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These Startups Are Helping Businesses Show Up In AI Search Summaries
The digital marketing landscape has undergone a significant shift with the emergence of AI-powered search engines like Google’s AI Overviews, Perplexity, and ChatGPT. These platforms are revolutionizing how we consume information, but for businesses, this change poses a daunting challenge: adapting to an AI-driven world where their visibility is no longer guaranteed.
Traditionally, companies relied on search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to ensure they appeared at the top of search results. However, with AI search engines dominating the space, traditional SEO tactics are no longer effective. According to one study, a staggering 60% of searches on platforms like Google don’t result in any clicks, as users opt for AI-generated answers instead.
This shift has sparked a new wave of innovation in the digital marketing sphere, as businesses scramble to re-strategize and capitalize on this evolution. One of these innovative solutions is Profound, an AI SEO startup founded by James Cadwallader and Dylan Babbs in 2024. The company’s innovative approach involves generating thousands of synthetic prompts like “cheap football cleats” or “best phone for a teenager,” which are then sent to AI search engines to grasp the brands that most frequently appear in different responses.
Armed with this data, Profound provides actionable insights and recommendations on how businesses can optimize their online presence for AI search engines. This includes suggesting keywords, formatting styles, and metadata layouts tailored to increase visibility and relevance within these platforms. In some instances, Profound even uses AI models to generate content specifically designed to be crawled by AI search engines.
As the demand for AI SEO services surges, Profound has already secured over $100 million in funding from investors like Nvidia and Khosla Ventures. This influx of capital allows the company to further develop its technology and expand its customer base.
Other startups have also emerged to address this growing need. Bluefish AI, a New York-based startup that has raised $5 million in seed funding from backers Crane Ventures and Laconia, is assisting companies in industries such as travel, pharmaceuticals, and retail by providing real-time visibility into how they appear on platforms like Gemini, Perplexity, and ChatGPT.
Athena AI, founded by former Google Deepmind’s generative media team member Andrew Yan, has also entered the fray. This startup utilizes its proprietary AI search model, which is trained on millions of prompts and data points to create a dashboard displaying various AI metrics like sources, mentions, and referral rates.
The advent of these innovative startups signals an exciting time for businesses seeking to capitalize on the immense potential of AI-generated summaries.
Source: www.forbes.com
