- Is it really worth worrying about customers who don't visit your site?
- What is really happening in your customers' buying journey?
- How much have searches with no click to the site grown?
- What does this change in practice for your company's marketing?
- Three real-world scenarios: what changes for an e-commerce store, a professional firm and a manufacturer?
- What tools exist to monitor my brand's AI visibility?
- Why everyone is talking about it now: is the AI market really relevant for Italian companies?
- How to run an AI visibility audit: the concrete steps
- What mistakes are made most often when tackling this topic?
- How do I know if my AI visibility is improving over time?
- Is it worth adapting your strategy to AI discovery?
- How we see it at SHM
- Frequently Asked Questions
- 73% of brands don't appear in AI answers even though they rank on page one of Google: traditional visibility is no longer enough.
- Searches with no click to the site are rising: in Europe they have passed 26%, and with AI Overviews the zero-click rate reaches 83%.
- You need an audit of your presence on ChatGPT and Perplexity, plus a structured machine-readable content strategy to get found by AI assistants.
- Brands cited in AI Overviews get 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks than competitors that aren't cited.
A buyer purchases your product without ever opening your website: AI has already chosen for them. If your company isn't present in AI assistants' answers, you're losing customers you'll never know you lost.
Is it really worth worrying about customers who don't visit your site?
Yes, and the problem is already here: your potential customers use AI assistants to compare products and choose suppliers, often without ever opening your website. If you're not visible in those answers, you don't exist for them.
Imagine a purchasing manager at a manufacturing SME. They're looking for a new component supplier. They ask ChatGPT: the AI lists three names, explains each one's strengths, and they choose. Your site is never opened. And yet you were on Google's first page.
This scenario, described by MarTech, is not an isolated case. It's the new AI-mediated buying journey, and it already affects Italian companies in every industry today.
| Your situation | Worth acting? | why |
|---|---|---|
| You're on page one of Google but not in AI answers | Yes Urgent | 73% of brands in this position have no AI mentions (Wellows/Onely, 2026) |
| You have B2B customers who run complex searches | Yes Top priority | B2B buyers use AI to shortlist and compare suppliers |
| You sell technical or specialized products | Yes High priority | AI summarizes specs and compares them: you need to be readable by machines |
| You already have solid, stable organic traffic | Yes Quote | Organic CTR is falling: protecting AI visibility means defending revenue |
| You're a small local business with loyal customers | Currency | The impact is smaller but growing: it's best to start with an audit |
What is really happening in your customers' buying journey?
AI assistants filter, compare and recommend products and suppliers before the customer opens any website. The customer journey has become invisible for companies that don't cover these channels.
The change didn't arrive with an announcement. It happened purchase by purchase, as the source tells it: a consumer buys a smartphone without visiting any brand website, because an AI assistant has already done the comparison for them.
For companies, the problem isn't just losing visibility. It's losing journey data: you don't know what criteria the customer used, which competitors they considered, why they chose or rejected your product.
How much have searches with no click to the site grown?
Searches that end without opening any external site are rising sharply, driven by Google's AI Overviews and assistants like ChatGPT. Traditional organic traffic is eroding.
Zero-click searches, where users get the answer directly on the results page without clicking any site, rose from 23.6% to 26.1% in Europe between March 2024 and March 2025, according to Search Engine Land and SparkToro. Organic CTR (the percentage of users who click on results) fell to 43.5%.
The numbers get worse when Google's AI Overview comes into play: in that case, according to Semrush across more than 200,000 keywords, 83% of searches generate no clicks to any site. Users read the AI-generated answer and stop there.
What does this change in practice for your company's marketing?
Marketing has to stop optimizing only for Google and start optimizing for the machines that read, interpret and recommend your brand to users. This requires structured content, verifiable data and an active presence on the sources AI consults.
The logic is the same as classic SEO: optimizing for how a system finds and understands you. But the system has changed. It's no longer just Google, but language models like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, which read the web differently.
Two acronyms are used in the industry to describe this approach: AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). Both aim to make your brand understandable and trustworthy for AI, not just for human users.
- 1 · Marketing / SEOAI visibility auditCheck if and how your brand appears in ChatGPT and Perplexity answers and in Google's AI Overviews for the queries that matter.
- 2 · Marketing / ContentStructure your data for machinesBuild a base of machine-readable content: technical specs, structured FAQs, schema markup, data verifiable from third-party sources.
- 3 · PR / CommunicationsIncrease third-party mentionsBrands with more external web citations receive on average 10 times more mentions in AI Overviews (Ahrefs, 2025). Focus on digital PR and authoritative content.
- 4 · Marketing / AnalyticsChange your tracking metricsAdd to your dashboard: AI mentions, share of voice in AI answers, AI referral traffic. Counting visits and sessions is no longer enough.
