Boosting B2B Visibility with AI Search
The challenge
In 2024, a leading technology provider offering complex B2B solutions noticed a clear shift in how decision-makers accessed information online. Google’s introduction of AI-generated Overviews for search queries began to displace traditional website listings with conversational summaries. Independent analyses of search patterns showed that these summaries could occupy nearly half the available screen space on mobile devices and significantly influence the information that users relied on.
By the beginning of the year, none of the provider’s technical documentation, product overviews, or case studies were appearing in AI-generated Overviews for priority keywords such as “cloud-native security solutions,” “compliance automation,” or “edge computing platforms.” In a competitive market where buyers often begin their research with online queries, the absence from AI-generated summaries risked limiting visibility and losing prospective clients to competitors who were being quoted or referenced.
Objectives
The communications and digital strategy teams identified three main goals for the year. The first was to secure citations within AI-generated Overviews for at least fifteen high-value technical and industry-related search queries. The second was to maintain organic traffic growth despite the potential shift in user behaviour toward zero-click searches. The third was to improve engagement on pages referenced by AI Overviews, translating visibility into meaningful lead generation and conversion rates.
The strategic response
Recognizing the evolving search landscape, the team focused on a hybrid strategy combining precision-engineered content with targeted media relations.
Content development efforts cantered on creating structured, clear, and reliable materials designed to appeal to both AI systems and human readers. Each technical release and thought leadership article was rewritten to include succinct summaries, bullet-point data highlights, and user-oriented explanations. These materials were accompanied by technical schema markup to enhance machine-readability.
Exclusive interviews were arranged with executives and senior engineers for trusted business and technology publications. These interviews covered industry trends and upcoming innovations, ensuring the provider’s insights were represented in well-regarded outlets. This approach enhanced credibility signals recognized by both human users and AI systems, increasing the likelihood of being referenced in summaries.
A comprehensive content review was launched to update over four hundred product and solution pages with easy-to-understand summaries, plain-language explanations, and expanded FAQs. This effort aimed to make the information more accessible to AI models while maintaining technical accuracy for human readers.
Weekly monitoring of AI-generated Overviews through a specialized tool enabled the tracking of keyword coverage, reference points, and citation frequency. This real-time feedback was used to adjust PR and content efforts as gaps and opportunities were identified.
Key actions
The PR team crafted a detailed release with bullet-pointed technical highlights and a clear summary, supported by targeted interviews with key industry publications. Over three hundred original articles were published globally within the first month, and more than half included direct citations of the release or technical details provided during interviews.
Midyear efforts included the release of an industry benchmark report focused on cloud-native security adoption. This report featured proprietary data and customer insights, and it was distributed through select channels and made available as a gated asset on the corporate website. The report was widely cited by industry analysts and began appearing as a source in AI-generated summaries for related search queries.
Over the course of 2024, the revised product and solution pages improved time-on-page metrics by approximately fifteen percent, signalling greater user engagement. The content was crafted with a dual focus on clarity and technical depth to ensure its suitability for AI consumption and human decision-making.
Results
By the end of the year, the provider’s content was referenced in AI-generated Overviews for seventeen high-value industry queries, surpassing the original goal. These citations covered a range of queries, from detailed product comparison questions to broader industry trends and compliance topics.
Despite fluctuations in organic search traffic seen across the industry, the provider experienced a four percent increase in organic sessions compared to the previous year. Conversion rates on pages cited by AI Overviews improved by ten percent, reflecting the impact of better-quality leads originating from AI-driven visibility.
Media coverage from high-authority publications expanded significantly, with over six hundred placements in 2024 alone, many in outlets frequently referenced by AI systems. This enhanced media authority strengthened the brand’s digital footprint and ensured that its insights were part of broader conversations in the industry.
Real-time monitoring of generative search patterns revealed that for several key queries, the provider’s content was cited more often than competitors, solidifying its position as a trusted resource in a rapidly evolving market.
Why the approach delivered results
The strategy succeeded by aligning the interests of human readers and AI systems. Clear, concise, and fact-based content was optimized not only for user readability but also for machine interpretation. The use of structured formats and schema markup improved the likelihood of being quoted in AI-generated summaries.
Targeted media outreach focused on authoritative outlets ensured that the content appeared in publications already recognized by AI models as reliable sources. This created a reinforcing cycle of credibility, which contributed to the inclusion of the provider’s materials in generative search summaries.
Frequent monitoring provided timely insights into performance gaps, enabling adjustments to both content creation and PR strategies. The inclusion of diverse content types, such as benchmark reports and technical explainer videos, added depth and variety that appealed to AI algorithms trained to value multi-format input.
Key lessons
Craft content that serves dual purposes: satisfying human decision-makers and being machine-readable for AI summaries.
Secure placement in high-credibility publications to enhance brand authority and citation potential.
Monitor AI-generated search summaries closely to identify emerging opportunities for coverage.
Use a mix of content formats to increase the chances of being included in generative answers, from structured product summaries to in-depth industry reports.
