Storm Brain’s AEO/GEO Results: Real Client Wins in AI Search Visibility 

Most agencies are still writing think pieces about why AEO and GEO matter.

We’re already moving the numbers.

While a lot of the market is trying to figure out whether AI search visibility is real, Storm Brain clients are showing up in ChatGPT answers, earning Perplexity citations, and out-positioning competitors inside the AI-generated responses their buyers actually read.

This isn’t a “why it matters” article. It’s a “here’s what happened” article.

Below are documented client wins across multiple industries: new ChatGPT citations, Perplexity citations, AI mentions built from zero, competitive visibility gains, and AI Visibility Scores tracking well above the platform average. The broader context on AI search is here too, but it sits where it belongs, in support of the results.

AEO/GEO Is Already Producing Measurable Results

There’s a version of the AI search conversation that stays theoretical forever. Webinars about the future. Predictions about 2027. A lot of hand-waving about “the coming shift.”

The shift already came.

The brands we work with are being cited, mentioned, and recommended inside AI answers right now, for the queries their buyers run when they’re close to a decision. That’s the whole game. Not impressions. Not vanity rankings. Actual presence in the answer a customer reads before they ever reach a website.

Here’s what that looks like in practice.

The Gap Between Talking About AEO and Doing It

The market is loud about AI search right now. Everyone has a framework. Everyone has a webinar. Far fewer have a client they can point to and say, “here’s the number, here’s when it moved, here’s what we did.”

That’s the difference we care about. AEO and GEO are easy to theorize and hard to execute, because the work isn’t a single tactic. It’s content structured for AI extraction, technical signals AI crawlers can read, authority built across the sources AI trusts, and consistent tracking to see what’s actually landing. Most teams do one of those and call it a strategy. (If you’re still untangling how that work differs from traditional SEO, our breakdown of AEO vs. SEO is a useful starting point.)

The results below came from doing all of it, in sequence, and measuring the whole way.

What We Mean by “Measurable”

AI visibility used to feel like a black box. You couldn’t see what AI said about you, so you assumed it didn’t matter.

It matters, and it’s measurable. We track new ChatGPT citations, Perplexity citations, total AI mentions, share of voice against named competitors, and an AI Visibility Score that benchmarks a brand against the platform average across the engines that count.

When those numbers move, that’s not a feeling. That’s a result.

The reason this matters more than a traditional ranking report is that AI visibility is where the buying decision is increasingly being shaped. A keyword ranking tells you where you sit on a page a buyer may never scroll. A citation in a ChatGPT answer tells you that you were in the room when the buyer asked the question that mattered. There’s also a meaningful difference between being mentioned and being recommended, which is worth understanding before reading the numbers below. We covered that distinction in depth in Why Some Brands Get Recommended by AI.

Case Study: NuFlow’s Growth in AI Search Visibility

NuFlow is the clearest proof point we have of what a focused AI Search Optimization strategy can do in a short window.

The starting position was familiar: near-zero presence in AI results. NuFlow existed, but when buyers asked AI about the category, the brand wasn’t in the answer. It was the most common failure mode we see, and the most fixable.

Then the numbers moved.

The Starting Point: Near-Zero AI Presence

Before the work began, NuFlow was effectively invisible in AI search. Search the category in ChatGPT and the brand didn’t surface. Ask for a recommendation and the answer named other companies. The brand had a real business and a real reputation, but none of that was translating into the AI-generated answers buyers were starting to rely on.

This is the position most brands are in right now, whether they know it or not. Being absent from AI results doesn’t usually mean AI has judged you and found you wanting. It means AI doesn’t have enough clear, consistent, structured signals to confidently include you. The brand is there. The signals aren’t. That gap is what the work closes. (If you want to see exactly what AI is saying about your brand today, our guide to running a 30-minute AI brand audit walks through how to check.)

+27 New ChatGPT Citations in 90 Days

In the first 90 days, NuFlow earned 27 new ChatGPT citations. That’s 27 new moments where the brand showed up as a referenced source inside answers it was previously absent from.

Citations are the unit that matters here. Each one is a place where AI now reaches for NuFlow when it builds a response, instead of reaching for someone else. And 90 days is fast. Independent timelines for AI visibility work generally put meaningful movement in the three-to-six-month range, so getting 27 new citations inside the first quarter put NuFlow ahead of the curve, not just ahead of where it started.

