AEOChatGPTAI ModePerplexity

From zero AI citations to cited in 22 of 60 answers. In eleven days.

A founder-led ultralight tent brand was invisible to ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity. The answer set belonged to Zpacks, Enlightened Equipment, Gossamer Gear and Durston. We rebuilt the content layer for machines and the brand started surfacing.

34%

AI visibility, up from 0%

From filtered out

22 of 60

answers citing the brand, up from 0 of 15

37%

brand mention rate, up from 0%

80%

visibility on the best query, up from 0%

8 May 2026 vs 19 May 2026

20 queries, 3 engines. Before: filtered out. After: surfacing.

Metric	Before	With us	Change
AI visibility	0%	34%	Brand surfacing
Results citing the brand	0 of 15	22 of 60	From zero
Brand mention rate	0%	37%	From zero
Best query visibility	0%	80%	Where can I buy the best lightweight backpacking gear
GPT citations	0 for 4 straight weeks	First citation 30 April	Breakthrough

AI visibilityBrand surfacing

0%34%

Results citing the brandFrom zero

0 of 1522 of 60

Brand mention rateFrom zero

0%37%

Best query visibilityWhere can I buy the best lightweight backpacking gear

0%80%

GPT citationsBreakthrough

0 for 4 straight weeksFirst citation 30 April

The brand

Outdoor Vitals makes premium ultralight tents, sleeping bags and backpacking gear, sold direct to consumer and led by founder Tayson Whittaker.

The problem

Zero AI Mode citations. Zero GPT citations. Four consecutive weeks of nothing while Zpacks, Enlightened Equipment and Gossamer Gear owned every conversational answer in the category. Same products, same founder, same quality. The machines simply had nothing clean to read.

What we did

1
Baselined AI visibility before touching anything. Tracked the brand and its competitors across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity on the queries its customers actually ask. That baseline is the before column in every table on this page.
2
Rebuilt the content layer for machines, not just people. Front-loaded answers, deep schema, an entity home page and semantic triples so an AI agent can retrieve facts about the brand cheaply and confidently.
3
Atomized founder content. One founder recording became a pillar article, spoke articles, FAQ schema, a Reddit thread, a YouTube cut, a LinkedIn post and a Quora answer. Fifteen assets across five channels from one hour of the founder's time.
4
Outranked two established competitors. Durston Gear and Hyperlite Mountain Gear both sat at zero citations across the same window while Outdoor Vitals started being cited.

The result

Eleven days from invisible to cited. 34% AI visibility across a 20-query, 3-engine scan, surfacing in 22 of 60 conversational results, 80% visibility on the best buying query. Same brand, same products, same founder. What changed is the content layer the machines read.

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