- 5 · ManagementAssign ownershipAppoint an AI visibility lead: someone who makes sure your brand is represented correctly in AI discovery systems.
Three real-world scenarios: what changes for an e-commerce store, a professional firm and a manufacturer?
The impact of AI discovery varies by industry, but the mechanism is the same: if AI doesn't cite you, you lose customers without knowing it. Here are three illustrative examples.
Illustrative examples: numbers are meant to show the reasoning, they are not real customer data.
| Company type | Current scenario | Concrete risk | Priority action |
|---|---|---|---|
| E-commerce store selling technical products | On page one of Google for 50 product keywords | AI compares products and recommends competitors with more structured product pages | Enrich product pages with machine-readable data and schema markup |
| B2B consulting firm | Great rankings on industry queries | Potential clients ask AI 'who are the best consultants for X' and the firm doesn't show up | Increase mentions on authoritative industry sources and specialized directories |
| Manufacturing company | Site with a detailed technical catalog | AI can't read the specs in PDFs and leaves them out of its answers | Convert the catalog to a structured format and publish technical FAQs in HTML |
What tools exist to monitor my brand's AI visibility?
There are specific tools for tracking mentions of your brand in AI answers, separate from traditional SEO tools. The right choice depends on your budget and the depth of analysis you need.
Monitoring AI visibility is a fast-moving field. You can dig deeper into the comparison between the main platforms in our article on Profound vs Bluefish for AI visibility, which analyzes the two most widely used tools right now.
For integrated tracking across classic SEO and AI, also read how Google and ChatGPT are changing the rules of SEO monitoring.
| Tool / Approach | What it monitors | Who they're for | Indicative cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Profound / Bluefish | Brand mentions on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini | Mid-market companies with a dedicated budget | From ~$500/month |
| Semrush AI Toolkit | Google AI Overviews, keywords with an AI answer | Those already using Semrush for SEO | Included in advanced plans |
| Systematic manual testing | AI answers for key industry queries | SMEs with a limited budget, to get started | Free (internal time) |
| Google Search Console | Impressions and CTR on queries with AI Overview | Everyone, as a starting point | Free |
| Digital PR + mention monitoring | Citations on third-party sources that AI consults | Companies with an active editorial strategy | Variable |
Why everyone is talking about it now: is the AI market really relevant for Italian companies?
Yes: the Italian AI market reached €1.8 billion in 2025, growing 50%, yet 76% of SMEs have not invested yet. Those who move now gain a real competitive advantage.
According to the Artificial Intelligence Observatory of Politecnico di Milano, the Italian AI market reached €1.8 billion in 2025, up 50% from the previous year. Yet 76% of Italian SMEs have not made any AI investment so far.
Meanwhile, ChatGPT Search reached 41.3 million monthly active users in Europe in the six months ending March 2025, up from 11.2 million six months earlier. Your customers are already there.
How to run an AI visibility audit: the concrete steps
An AI visibility audit takes less than a week, using free tools and a few hours of work. The goal is to understand where you appear, where you're missing, and why.
Before investing in paid tools, you can do a first manual mapping. Here's how to go about it systematically.
- 1 · MarketingList your top 10 queriesPick the questions your customers would ask an AI assistant to find a supplier like you. Include comparison queries ('best suppliers of X', 'difference between A and B').
- 2 · MarketingTest on ChatGPT and PerplexityAsk the same questions on ChatGPT and Perplexity. Note whether your brand appears, in what position and with what information. Repeat with different accounts to reduce personalization.
- 3 · SEO / ITCheck Google Search ConsoleFilter the queries that show AI Overview and analyze the CTR. A drop in CTR on stable queries is often the first sign that AI Overview is intercepting your traffic.
- 4 · Marketing / PRMap the sources AI citesWhen AI answers, it cites sources. Identify which sites, directories and publications are cited for your industry: these are the sources where you need to be present.
- 5 · ManagementSet a baseline and a cadenceDocument your current results as a starting point. Repeat the audit every 30-60 days to measure progress.
What mistakes are made most often when tackling this topic?
The most common mistake is thinking it's enough to optimize your existing content for AI, without working on data structure and your presence on third-party sources. The second is not measuring anything.
Many companies stop at the first step: they rewrite a few pages of the site in a more "AI answer" tone. It's not enough. AI doesn't only read your site: it reads the entire web and builds an image of your brand from dozens of different sources.