From Near-Zero Presence to Active LLM Results

The bigger story is the category shift. AI Search Optimization moved NuFlow from near-zero AI presence into active LLM results. The brand went from invisible to part of the conversation, which is the hardest and most valuable jump to make.

Getting named the first time is the threshold. Once a brand crosses it, momentum compounds, because AI systems reinforce the patterns they already see. The more consistently NuFlow showed up as a credible answer, the more reasons AI had to keep surfacing it. Early visibility isn’t just a win in itself. It’s the foundation the next win is built on.

3.7% More Visibility Than Its Nearest Competitor

Presence is the floor. Competitive positioning is the ceiling.

NuFlow now holds 3.7% more AI visibility than its nearest competitor and 44% more than the next competitor after that. In a space where AI hands buyers a short list, that margin is the difference between being the recommendation and being the runner-up nobody clicks.

Think about how a buyer actually uses AI here. They don’t read ten results and weigh them. They ask a question, get a synthesized answer, and act on it. The brand AI mentions first, describes most confidently, and recommends most often is the one that wins the consideration. Visibility share is a direct proxy for that. Being 3.7% ahead of your closest rival and 44% ahead of the next means that when the category comes up, NuFlow is more likely to be the name AI puts forward.

How NuFlow Got There

NuFlow’s results came from intentional work, not luck and not volume. The campaign combined technical optimization so AI could cleanly access and parse the brand’s content, content signals structured around the questions buyers actually ask, authority-building across the third-party sources AI leans on, and ongoing visibility tracking to see what was moving and where to push next.

None of those pieces works alone. Great content that AI can’t crawl stays invisible. Clean technical signals with thin content give AI nothing to recommend. Authority without consistency confuses the model rather than convincing it. The reason the numbers moved is that the pieces reinforced each other, and the tracking made it possible to keep tuning instead of guessing. That’s the point: this was engineered, and engineered things can be repeated.

More Storm Brain Wins Across AI Search Platforms

NuFlow isn’t a one-off, and it isn’t a one-industry story. The same approach has produced measurable gains for clients in very different categories. A few proof points from the field.

Hampton Fitness: +144 New AI Citations Across Two Platforms

Hampton Fitness earned 144 new AI citations across ChatGPT and Perplexity, establishing a multi-platform LLM presence on two major AI search engines at the same time.

Multi-platform matters more than most brands realize. Visibility on one engine doesn’t carry over to another. Each one pulls from different sources, weighs trust differently, and builds its own short lists, so showing up across both is a structural advantage, not a coincidence. A brand that wins only on ChatGPT is leaving every Perplexity-driven decision on the table, and vice versa. Hampton Fitness built presence on both, which means it shows up regardless of which tool the buyer happens to open.

That 144-citation footprint also speaks to durability. A brand cited across multiple platforms has a more resilient AI presence than one concentrated on a single engine, because no single model update or sourcing change can erase it overnight.

Moving Company: 122 ChatGPT Mentions Built From Zero

A moving company client built 122 ChatGPT mentions from a standing start. AI Search Optimization created a measurable LLM presence from scratch in six months, in a local-services category where most competitors still have no AI footprint at all.

This is what “built from zero” actually means. Not optimized, not improved. Created. The brand went from having no presence in AI answers to being mentioned 122 times across the queries that matter for its business.

Local services is a telling category to win in, because it’s one where almost nobody is paying attention to AI search yet. That’s exactly why it’s an opportunity. When competitors haven’t established any AI presence, the brand that moves first doesn’t just gain visibility, it gets learned as the answer while the category is still wide open. Six months in, this client isn’t fighting to displace an established pattern. It’s becoming the pattern.

Financial Services Firm: 35% AI Visibility Score vs. a 21.1% Average

A financial services client reached a 35% AI Visibility Score against a 21.1% platform average. That’s AI presence tracking 66% above the industry norm across every monitored platform.

Regulated industries are some of the hardest places to win AI visibility, because AI tends to hedge when the stakes of wrong information are high. In finance, healthcare, and law, AI defaults to cautious, non-committal language unless it has strong, consistent, trustworthy signals to draw on. That caution is a real barrier, and it’s why a lot of regulated brands stay stuck at or below the category average.

Beating that average by 66% is a strong signal that the underlying trust architecture is doing its job. It means the brand gave AI enough credible, corroborated information to recommend it with confidence instead of hedging. In a category built on trust, that’s not a vanity metric. It’s the whole proposition, reflected in how AI talks about the firm.

