By: Gabby Sobieski
I was scrolling TikTok the other day and came across a girl who created a fake deodorant brand, seeded a handful of mentions around the web, and was then able to get a major AI assistant to start recommending her deodorant brand (which did not really exist) a few weeks later. It all happened so fast, and the whole stunt cost about the price of a domain name.
To say I was both shocked and a bit impressed is an understatement. While we’re all scrambling to figure out what the right AIO moves are and struggling to get ahead of things, this girl was able to get an AI model to form an opinion about a product, decide it was worth recommending, and hand that recommendation to real people. The product’s actual quality (or existence) never even entered into the equation.
Now flip it. If a made-up brand can earn an AI’s confidence just by showing up across the web, what happens to a real brand that doesn’t?
Is this the case study we needed to prove that LLMs do indeed expect you to be everywhere all at once in order to win AIO?
One Ranking Doesn’t Save You Anymore
Recent stats show the overlap between ranking in Google’s top 10 and getting cited in its AI Overview has collapsed from roughly 76% in mid-2025 to somewhere between 17% and 38% today. This means that old school SEO is just not enough anymore. Even if you’re crushing it on Google, that success doesn’t automatically translate to crushing it at AIO. They’re two separate beasts needing two separate approaches.
With people increasingly turning to AI for answers before consulting Google, it’s no longer enough to optimize for search and just hope that success follows you to LLMs. Around 68% of U.S. Google searches now end without a single click. Google’s AI Mode recently passed a billion monthly users, and 94% of B2B buyers say they leaned on a generative AI tool somewhere in their last purchase process.
The need to make AIO a priority is no longer up for debate, but how to win with LLMs can feel like a wild goose chase.
AI Builds Its Opinion of You From the Whole Web
Throwing tons of keywords on your brand’s website used to feel like the cheat code to get ahead in SEO, but AI calls for an entirely different approach. An LLM doesn’t form its take on your brand from your homepage. It stitches together everything it can find: earned coverage, review sites, analyst notes, podcast transcripts, LinkedIn posts, community threads, the data other people cite about your category. Then it weighs through all of those mentions to decide whether or not you’re worth mentioning.
If your brand only lives on your own domain, you’ve handed the model one data point and hoped for the best. If it lives in dozens of credible places that all say the same thing, you’ve given the model a pattern of information it can trust.
So “be everywhere all at once” isn’t just a vibe; it’s literally the mechanics behind AI visibility.
What Showing Up “Everywhere That Matters” Looks Like
This is not a call for you to plaster your mission statement across every corner of the internet. You don’t need to be throwing brand info at every wall it can stick to; you just need to be in the places your ICP asks about you, and the sources AI already trusts. In practice, that means building a strong presence across a few important layers.
Earned media. Coverage on high-authority domains is some of the most citable content there is. In our research with Pavilion, teams investing in PR were 107% more likely than average to report meaningful leads from AI search. Credible third parties vouching for you is exactly what models look for.
Proprietary data. Original research gives the web something to quote, and quotable is halfway to citable. When you own a stat, you own every conversation that references it, including the ones happening inside an AI answer.
Third-party validation. Review platforms and analyst mentions act as structured credibility signals. Teams leaning into review sites were 114% more likely to trace qualified leads back to AI search.
Executive and brand social. LinkedIn, in particular, is a feeding ground for the models. When your leaders publish real points of view, they build a following and document expertise LLMs can attribute back to you.
Answer-shaped content. Refreshing your evergreen content into clear, structured, question-and-answer formats made teams 114% more likely to see AI-sourced leads. Publishing more, on its own, only got them to 79%. Be mindful of the structure of your content.
Presence Without Credibility Is Just Noise
Back to that fake deodorant brand for a second, because it’s such a clear example of how AIO can work both ways. A strong presence can conjure a recommendation out of thin air, but it can also spread bad information about you at scale when the web’s picture of your brand is thin, stale, or inconsistent.
So the goal is less about flooding the zone and more about being present, consistent, and credible everywhere at once. Two-thirds of GTM leaders (67%) already tell us traditional web analytics don’t capture the full story of where they’re winning or losing. If you can’t see where the models are getting you wrong, then you can’t fix it.
This is where volume, consistency, and originality have to travel together. Show up in enough relevant places. Make sure those places are trusted. And say something worth citing once you get there.
Proactive Teams Are Poised To Win
We’re all figuring out AIO as it evolves, but the brands pulling ahead are the ones treating their web-wide presence as a living asset instead of a set-it-and-forget-it project. They know first impressions are close to final: 90% of buyers pick a vendor from their initial consideration set, and if you’re not in it, your win rate drops significantly to around 17%.
Being everywhere all at once sounds daunting, because it kind of is. It takes earned media and original research and social presence and validation and structured content all rowing in the same direction.
It also happens to be the kind of integrated, everywhere-at-once program we build for a living. If your brand is easy to find on Google but invisible in the answers your buyers actually trust, let’s change that. Talk to us.
