Over the past decade as an SEO expert, I’ve helped international corporations optimize their online visibility. I still do—SEO remains a critical channel for brand discovery and customer acquisition.
But something fundamental is shifting in how people find and evaluate brands.
The problem brands are facing
In recent years, I started observing a significant shift in how people search for information.
While companies were maintaining strong Google rankings, a new question emerged: “How do our brands appear when someone asks ChatGPT or other AI models for recommendations?”
For most companies, the answer is unclear.
When someone asks an AI model “Which airline has the best customer service?” or “Which online bank has no fees?” they don’t see 10 blue links. They see 3-5 direct recommendations. If your brand isn’t one of them, you don’t exist in that customer’s consideration set.
The shift is happening faster than most companies realize:
- Gen Z increasingly defaults to AI chat over traditional search
- Voice assistants now use LLMs for recommendations
- AI-powered search is being integrated into traditional search engines
- Customer journeys are becoming harder to track as AI interactions leave no traditional attribution trail
Brands are investing millions in SEO and digital marketing without clear visibility into how they appear in AI recommendations. They’re optimizing for one discovery channel while a new one grows in parallel.
The attribution challenge
Here’s what complicates planning: attribution is becoming fragmented.
When a customer asks ChatGPT for software recommendations, researches three options, and makes a purchase—there’s often no tracking pixel, no UTM parameter, no clear attribution path.
Your analytics might show “direct traffic.” Your attribution model doesn’t capture the AI interaction. Your marketing team optimizes based on incomplete data about how customers actually discover your brand.
Companies need visibility into this new channel, just as they have for SEO, paid search, and social media.
Why I built Knownful
Marketing teams had sophisticated tools for traditional search, paid advertising, and social media. But limited options for understanding AI recommendations at scale.
They couldn’t easily answer questions like:
- Does our brand appear in AI-generated recommendations compared to competitors?
- How visible are we across different AI models?
- Which product categories do AI models associate with our brand?
- What sources are AI models learning from about our company?
So I built Knownful to fill this specific gap in the market.
Knownful focuses exclusively on competitive AI visibility analysis. We provide the data marketing teams need to benchmark their position in this emerging channel.
- Competitive visibility scoring across AI answers
- Category-level performance analysis
- Source attribution to understand what drives AI mentions
- Industry-specific insights from comprehensive studies
What Knownful does
Knownful provides AI visibility analysis through a systematic methodology:
1. Competitive Benchmarking We analyze how your brand appears across AI answers compared to competitors, providing a visibility score that shows exactly where you stand.
2. Category Analysis We break down visibility by product category, search intent, and customer journey stage, revealing where you’re winning and where you’re invisible.
3. Source Attribution We identify which websites and content AI models reference when discussing your brand, showing what’s driving your AI visibility.
4. Strategic Recommendations We provide specific, actionable strategies to improve AI visibility based on your competitive position and industry dynamics.
Interested in understanding your brand’s AI visibility compared to competitors? I can provide a complete private audit with visibility data, competitive analysis, and a personalized 10-minute video breakdown. Contact me →
Who Knownful serves
Knownful is built for:
- Marketing leaders who need to understand AI’s impact on customer acquisition
- Brand managers tracking competitive positioning across channels
- SEO professionals adapting their strategies for evolving search behavior
- Growth teams optimizing for emerging discovery channels
Our first comprehensive study analyzed 48 banks across 2,019 AI-generated mentions. The findings revealed significant visibility disparities: some brands appeared in 67% of recommendations while others—despite substantial market presence and marketing investment—had zero AI visibility.
The mission
My mission with Knownful is to help brands understand where they stand in AI recommendations as this channel becomes increasingly important for customer acquisition.
AI-powered search isn’t replacing traditional search overnight, but it’s growing as a parallel discovery channel. Brands that build visibility early will have an advantage.
Those that ignore it risk being absent from an increasingly important customer touchpoint.
What’s next
Knownful is launching with comprehensive industry studies—like our banking analysis—to map how AI models understand different sectors. Each study reveals patterns brands can use to inform their visibility strategies.
We’re also offering private AI visibility audits for individual companies. These audits provide the competitive intelligence marketing teams need to understand their position and develop strategies to improve it.
As SEO professionals adapt to changing search behavior and new discovery channels, understanding AI visibility becomes increasingly important. The question isn’t whether AI will become a significant customer acquisition channel.
The question is: how visible is your brand in AI recommendations today?
Interested in understanding your brand’s AI visibility compared to competitors? I can provide a complete private audit with visibility data, competitive analysis, and a personalized 10-minute video breakdown. Contact me →