The Pattern Across All Four

Four clients, four industries, four different starting points. Plumbing technology, fitness manufacturing, local moving, regulated finance. The throughline isn’t the category. It’s the outcome: measurable AI visibility, built on purpose, tracked the whole way.

That’s what tells us this is repeatable. If the wins only happened in one vertical, you could chalk it up to a quirk of that market. Across four very different ones, the common factor is the approach, not the industry. AI search rewards the same fundamentals everywhere, and brands that invest in them see movement regardless of what they sell.

Why These Results Matter in Today’s Search Landscape

Now the context. These wins land the way they do because of where search is heading, and the data backing that shift is no longer speculative.

AI search behavior is growing fast, and it’s changing how customers discover, compare, and evaluate brands before they ever touch a traditional search result. Buyers increasingly form an opinion inside the AI answer itself, where recommendations are summarized for them, which means the click to your site, if it happens at all, comes after the decision is half made.

That’s why ranking on Google is no longer the finish line. The real question is whether your brand is being cited, mentioned, or recommended in AI-generated answers, because that’s where the comparison is happening.

The Numbers Behind the Shift

The data tells the story:

• 97% of digital marketing leaders say AEO/GEO delivered positive results in 2025. That figure comes from Conductor’s 2026 AEO/GEO CMO Investment Report, based on a survey of more than 250 enterprise CMOs and senior digital leaders, who reported AEO/GEO had a positive impact on the marketing funnel. AEO/GEO also ranked as their number one strategic marketing priority for 2026, which tells you this isn’t a side experiment anymore. It’s where budgets and attention are moving.
• AI search visitors are worth roughly 4.4x more than traditional organic visitors. That comes from Semrush’s June 2025 study of more than 500 high-value topics, which found AI-referred visitors convert at substantially higher rates because they arrive pre-qualified. The AI already compared the options and vetted you before the click, so the visitor shows up further along in the decision. Conversion premiums vary widely by industry and study, but the direction is consistent across every credible dataset: AI-referred traffic is higher-intent traffic.
• 85% of B2B buyers think more highly of a vendor when an AI chatbot recommends it. From G2’s 2026 Answer Economy report, based on a March 2026 survey of more than 1,000 B2B buyers. The same report found AI chatbots are now the number one source influencing buyer shortlists, and that 69% of buyers chose a different vendor than they originally planned based on AI guidance. Being in the answer doesn’t just earn a click. It earns credibility.
• Nearly 60% of consumers now use AI tools when researching purchases. That comes from University of Virginia Darden School of Business research, drawing on consumer surveys tracked by Professor Luca Cian. The same research found a striking share of people now trust AI recommendations more than a friend’s for certain decisions, a meaningful shift in who, or what, shapes a purchase.
• ChatGPT surpassed 800 million weekly users in late 2025 and has since climbed past 900 million. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the 800 million milestone at the company’s DevDay in October 2025, and by February 2026 OpenAI reported 900 million weekly active users. ChatGPT also closed 2025 as one of the most-downloaded apps in Apple’s App Store. This is not a niche tool. It’s a mainstream front door to information, and it’s where a growing share of your buyers start.
• Meaningful AI visibility improvements typically take 3 to 6 months. Independent timelines from WebFX and others converge on the same window: early signals in the first weeks, repeat citations within a few months, and stronger, more defensible visibility by the three-to-six-month mark. That cuts both ways. Results are achievable on a real timeline, and every quarter you wait is a quarter a competitor can use to get learned as the answer first.

What the Data Adds Up To

Put those together and the picture is simple. Customers are forming brand impressions inside AI answers. That traffic is the highest-intent traffic available. And the brands building visibility now are the ones AI will keep recommending later.

There’s a compounding dynamic underneath all of it that’s easy to miss. AI systems reinforce the patterns they already see. A brand that earns citations today becomes a more likely answer tomorrow, which earns it more citations, which makes it more likely still. Early movers aren’t just ahead. They’re building an advantage that gets harder to overtake the longer it runs. That’s the real reason “AI visibility is a 2027 problem” is a dangerous assumption. By 2027, the defaults may already be set.

What These Wins Show About Storm Brain’s AEO/GEO Approach

Step back from any single client and a pattern emerges. Every result above came from the same focus: measurable visibility outcomes, not activity for its own sake.

In practice, that means a few things.

We Optimize for Citations and Mentions, Not Impressions

The objective is to be in the answer. We work to increase the citations and mentions a brand earns inside AI-generated responses, because that’s the moment that shapes a buyer’s thinking. A citation is a vote of confidence from the model, and every additional one makes the next more likely. That’s what turned NuFlow’s first appearances into a 27-citation quarter and the moving company’s standing start into 122 mentions.

