We Had No Organic Traffic, Then AI SEO Changed Everything

We Were Invisible in Search, Old and New

Before this work, Strataigize had almost no organic visibility. Google did not show us, and AI answers did not name us.

People looking for an agency like ours never found us on the list. We were not losing the comparison. We were not in it.

The job was to earn the first mentions, starting from zero, and to see whether that brought visits and real leads. That work is generative engine optimization (GEO).

You can run the same test on yourself in about a minute. Ask an AI assistant who the best providers in your category and city are. Whatever comes back is your current position.

We Went After Citations in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini

We worked to get named in ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, and Gemini.

The aim was to show up in those answers, earn the mention, and turn the visit into a real lead. Everything below is our own account, before and after.

117 Citations, and a Client Who Named ChatGPT

The traffic arrived first

Google Analytics recorded more traffic from AI search tools. The tables below show our reported before-and-after figures. Exact start and end dates for these traffic windows are not provided in this study, so they should not be treated as a matched-period benchmark or a controlled test.

ChatGPT.com traffic. 474 sessions attributed directly to chatgpt.com, 255 engaged sessions (a 53.8% engagement rate), an average session duration of 30 seconds, and 2,735 total events.

The traffic got bigger and better at the same time: twelve times the sessions, at a higher engagement rate and four times the duration.

Perplexity.ai traffic. 76 sessions total, the majority from perplexity.ai (89%), a 46.1% engagement rate, and 17 seconds average engagement time.

Smaller absolute numbers, same shape: more sessions, and each one worth more.

Gemini traffic. 22 sessions from gemini.google.com at a 19% engagement rate. Volume was smaller here, and it still showed an early foothold across every major AI search environment. Google Analytics doesn’t separately track traffic from AI Mode or AI Overview citations, so our real numbers may be higher, especially since Semrush recorded 40+ cited pages from this source as of December 9, 2025. Across organic Google search, Google Analytics recorded a 302% increase in traffic and a 274% increase in overall event count over the same period.

AI engines cited our pages 117 times

AI search engines referenced Strataigize content 117 times as of 2025-12-09 (Semrush), a meaningful indicator of authority and relevance to AI systems. Breakdown: ChatGPT 60 citations, AI Mode 40 citations, Gemini 15 citations, Google AI Overview 2 citations. Notable examples included inclusion in “Best Mobile App Marketing Agencies in Vancouver” and “Top GEO Services in Vancouver.”

Citations also pull links along with them. Domain rating (DR) is the score that estimates how much weight a site’s outbound links carry, and 50 and up is strong. These citations have been securing us high-authority backlinks from DR 50+ websites without any outreach or collaboration on our part, which is link building we no longer have to do by hand.

Then the AI started naming the brand

In just one month, Strataigize received several mentions across AI search engines. There are fewer of these than citations, and they count for more. A citation means the AI quoted a page. A mention means it knows the company. We credit this for driving bottom-funnel lead acquisition.

The leads were real

AI search visibility converted into real pipeline. From HubSpot attribution logs, new contacts were created directly from ChatGPT referrals, the lifecycle stage automatically updated to Lead, and users viewed multiple pages, a sign of research intent.

Citations and mentions are the leading indicators. We closed one of our highest-tier clients to date during this period, and he told us directly that he found us through ChatGPT.

“This was one of the most rewarding AI SEO/GEO projects I’ve worked on. I’ll admit, I was nervous at first because AI SEO is so new and very few people are actually doing it. Starting from zero visibility meant every gain was meaningful: every citation, every ranking, every lead. Seeing Strataigize become discoverable across major AI search engines so quickly validated our entire approach.”

Abbey Claire Dela Cruz, Strategic Director, Strataigize Marketing

What to Fund First If You Are Starting at Zero

Rank on the questions buyers actually ask. Publish facts a reader can check, with a link to the source. Keep the update date real. Earn mentions on other sites.

Schema packages and llms.txt files do not earn those mentions. Google’s own AI optimization guide says Search does not use them.

Ask the assistants who the best providers in your category are. Write down whether your name comes back. Then look at which page should have earned that mention. This page started with that test coming back empty.

The method is in our AI SEO guide. The service is Generative Engine Optimization.

Read the playbook behind these numbers

• How generative engine optimization actually works: the five-stage pipeline these results came out of, plus our AI crawler data.
• AEO vs GEO vs SEO: what answer engine optimization (AEO) is, how it differs from the other two, and which layer to fund first.
• AI SEO services: what they include and how to vet an agency: the buy-side checklist, applied to us as well.
• The best generative engine optimization agencies in 2026: who else is doing this work, ranked on three published criteria.