The AI visibility Playbook: How brands get included in AI answers - and why it matters for visibility

AI is revolutionising how consumers find and choose products, with more people than ever relying on AI overviews and AI tools like ChatGPT in every stage of the buying journey. Crucially, all of this can happen without clicking through to a website. This ‘zero click’ reality has opened up a whole new arena of competition for businesses to show up in AI answers, and has made it increasingly crucial that marketers consider their AI visibility playbook.

These AI systems don’t just randomly select information when generating answers, but instead prioritise content that is most relevant to the request, reasonably up-to-date, and from the trusted high-ranking sources. This raises a key question for brands: how can they make it more likely that their brand will be included in an AI-generated answer?

Much of a brand’s success in securing mentions and citations comes down to the three key pillars of AI search, the “3Rs”. These are relevance, recency, and ranking. Focusing on these, a business can explore how to make this new system work for them.

What are the 3 Rs?

The first of the 3Rs is relevance. Inclusion in AI answers is not driven by traditional markers of relevance like brand size or share of voice. Instead, to be considered relevant for AI answers, a brand’s content needs to be answering the right questions. Owned channels such as brand websites and social media profiles are incredibly powerful in this regard - but only if the content directly answers the specific question asked.

It’s best for brands to focus on creating content that clearly explains what the brand does, while leading with concise answers to the most likely or obvious user queries, as this will match the typical format in AI search. It’s also important for brands to make sure this content is consistently available across a range of external sources, with visibility and relevance being shaped by a brand’s wider digital ecosystem and footprint.

The next R is recency. AI systems are trained to prefer recently published or updated information, especially when conversations focus on more time-sensitive topics. With this in mind, it’s important that a brand’s content remains as fresh as possible, as stale content reduces the odds of being cited and therefore has an impact on visibility. By making regular updates to core brand pages and being quick to respond to industry developments, brands can establish themselves as credible sources for AI answers, time and time again.

The final R is ranking, with this referring to how many credible sources ‘talk’ about you, and what they say. This doesn’t mean appearing on the first page of Google or other search engine results, but if you’ll be recommended in an answer from an AI system. Among these sources, some of the most cited include social media, industry forums and online reviews - all platforms where human insight and sentiment is king.

With this in mind, it’s crucial for businesses to make sure they are where their customers are. Leveraging the high domain authority of these sites can be a great way to boost visibility and ensure information is more likely to be picked up by AI systems. For example, recent research highlights that actively collecting and responding to reviews on an open platform such as Trustpilot can increase AI citation rates from 1% up to 75.3%.

More than simply citing these profiles, AI tools actively use their content to inform responses. For example, AI tools will summarise customer feedback themes and paraphrase what reviewers say, not simply quote an overall rating. This makes open feedback platforms a key channel for businesses to gather customer feedback and ensure AI systems have an up-to-date and holistic view of your business. Both this and the likes of a talkative community in Reddit threads serve as ‘trust signals’ to AI that you’re a worthy recommendation.

What does this mean for businesses, and their visibility?

The ‘zero click’ era poses a challenge for businesses, but is one that brands can be ready to manage by building their own visibility playbook, based on the 3Rs framework. At the end of the day, if a brand wants to kickstart their AI visibility, I’d recommend focusing on making sure that the brand has provided everything an AI tool might be looking for. Remember that while AI tools are a new audience, they ultimately look to answer the questions and needs of human consumers - which are likely to be similar to what they were before the age of AI. By becoming the most relevant, up to date, and trusted brand in your sector the AI won’t just find you, but will recommend you.