Many sites saw a decline in organic traffic in 2024. This is primarily due to the increase in search results generated by AI. Many queries don't result in click-throughs, and even when users do click, it's difficult for businesses to get more context about searches made within apps like ChatGPT and Perplexity.
The answer to this problem is sometimes called generative engine optimization (GEO), after SEO. “Some people call this AI Search Visibility Optimization, which is a little long, but I believe it’s a little more accurate,” said Thomas Pelham, CEO of Otterly.AI (pictured above on the right). ) says.
Like New York-based competitor Profound, the Austrian startup is building dashboards to help businesses and advertising agencies monitor and optimize their presence in AI results. But while Profound is still in closed beta, Otterly is exiting stealth mode after passing the 1,000 user milestone, Peham exclusively told TechCrunch.
You may have heard of Otterly before. Otterly launched on Product Hunt earlier this year with some success. Then Google shook everything up.
“Honestly, the reality was that after Google introduced AI Overview in May, we rebuilt the product from the ground up,” Pelham said.
AI Overview is Google's implementation of AI-powered results, often resulting in so-called zero-click searches, where users never go past the search engine.
As AI Overview begins to roll out globally, businesses that rely on organic search traffic are feeling the pain. Peham gave the example of a SaaS business whose organic search presence in the U.S. has declined, but through Otterly found that Google is now showing AI summary search results for half of its SEO keywords. Ta.
The next challenge is how to put this knowledge into practice, especially when LLMs are often described as black boxes. This is one of the reasons why Otterly plans to add a recommendation engine, and why it has changed tracking from monthly to weekly during that time. So your marketing team can run experiments to optimize content and quickly see what works and what doesn't.
This trick is similar in part to SEO, but with less emphasis on clicks. “I think calling this AI search visibility optimization really emphasizes the aspect that as a marketing team you also need to consider brand position and brand visibility,” Pelham said. said.
Pelham himself spent most of his career in marketing. The former VP of Marketing at CMS company Storyblok started Otterly to scratch his own itch and understand how ChatGPT was impacting search from a brand perspective.
Eventually, he teamed up with two co-founders, Josef Trauner (center in image above) and Klaus M. Schremser (left). They are respectively the former CEO and Head of Growth at Usersnap, a user feedback platform. They sold it to saas.group in 2023.
Having two co-founders allows everyone to divide tasks, with Schlemser focusing on operations and product, and Trauner focusing on the technical aspects. It's not a bad thing that the two left together. Peham said his incubator, GroWTF, is also backing Otterly, but the startup has no intention of seeking outside funding.
Instead, he said Otterly plans to continue growing with its customer base, with ambitions to become the Semrush and Ahrefs of SEO.
Although there is always a risk that these companies will expand and become direct competitors, Ottery is hopeful that the two companies can work together and will announce details of the partnership with Semlash next month. said Pelham.