AI Search Optimization
insights
Research, guides, and practical playbooks for understanding how brands appear in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other AI answer engines.
How often should you run your AI search prompts?
AI answers are noisy, so each run is a sample, not a fact. A benchmark on run frequency: a category leader needs as little as 1 run a day to be representative, an established mid-size brand around 10, and a long-tail challenger around 40, set by how variable its mention rate is. The sampling logic, with charts.
The Brave of AI search: why full opt-in conversation data wins
Brave built an independent search index on strictly opt-in, anonymized, k-anonymous browsing data. Aiso applies the same principle to AI search: every conversation in our 5M+ IP panel is voluntarily shared, anonymized, and reported only in aggregate. The analogy, the mechanics, and why consent-first data is also better data.
Why one ChatGPT query tells you almost nothing about your brand visibility
We ran 19 real consumer prompts through ChatGPT ten times each under identical conditions. Two runs share only 55% of recommended brands on average. 27% are 'ghosts' - mentioned in one run and never again. Only 16% are stable across all ten runs. Why single-screenshot AI visibility audits are statistically indefensible.
Is your portfolio company winning AI search? 4 metrics that matter (and 1 that lies)
A scorecard for investors evaluating portfolio companies' AI search performance - and for the marketing leaders who'll get the question. Commercial-intent mentions, the referral underestimation problem, visibility per dollar, and revenue per dollar, with public benchmarks plus original data from Aiso's panel of millions of real anonymized AI prompts and a live gpt-5.3-chat-latest replay.
Bing just redefined the index: grounding is now the unit of value, not pages
Microsoft Bing's May 2026 post draws a sharp line between traditional search and grounding for AI answers. The five dimensions Bing now uses to measure index quality - and what brands should change.
LLM Ranking Factors: What Actually Determines Whether AI Recommends Your Brand
We analyzed millions of AI answers to uncover the top factors influencing brand recommendations across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.
How Much ChatGPT Traffic Should Brands Expect?
Benchmarks from 500+ brands across industries on AI referral traffic, conversions, and growth potential.
Most Popular ChatGPT Models: Real Data Analysis
Discover which ChatGPT models users actually prefer based on real query data - and what that means for your optimization roadmap.
What Are the Real Sources Used by ChatGPT? A Detective Investigation
We isolated unique phrases and traced them back to Reddit, directories, and training data to reveal AI's real source mix.
Our ChatGPT Sample Demographics: Overview & Limitations
An honest look at the consent-based panel powering Aiso - who's in it, what biases to know, and how we mitigate them.
Testing ChatGPT's Non-Ranking Nature: Espresso Machines
We ran 400 queries to test whether ChatGPT maintains consistent rankings - and found something more nuanced.
ChatGPT Search Market Share
How AI search market share is shifting in 2026 across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.
Comparing Major LLMs in 2025
A side-by-side breakdown of how the top LLMs differ on retrieval, citations, and brand recommendation behavior.
What Are People Searching for on ChatGPT?
Real data on the most frequent prompts, products, and brands people query inside ChatGPT.
ChatGPT Scrapes Google and Leaks Prompts
An investigation into how ChatGPT scrapes Google Search and leaks user prompts into Google Search Console.
How AI Question Types Determine Citation Sources
Different prompt types pull from different sources. Here's the mapping for research, comparison, how-to, and purchase queries.
AI Chatbot Conversion Study
Conversion data from AI-referred traffic across e-commerce, SaaS, and travel sites.
How We Test and Run Experiments at Aiso
Our scientific commitments - falsificationism, hypothesis-driven design, replication - applied to AI search research.
Brands See AI Traffic Surge
The brands quietly winning AI referral traffic in 2026, and the tactics they share in common.
Advertising in ChatGPT: The Next Frontier of Marketing
How OpenAI's monetization roadmap will reshape paid acquisition - and how to prepare your team and content.