What and Why Visibility in Search
Understanding the fundamentals of visibility in AI search and why it matters for your brand.
Visibility is the Capstone Metric for Search
All search is now AI search.
Whether someone types a query into Google and gets an AI Overview, asks ChatGPT for recommendations, or uses Perplexity to research products, AI is mediating the search experience.
This means the old playbook of optimizing for rankings doesn’t work anymore.
Visibility is the new currency of search.
Not whether you rank #3 for a keyword. Whether you’re mentioned in the answer at all.
Why We Focus on Visibility Instead of Rankings
Traditional SEO focused on rankings because rankings were predictable and measurable. If you ranked #1 for “project management software,” you knew what that meant.
But things are changing:
AI decides what’s relevant: You don’t control whether you appear. The AI system decides if your brand is relevant to the question being asked.
No fixed positions: There’s no “position 3” in a conversational AI response. You’re either mentioned or you’re not. And if you are mentioned, it’s alongside 3-5 competitors in the same breath.
Context shifts constantly: Ask the same question today and tomorrow and you might get different results. Phrasing matters. Time of day matters. The user’s conversation history matters.
The traditional ranking game assumed a static SERP. AI search is fluid, contextual, and inconsistent.
That’s why we measure visibility—whether you’re in the conversation—not where you rank on a page.
You Earn Visibility Through Groundwork
Visibility isn’t something you optimize for directly.
You earn visibility through doing the right groundwork in lots of other areas:
- Citations: Getting mentioned in authoritative sources that AI services reference
- Content strategy: Making sure your content is in the right place and answers the right questions
- Strategic distribution: Establishing clear, factual information about your brand across the web
You can’t trick AI into mentioning you. You build visibility by creating the conditions where AI systems naturally reference your brand when it’s relevant.
Visibility is the result of comprehensive, authoritative content about your business being available where AI looks for answers.
Where Visibility Matters Most
Not all visibility is created equal. The questions you need to be visible for depend on where users are in their buying journey.
| Stage | Volume | Intent | Strategic Value | Example Questions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top of Funnel | High | Low | Declining | “What is CRM software?” “How do I manage remote teams?” “What is project management?” |
| Middle/Bottom of Funnel | Medium | High | Critical | “Best CRM for small businesses” “Salesforce vs HubSpot” “What does [product] cost?” “Is [product] worth the price?” |
| Brand Questions | Low | Very High | Essential | “What does [company] do?” “Is [company] reliable?” “Does [product] work with [integration]?” “[Company] pricing” |
Top of Funnel: High Volume, Low Intent
Top-of-funnel searches are the classic broad queries: “What is project management software?” or “How do I manage remote teams?”
These have huge search volume. They’re also increasingly less workable as a visibility strategy.
Why? Because AI answers these questions directly without sending traffic anywhere. Someone asks “what is CRM software?” and gets a comprehensive answer. They’re satisfied and they typically don’t click through even when citations are present.
Middle and Bottom of Funnel: Where It Matters
This is where visibility becomes absolutely vital.
High-intent searches are where people are actively evaluating and making decisions:
- “Best CRM for small businesses”
- “Salesforce vs HubSpot”
- “Is [your product] worth the price?”
- “What does [your product] cost?”
This is your best opportunity to influence the AI response as competition is typically lower and there’s a lot more direct avenues for your content to be picked up and indexed by AI services.
Focus not just on showing up, but on showing up with very positive sentiment.
Distribute content to social platforms, Reddit, LinkedIn, and other communities and review sites to show up in more AI responses.
ChatGPT is now the most popular and least well-trained representative of our company.
- Literally Everybody
Brand Questions
- “What does [your company] do?”
- “Who founded [your company]?”
- “Is [your company] reliable?”
- “Does [your product] work with [integration]?”
Are all questions that were not typically considered to be “marketing” or “SEO” questions, but in the new reality of AI search, they absolutely are.
Here it’s important to track both your visibility, but also that the AI services aren’t hallucinating key aspects of your business.
Tracking Visibility
Run a free Knowatoa site report to see which sources AI services are citing when they mention your brand or industry. The report you get initially will cover a snapshot of your current citation profile, but the 7 day free trial.
At Knowatoa, we help you track visibility across all major AI services and identify where you need to focus. We measure what matters—whether you’re in the conversation when it counts—not vanity metrics like keyword rankings.
Next Steps: Learn how sentiment affects whether visibility converts into recommendations → Continue to AI Search and Sentiment