Pressfront

The AI Visibility Reference

A working reference on getting found by AI, how the engines actually pick who to name, why you might be invisible, and what moves the needle. Built on our own data, written with a point of view, updated as the engines change. No hedging, no vendor hype.

Core concepts

• Why is my brand invisible to AI even though I rank on Google?Only 38% of AI Overview citations now come from Google's top 10, down from 76%. AI cites pages that rank, not pages that rank first.
• What is co-occurrence, and why do mentions beat backlinks for AI?Across 75,000 brands, mentions correlate 0.664 with AI visibility; domain rating 0.266. The unlinked mention is the currency.
• Retrieval vs training: which decides whether AI mentions you?Two memories, and only one is editable. The retrieval lever is fast but fires on about two prompts in three.
• What is the knowledge cutoff, and can a new brand even be mentioned?A brand launched after the cutoff cannot exist to a model that isn't searching. Time-based invisibility nobody flags.

Tactical playbooks

• How do I write a first paragraph that AI will lift verbatim?The mechanics of a self-contained, entity-complete opener. Graded examples, not "be clear."
• How do I get mentioned on the third-party sites AI reads, without a backlink?Co-occurrence in practice. Target the mention, not the link.

Measurement

• How do I actually measure whether AI is recommending my brand?A real method, not a dashboard. Sample across runs and engines; report a rate, not a verdict.

Strategy and hard questions

• Should you optimize differently for AI than for Google?Not separate, not the same. A vertical-set slider: trust industries still reward ranking, e-commerce barely does.
• Do backlinks still matter, or have mentions replaced them?Demoted, not dead. Links reach AI only through Google's ranking layer now.
• Should you block AI crawlers, or feed them to stay visible?Depends on one thing: is your content the product or the marketing? Publishers block and license; businesses feed.

Reality checks

• What do I do when AI states something false about my brand?There is no takedown form. You fix it at the source: out-repeat the wrong fact where the model reads.

Our research

• How consistent are AI recommendations, really?About a third of the answer changes on a repeat. The stable third is the most-mentioned brands. Original dataset, DOI-registered.
• How often does the "best X" recommendation change when you just ask again?Enough that a single AI check is worthless. Why you have to sample.
• How often does Gemini search the web vs answer from memory?About 63% of the time. Being in Google's index is a coin flip for Gemini.
• How does republished PR (churnalism) seed what AI says about a company?One release across many outlets becomes many co-occurring mentions. PR works for AI via the mention, not the link.

More entries in progress, and existing ones are updated as the engines change. See also the research hub and run your free AI Visibility Report.