We Build Competitive Visibility, Not Just Presence

Being present is the floor. Being positioned ahead of the field is the goal. We track share of voice against named competitors so a brand isn’t just showing up, it’s showing up stronger than the alternatives, the way NuFlow now sits ahead of its nearest competitors by a measurable margin. In a category where AI hands buyers a short list, the gap between first mention and third mention is the gap between winning and losing the consideration.

We Build Across Multiple Platforms

Winning on ChatGPT and ignoring Perplexity leaves half the opportunity on the table. Each AI platform pulls from its own sources and builds its own answers, so a real AI visibility strategy targets more than one, the way Hampton Fitness’s multi-platform footprint spans both major engines. Multi-platform presence is also more durable, because it isn’t exposed to a single model’s sourcing changes.

We Track Everything Over Time

AI responses shift, competitors move, and platforms update their models. Ongoing visibility measurement is how we tell what’s working, where a brand stands against the field, and where the next gain is. It’s also how a brand goes from guessing about its AI presence to actually knowing. The tracking isn’t a reporting afterthought. It’s the feedback loop that makes the rest of the work improvable instead of speculative.

We Show Brands Where They Stand and Where They Can Improve

Every engagement starts from a clear-eyed read of the current position: which prompts surface the brand, which surface competitors, what AI says when it does mention the brand, and where the biggest gaps are. From there, the path forward is specific rather than generic. Not “publish more content,” but “close this gap, on this platform, against this competitor.”

The throughline is intent. These outcomes are engineered, measured, and repeatable across industries, which is exactly why they hold up whether the client is a plumbing technology brand, a fitness manufacturer, a local mover, or a regulated financial firm. We don’t reveal the internal playbook, but the shape of it is no secret: figure out exactly how AI sees a brand today, then build the signals that change what it sees tomorrow.

Start With an AI Visibility Audit

If there’s one thing the results above make clear, it’s that you can’t improve what you can’t see.

Every one of these client stories started the same way: by figuring out exactly where the brand stood in AI search before changing anything. That’s what an AI Visibility Audit is for.

What the Audit Reveals

A Storm Brain AI Visibility Audit helps you understand:

• How your brand currently appears across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other AI-powered search environments.
• Whether you’re being cited, mentioned, or recommended in AI-generated answers, or missing from them entirely.
• Where competitors may be gaining stronger visibility than you.
• What opportunities exist to improve your AI search presence, and which ones move fastest.

It’s the same diagnostic foundation that preceded NuFlow’s 27 new citations and the financial firm’s above-average visibility score. You find out where you stand, then you build from there. If you want a sense of what a serious audit surfaces before you talk to us, our piece on what AI thinks about your brand shows the kinds of gaps these audits are built to catch.

Why the Audit Comes First

It’s tempting to skip straight to “doing AEO.” More content, more pages, more activity. But without knowing how AI currently reads your brand, that effort is a guess. You might be pouring resources into content when your real problem is inconsistent signals across third-party sources, or building authority when the actual gap is technical and AI can’t cleanly crawl what you already have.

The audit removes the guesswork. It tells you which problem you actually have, which means the work that follows is targeted instead of scattered. That’s the difference between spending a quarter and wasting one. Every client win above was built on knowing the starting position cold, then moving with intent from there.

Conclusion

AEO and GEO stopped being theoretical the moment clients started seeing real numbers move.

NuFlow went from near-zero AI presence to leading its competitors. Hampton Fitness built a 144-citation multi-platform footprint. A moving company created 122 ChatGPT mentions from nothing. A financial services firm beat its category’s AI visibility average by 66%. Different industries, same result: measurable visibility, intentionally built.

The broader landscape only sharpens why this matters. Buyers are forming impressions inside AI answers, that traffic converts at a higher rate than traditional search, and AI systems reward the brands that establish presence early by recommending them more often over time. The window where this is still an open field won’t stay open forever.

As AI search continues to shape how customers discover and evaluate brands, businesses need to understand where they stand. Storm Brain’s AI Visibility Audit helps identify how your brand appears across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other AI-powered search environments, where competitors may be gaining visibility, and what opportunities exist to improve your presence.

If your business is ready to understand its current AI visibility and uncover where it can grow, Storm Brain can help you start with a strategic AI Visibility Audit.