The levers in order of impact: how to actually improve AI visibility

The finding holds. Brand authority beats technical optimisation by a factor of 3.1. That is evidenced and derived in our article on choosing an agency. Anyone who reads it there will find the numbers, the sources and the caveats. We do not start over here.

A finding is not yet an action. Almost every list of measures on this topic is complete and still useless, because it does not say what comes first. This article answers exactly that: which levers work hardest, and in which order should you pull them?

The levers, ranked

The table below gathers the best available correlation data. The figures come from two studies that measure differently and therefore report different magnitudes. That is why the source sits on every row.

One row deliberately breaks the pattern: branded search volume is not something you can pull. It is an outcome of what the other levers achieve. It stays in the table because it shows that brand awareness and AI visibility share the same origin.

This ranking is the best basis for decisions we currently have. It is not perfect. The next section explains why.

What the numbers do not say

Three limitations belong here honestly.

First, the two large studies contradict each other on the magnitude of individual values. Ahrefs measures YouTube mentions at around 0.74, Loamly at 0.26. Loamly itself explains the gap with a stricter definition of visibility. The direction is the same in both: signals outside your own website dominate. Quoting only the higher number is cherry picking.

Second, correlation is not causation. Well known brands have more YouTube mentions and more AI visibility. Which causes which is not resolved by either study. It could just as easily be that visibility produces mentions as the other way round.

Third, there are no intervention studies so far. Nobody has systematically measured what happens when one of these levers is pulled deliberately and in isolation. The ranking still remains the best available basis for setting priorities. Better data does not exist yet.

Lever 1: get mentioned, not linked

This is the most important conceptual difference from classic SEO, and it can be shown with the same data. In the Ahrefs analysis, plain brand mentions on the web correlate at around 0.66. Links carrying the brand name as anchor text reach only around 0.51. [1]

The mention beats the link. Language models read unlinked references; a backlink is not the currency. Anyone still optimising mainly for linked mentions is optimising for the weaker metric.

In practice that means trade media, industry directories, comparison platforms and specialist databases. In the DACH market that includes OMR Reviews, Clutch and sector specific directories. Digital PR for GEO therefore differs from classic digital PR. It is less about the link and more about consistently naming the brand in places models treat as credible.

Lever 2: the platforms that get cited

YouTube and Reddit are among the strongest individual signals and at the same time the most uncomfortable.

There is no way to shortcut YouTube or Reddit presence in four weeks. Anyone selling that as a quick win is overstating it. Both platforms need repeated, credible presence over a longer period. One off pushes produce almost nothing measurable.

Review platforms come on top of that. In comparison and shortlist questions they get cited disproportionately often. Solid presence on G2, Capterra or sector specific review sites works harder here than many expect.

Lever 3: one brand, one description

Entity consistency is the foundation for everything else. The same spelling of the name everywhere, the same short description, the same core data. Wikipedia is worth a factor of about 3.6 in the data, but is reachable for only a small share of brands, around 16 percent in the Loamly data. [2] For everyone else, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, G2 and industry directories are the practical substitute anchors.

Our own case shows why this matters. A substantial share of the brand impressions for "Grovia" went to other companies, because the name is ambiguous. Only a stable, everywhere identical entity identifier turns a name into a clearly identifiable brand. That is verifiable, and it happens before anyone thinks about content or PR.

Lever 4: content that can be quoted

Not "good content", but extractable content. Questions as headings. The direct answer in the first paragraph. Figures with a clear source. Tables instead of long prose for comparisons. A clear position instead of a neutral list.

Perplexity reads in real time and responds relatively quickly to structures like these. With ChatGPT it takes longer, because authority and training consensus weigh more heavily there.

Lever 5: the technical base, honestly placed

Schema markup, a clean entity definition, crawlability and where useful an llms.txt. The correlation sits at about 0.14 and explains only a very small part of the variance. [2]

Its absence can disqualify you. Its presence does not set you apart. Anyone investing heavily here while neglecting the stronger signals has the priorities the wrong way round.

A realistic sequence over twelve months

The logic is simple: what works relatively quickly and buys internal patience comes first. The slow, effective part follows.

Measurement belongs in from the start, not bolted on at the end.

What even this plan will not do

Three hard limits remain.

Individual answers vary heavily. Only rates across many runs are stable. The figures for that sit in the article on choosing an agency.

Prominence is a threshold, not a dial. An audit across roughly 37,000 runs shows that brands in the lower prominence tiers never surface at all in 48 to 52 percent of cases. [3] Starting small takes longer than the ranking above suggests at first glance.

How the brand is portrayed stays with the model. Even when you are named, you do not decide in what context or with what judgement that happens.

The ranking tells you where to start. It does not tell you that it will be quick.

A short note on us

This article is written as a neutral guide to action. The ranking and the limitations carry the decision, not the self-promotion. That is why it sits bundled here at the end.

Grovia Digital is a performance marketing and AI consulting agency based in Dubai, focused on the DACH and MENA markets. We work with B2B companies on pulling these levers in the right order and making the effect measurable.