AI buries company websites in search results, but Otterly.AI thinks it can help
Many sites saw a decline in organic traffic in 2024, largely due to the rise of AI-generated search results. Many queries no longer result in clicks, and even when users do click, it’s difficult for companies to get more context for searches conducted within apps like ChatGPT or Perplexity.
The answer to this problem is sometimes called generative engine optimization, or GEO, in reference to search engine optimization (SEO). “Some people call it AI search visibility optimization, and it’s a little longer, but I think it’s a little more precise,” some said. Otterly.AI CEO Thomas Byham (on the right in the photo above).
He loves A New York-based competitor is deepthe Austrian startup is building dashboards to help companies and ad agencies monitor and improve their presence in AI results. But while Profound is still in closed beta, Otterly is coming out of stealth mode after surpassing the 1,000 user mark, 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 things up.
“To be honest, the truth is that we rebuilt the product from scratch after Google introduced AI Overviews in May,” Byham said.
An overview of artificial intelligence is Google’s implementation of AI-powered resultsoften leading to so-called no-click searches where users never go beyond the search engine.
As AI Overviews begins to roll out globally, companies that relied on organic search traffic are feeling the impact. Byham gave the example of a SaaS company that saw its organic search presence decline in the US, only to realize through Otterly that Google had displayed AI Overviews search results for half of its SEO keywords.
The next question is how to make this knowledge actionable, especially when an MBA is often described as a black box. That’s one reason why Otterly plans to add a recommendations engine, and in the meantime, why it’s moving from monthly to weekly tracking — so marketing teams can run experiments to improve their content and quickly see what might be working or not.
While this tinkering is partly similar to SEO, the clicks are less focused. “I think calling it improving AI search visibility really highlights the aspect that we need as marketing teams to also think about our brand positioning, our brand vision,” Byham said.
Byham himself spent most of his career in marketing. Former Vice President of Marketing at CMS Storyblok CompanyOtterly set out to hone his head and understand how ChatGPT could impact search from a brand perspective.
Eventually, he teamed up with two co-founders, Joseph Trauner (center in the photo above) and Klaus M. Schremser (left), who are respectively the former CEO and head of growth at Usersnap, a user feedback platform. they It was sold to saas.group In 2023.
Having co-founders helps them all divide up tasks, with Schremser focusing on operations and product, and Trauner focusing on the technical aspects. It also doesn’t hurt for the couple to have a way out together. Byham said his incubator, GroWTF, has also backed Otterly, but the startup will not seek outside funding.
Instead, he said, Otterly plans to continue growing with its customer base, with the ambition to be like Semrush or Ahrefs in SEO, but in the AI search space.
There’s always a risk that these companies will want to expand their reach and become direct competitors, Byham said, but Otterly hopes they can work together, and plans to announce details of the partnership with Semrush next month.