To understand how AI cites sources and what really matters for visibility, read our article on how ChatGPT cites primary sources and what it means for your strategy.
| Common mistake | Why it is a problem | What to do instead |
|---|---|---|
| Optimizing only your own site and ignoring third-party sources | AI weighs external mentions more heavily than backlinks (correlation 0.664 vs 0.218, Ahrefs 2025) | Invest in digital PR and presence on authoritative industry directories |
| Using PDFs and unstructured catalogs | AI can't read and cite content in PDFs | Convert to structured HTML with schema markup |
| Not measuring AI visibility | You can't tell whether you're improving or declining | Add AI mentions and AI share of voice to your monthly dashboard |
| Waiting for the problem to become obvious | The traffic drop comes months after the loss of AI visibility | Run the audit now, while there's still room to get ahead |
| Delegating everything to an automated tool | Tools measure, but they don't decide your editorial strategy | Pair the tool with a person responsible for AI visibility |
How do I know if my AI visibility is improving over time?
You need specific indicators, different from traditional SEO ones. Combining quantitative data with qualitative tests gives the most reliable picture.
Monitoring is also key to understanding what is changing with Google's AI Overviews. You can learn more in our article on SEO without the Google index, which explains how organic visibility changes in an ecosystem dominated by AI.
| Indicator | How it is measured | Recommended frequency | Positive signal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand mentions on ChatGPT / Perplexity | Manual tests or dedicated tools (Profound, Bluefish) | Monthly | The brand appears in the top answers for key queries |
| Organic CTR on queries with AI Overview | Google Search Console, AI Overview filter | Weekly | CTR stable or growing despite AI Overview |
| Citations on authoritative third-party sources | Mention monitoring (e.g. Google Alerts, Mention) | Monthly | Increase in citations on sites that AI consults |
| AI referral traffic | Google Analytics 4, AI sources segment | Monthly | Growth in traffic from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing AI |
| Position in AI answers for comparison queries | Systematic manual testing | Quarterly | The brand appears in the top 3 options cited by AI |
Is it worth adapting your strategy to AI discovery?
It depends on your current situation, but for most B2B companies and e-commerce stores with technical products the answer is yes, and the best time to start is now.
It's worth it if your ideal customer does complex research before buying, you operate in B2B markets or sell technical products, and you want to protect organic traffic from the erosion caused by AI Overviews.
Somewhere in between: you're a B2C company with simple products and loyal customers. The impact is real, but you can start with a light audit and act gradually.
Not yet if you're a small local business whose customers come mainly through word of mouth and direct relationships. The urgency is lower, but keep the topic on your radar.
How we see it at SHM
For us, AI is a means — a powerful one, but still a means. The real point isn't chasing every new platform, but understanding where your customers actually are and building a presence that lasts.
We worked with a specialized industrial manufacturer whose site was technically solid but almost invisible in international markets. The problem wasn't the product: the information wasn't structured in a way that search engines — and today AI too — could read and cite it. A full technical audit, a rework of the content architecture and the introduction of schema markup changed the picture. The same principle applies to AI visibility today: if machines don't understand who you are, they won't cite you.
If you want to understand where your brand stands in AI answers and how to improve your position, the starting point is our hub dedicated to SEO and AI visibility. For a structured engagement, you can explore our SEO for AI service, or consider a path of strategic AI integration to adapt your entire marketing structure. If you'd like to start with in-house training, we also offer our AI training for companies program.
The digital PR strategy to increase mentions on third-party sources — the ones AI consults — is also an area where we work hands-on. You can learn how it works in our article on digital PR and AI to get cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. According to Wellows and Onely (2026), 73% of brands on Google's first page don't appear in AI assistants' answers. Google visibility and AI visibility are two different things: the first doesn't guarantee the second. You need a specific audit to understand where you stand.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) are approaches that optimize your brand's presence for AI answer engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity, not just for Google. The main difference is that AI doesn't just index pages: it reads, synthesizes and recommends, giving more weight to structured data, verifiable sources and mentions on authoritative third-party sites.
The simplest way is to run manual tests: ask the questions your customers would ask an AI assistant and check whether your brand shows up. For systematic monitoring there are dedicated tools such as Profound and Bluefish. Google Search Console, instead, shows the impact of AI Overviews on organic CTR.
According to an Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands (2025), the correlation between third-party web mentions and visibility in AI Overviews is 0.664, far higher than that of backlinks (0.218). This means that being cited on authoritative sources matters much more than traditional links for being recommended by AI.
There are three main steps: structure your content with schema markup (a format machines read easily), convert catalogs and technical specs from PDF to structured HTML, and create detailed FAQs that answer your customers' real questions. But your site alone isn't enough: you also need an active presence on third-party sources that AI consults.
The first signs appear within 60-90 days for the site's technical optimizations. Presence in AI answers also depends on external factors such as mentions on third-party sources, which require an ongoing digital PR strategy. The initial audit can be completed in a week, even with internal resources.
The customer who has never visited your site isn't a future problem: they're the customer you lost yesterday without knowing it.
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