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Many sites saw their organic traffic decline in 2024, largely due to the rise of AI-generated search results. Many queries no longer lead to clicks, and even when users do click, it’s difficult for companies to get more context from searches within apps like ChatGPT or Perplexity.
The answer to this problem is sometimes called generative engine optimization or GEO, a nod to SEO. “Some call it search visibility optimization with artificial intelligence, which is a little longer, but I believe a little more accurate,” he said. Otterly.AI CEO Thomas Peham (pictured right above).
as New York-based rival ProfoundThe Austrian startup develops dashboards to help companies and advertising agencies track and optimize their participation in AI results. Peham told TechCrunch exclusively that while Profound is still in closed beta, Otterly is coming out of stealth once it hits the 1,000 user milestone.
You may have heard of Otterly before: It launched on Product Hunt earlier this year to certain success. Then Google shook things up.
“Honestly, the reality was that we rebuilt the product from the ground up after Google introduced AI Insights in May,” Peham said.
These are the AI Views Implementing Google’s AI powered resultsoften resulting in zero-click searches where users never leave the search engine.
As AI Views begin to spread globally, companies that rely on organic search traffic are suffering. Peham gave the example of a SaaS business that saw its organic search presence decline in the US, only to realize through Otterly that Google’s AI Insights was showing search results for half of its SEO keywords.
The next question is how to make this knowledge operational, especially when LLMs are often described as a black box. That’s one of the reasons Otterly plans to add a recommendation engine and move from monthly to weekly tracking in the meantime — so marketing teams can experiment to optimize their content and quickly see what’s working.
Although this arrangement is partially similar to SEO, clicks are less focused. “I think calling it AI search visibility optimization really highlights an aspect that we as marketing teams need to think about our brand positioning, our brand visibility,” Peham said.
Peham himself spent most of his career in marketing. Former VP of Marketing CMS company Storyblokhe started Otterly to scratch his own itch and understand how ChatGPT was impacting search from a brand perspective.
Finally, he teamed up with two co-founders, Josef Trauner (pictured above, center) and Klaus M. Schremser (left), former CEO and head of development, respectively, at Usersnap, a user feedback platform. they are sold to saas.group In 2023.
Having two co-founders helps them handle all tasks, with Schremser focusing on operations and product and Trauner on technical aspects. The pair performing together doesn’t hurt either. Its incubator, GroWTF, has also backed Otterly, but the startup will not seek outside funding, Peham said.
Instead, Otterly said it plans to continue growing with its client base, where Semrush or Ahrefs are for SEO, but with a desire to be in the AI search space.
Peham said there is always the risk that these companies will want to expand their reach and become direct competitors, but Otterly hopes they can work together and plans to reveal details of the partnership with Semrush next month.
