Your Competitor Shows Up in ChatGPT. You Don't.

You asked ChatGPT for recommendations in your industry. Your competitor was mentioned. You weren't. This stings in a way that losing a Google ranking doesn't.

It's personal because it feels like the AI chose them over you. Like there's some objective reason they deserve to be recommended and you don't.

Why This Happens

ChatGPT doesn't rank websites the way Google does. It synthesizes information from what it learned during training and from real-time search. The brands it mentions are the ones that appear most prominently and consistently in the sources it trusts.

Research from Ahrefs analyzing over 75,000 brands found that about three out of four brands are invisible to ChatGPT. Being among the missing majority doesn't mean your business is worse. It means your competitor did something to build AI visibility that you haven't done yet.

The good news is that this is fixable. The signals AI uses are different from traditional SEO, but they're learnable.

Understanding Their Advantage

Before you can close the gap, you need to understand what your competitor is doing differently. Start by analyzing where they appear that you don't.

Check whether they're mentioned in industry publications, expert roundups, and authoritative lists. According to research from Onely, these types of mentions account for about 41 percent of what influences ChatGPT's brand recommendations. If your competitor has coverage in Forbes, industry trade publications, and "best of" lists while you don't, that's likely a major factor.

Look at their review presence. Reviews contribute roughly 16 percent to AI recommendation decisions. If they have more reviews, more detailed reviews, or reviews on more platforms, that matters.

Check their awards and accreditations. These signals account for about 18 percent of AI visibility influence. Industry awards, certifications, and official recognitions all help AI systems recognize brands as credible.

What You Can Do About It

The first step is building earned media presence. Get covered in publications your target customers read. This doesn't require massive PR budgets. Start with industry blogs, local publications, and niche outlets that cover your space.

Focus on being included in comparison content and expert roundups. When journalists or bloggers write "best tools for X" or "top companies in Y," you want to be part of those conversations. Reach out to writers who cover your industry. Offer to be a source. Provide genuine value.

Build your review presence strategically. Don't just ask for reviews. Ask satisfied customers to write detailed reviews that explain why they chose you and what specific problems you solved. Studies show that review content matters more than star ratings for how AI interprets brand quality.

The Content Gap

Your competitor might also have content that AI finds more useful to cite. AI systems prefer content that answers questions directly, contains original data or research, and provides clear, factual information.

Analysis from Semrush found that content clarity and easy summarization are the top factors in AI citation, accounting for 33 percent of what makes content likely to be referenced.

Look at your competitor's content. Is it more clearly structured? Does it answer common questions more directly? Does it contain statistics, research, or original insights that AI might want to cite?

Creating content that AI wants to reference isn't about keyword stuffing or traditional SEO tactics. It's about being genuinely helpful and authoritative on topics your customers care about.

Playing the Long Game

Closing the AI visibility gap won't happen overnight. Your competitor's advantage might have been building for years through consistent PR, content marketing, and reputation building.

But AI systems update their knowledge over time. The information they use for recommendations isn't static. As you build presence in the sources AI trusts, your visibility will improve.

The brands that start working on this now will be better positioned when AI search becomes even more dominant. Gartner predicts that traditional search volume will drop 25 percent by 2026. The gap between AI-visible brands and AI-invisible brands will only widen.

Tracking Your Progress

Once you start working on AI visibility, you need to track whether it's working. Manual spot-checks help, but AI responses vary based on how questions are phrased and when they're asked.

Systematic monitoring shows you trends over time. Are you starting to appear in responses where you didn't before? Is your competitor's dominance decreasing? Are there new queries where you're gaining ground?

Without measurement, you're guessing. With measurement, you can see what's working and double down on effective strategies.

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LLM Data Kit tracks how you and your competitors appear across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and more. See exactly where you stand and monitor changes as you build your AI visibility.