AI search is already rewriting the rules of visibility. If your brand isn’t getting cited by other people (not just posting on your own website and praying), you’re going to feel it.
Let’s build a simple yet powerful system with Ben Jacobson.
About our teacher
A seasoned marketing strategist, Ben Jacobson serves as the chief content officer at InboundJunction, a PR, SEO and GEO agency for growth-stage tech companies. His writing has appeared in SEMrush, HubSpot and The Next Web.
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Website: InboundJunction
Rebel, here’s a stat worth sitting with: Gartner predicts traditional search volume will drop 25% by 2026 as AI chatbots take over more of the “answer” job Google used to do. That’s not a someday problem. It’s a right-now problem.
Ben Jacobson, Chief Content Officer at InboundJunction, has a system for it. Not a hack. An actual PR system.
Zero-Click Search Changes What “Visibility” Means
The old game was rank and hope for a click. The new game: your audience asks ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews a question, gets an answer, and only visits your site after they’ve already been convinced. Ben’s blunt about it: by the time someone lands on your homepage, they’ve often already shortlisted you.
That means the moment that actually matters happens somewhere you don’t control.
- Stop measuring success by rankings alone. Start asking: does AI recommend me when someone asks the question I solve?
- Write down 5 real questions your ideal customer might type into ChatGPT, not keywords, actual questions
- Check your brand in an incognito or fresh AI session. Personalized results will lie to you about your real visibility
Earned Media Beats Owned Content For AI Citations
Here’s the part that surprises most marketers: your own blog carries less weight with AI than what other people say about you. Ben’s system leans on citation analysis, working out which third-party sources (trade publications, LinkedIn posts, niche blogs, even micro-influencers) actually get pulled into AI answers, then earning a place in them.
This is the PR-and-SEO combination we dig into more in our course library, and it pairs well with the content fundamentals from our episode with Andrew Cock-Starkey on AI and SEO, if you want the full picture from both angles.
- List 5 realistic publications or platforms where your audience already looks for recommendations
- Contributing quotes, guest posts, and podcast appearances count just as much as full features
- Prioritize consistency of message across every place you show up, AI is stitching together a pattern, not just reading one page
Build A Feedback Loop, Don’t Launch And Walk Away
AI search visibility isn’t a one-and-done project. Ben treats it as a system: land an earned media asset, then check whether it actually moved your share of voice in AI answers. If nothing shifted, that’s data, not failure, use it to pick the next target.
- Once a month, ask an AI tool your own core prompts and note who’s getting cited, including competitors
- After every new placement, check back in a few weeks to see if it shows up in AI answers
- Treat “no movement” as information. Try a different platform or angle next, don’t just repeat what didn’t work
You can’t out-rank your way into an AI answer. You have to earn your way in, one citation at a time.