Case Study

From 8% to 35%: 340% Increase in AI Citations

How a B2B SaaS company restructured their content strategy and became one of the most-recommended brands in their category across AI answer engines.

Start Your AEO Journey Free
340%
Increase in AI citation rate
8%→35%
AI mention rate (start vs. end)
6 mo
Time to achieve results
#2
Category AI share of voice (from unranked)
Background

A strong product, invisible in AI answers.

A B2B SaaS company (name withheld at their request) selling project management software to mid-market professional services firms came to AnswerMap with a specific problem: they had strong Google rankings (#1-3 for several category keywords) but were almost invisible in AI-generated answers.

When potential buyers asked ChatGPT "what's the best project management software for consulting firms?" the AI recommended Monday.com, Asana, and ClickUp. The client's product — despite being highly rated on G2 and Capterra — was not mentioned. They were winning SEO but losing the AI layer.

"We were ranking first on Google but invisible to AI. Our AEs started getting into demos where prospects had already been told by ChatGPT what to buy — and we weren't on that list. That's when we realized AEO wasn't optional."

— VP of Marketing, B2B SaaS client
The Starting Point

Baseline audit: strong SEO, weak AEO.

📊

AI Mention Rate: 8%

Only 8 out of 100 relevant AI queries mentioned the brand. Competitors with weaker SEO had 30-50% mention rates. The gap was entirely in AEO, not product quality.

😐

Sentiment: Neutral (when mentioned)

On the rare occasions the brand was mentioned, the AI described it as "a project management option" with no specific praise or differentiated positioning.

🔗

Citation Rate: 2%

Almost zero citations in Perplexity and Bing Copilot. The brand's content was blocking AI crawlers (GPTBot was in robots.txt disallow list).

The Strategy

6-month AEO transformation playbook.

Month 1

Fix technical blockers

Removed GPTBot, PerplexityBot, and ClaudeBot from robots.txt disallow list. Created llms.txt guiding AI crawlers to their highest-value content. Added Organization schema to homepage. Baseline: 8% mention rate.

Month 2

Content restructuring

Rewrote the top 15 content pages to open with a direct answer paragraph. Added FAQPage schema to all guide and feature pages. Converted 4 prose comparison pages to comparison tables. Launched a 50-term glossary for their industry category.

Month 3

Third-party citation building

Secured 8 new placements in industry publications (contributed articles). Updated G2 profile with more detailed descriptions. Got listed on 3 analyst comparison reports. Mention rate climbed to 14%.

Month 4

Topical authority push

Published 20 new "direct answer" articles targeting high-frequency AI queries in their category. Launched a quarterly benchmark report with original survey data — earned 12 inbound citations within 3 weeks. Mention rate: 22%.

Month 5-6

Iteration and scaling

Used AnswerMap weekly reports to identify which queries still showed competitors instead of their brand. Wrote targeted content for each gap. Added positive customer testimonials to G2, Capterra, and Trustpilot. Final mention rate: 35%. Citation rate: 18%.

"AnswerMap gave us the weekly data we needed to move fast. Instead of guessing what to optimize, we could see exactly which queries were returning competitors — and write directly for those. It turned AEO from guesswork into a measurable growth channel."

— Content Marketing Lead, B2B SaaS client
Business Impact

What a 340% AI citation increase actually moved.

+28%
Organic demo request rate (6 months)
+41%
Branded search volume increase
+19%
Referral traffic from Perplexity citations
#2
Category AI share of voice (from unranked)

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