E-commerce Brand Discovers 3x Cross-Platform Visibility Gap

The Challenge

A mid-size e-commerce brand selling consumer electronics had invested heavily in traditional SEO and Google Ads. Their Google rankings were strong, but they had no visibility into how AI search engines talked about them — especially models like DeepSeek, where their position differed from ChatGPT and Perplexity.

The brand's marketing director had a nagging suspicion: "We're probably invisible on these AI platforms, but we don't know how to check at scale."

The Discovery

Using CitedMe, the team ran an initial audit across 7 AI platforms with 50+ target queries. The results were revealing:

• ChatGPT: Mentioned in 40% of relevant queries — decent, but behind the top competitor at 65%
• Perplexity: Strong citation presence due to their content marketing efforts
• DeepSeek: Mentioned in only 12% of queries — compared to their main competitor at 45%
• Yuanbao and Doubao: Nearly invisible

The gap across DeepSeek, Yuanbao, and Doubao was the biggest surprise. Despite strong product content and established demand, their sources were not shaping these models consistently.

The Approach

Based on CitedMe's insights, the team:

1. Prioritized model-relevant source coverage — Invested in original content for the sources shaping DeepSeek, Yuanbao, and Doubao answers
2. Optimized for AI-friendly formatting — Restructured product pages with clear specs, comparisons, and FAQ sections
3. Monitored weekly — Used CitedMe's recurring monitoring to track progress

The Results

After 8 weeks of focused optimization:

The 3x improvement across the selected platforms was the most significant finding. The team discovered that their competitors had been actively optimizing for DeepSeek for months — and that catching up was possible with the right data.

Key Takeaway

You can't optimize what you can't measure. Without AI search monitoring, this brand would have continued investing in traditional SEO while missing an entire channel where their customers were increasingly making decisions.