Many sites saw their organic traffic decline in 2024, in big part due to the rise of AI-generated search results. Many queries no longer lead to click-throughs, and even when users click, it is hard for companies to get more context on searches made within apps like ChatGPT or Perplexity.
The answer to this problem is sometimes called generative engine optimization, or GEO, in a nod to SEO. “Some call it AI search visibility optimization, which is a bit longer, but I believe is a bit more accurate,” said Otterly.AI CEO Thomas Peham (on the right in the image above).
Like New York-based competitor Profound, the Austrian startup builds dashboards to help companies and ad 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 told TechCrunch exclusively.
You may have heard of Otterly before: It launched on Product Hunt earlier this year to some success. Then, Google shook everything up.
“To be honest, the reality was we rebuilt the product from scratch after Google introduced AI Overviews in May,” Peham said.
AI Overviews are Google’s implementation of AI-powered results, often resulting in so-called zero-click searches where users never go beyond the search engine.
As AI Overviews starts rolling out globally, companies who relied on organic search traffic are feeling the sting. Peham gave the example of a SaaS business that saw its organic search presence decline in the U.S, only to realize through Otterly that Google showed AI Overviews search results for half of its SEO keywords.
The next question is how to make this knowledge actionable, especially when LLMs are often described as a black box. That’s one reason why Otterly plans to add a recommendation engine, and in the meantime, why it went from monthly t …