is growing in importance. Conversely, those who are present there get a seat at the table before the competition has even begun. In a market where supplier selection is increasingly limited by upstream research, early AI visibility provides a structural advantage. 

Why are good Google rankings alone not enough? 

AI systems do not rely on Google rankings. They evaluate content according to their own criteria: factual structure, source quality, semantic consistency. Only about 12% of the URLs cited by AI systems are also in Google's top 10. Around 28% of the most frequently cited pages have no organic Google visibility at all. This does not mean that SEO is becoming worthless. It means that AI visibility requires additional, separate measures. 

What levers lead to AI visibility? 

Three areas of action have proven to be particularly effective: 

Build structured, machine-readable content:
AI systems prefer content with a clear factual structure, schema markup, and unique entities. The more precisely your content is structured, the more reliably an AI system can cite it. 

Strengthen authority signals:
Presence in specialist media, consistent brand mentions, and recognizable expertise increase the likelihood of being classified as a trustworthy source.

Regularly check how AI systems talk about you:
If you know how you are portrayed in AI responses, you can take targeted corrective action. Each of these levers will be explored in more depth in the subsequent articles in this series. 

When is the right time for an initial overview? 

Now. Not because there is cause for panic, but because the effort required for an initial assessment is manageable and the findings can be used immediately. Those who develop an understanding of their own position early on can later make more targeted decisions about which measures are worthwhile. If you want to get a basic understanding of the topic, we recommend our introductory article “Do we really need this?” as a starting point. 

Find out how your company is represented in AI systems today. Our GEO Readiness Check provides you with an initial assessment of your current situation, compact, non-binding, and with concrete recommendations.