Case Study · Industrial Manufacturing · SEO & AI Search / GEO

From invisible to cited: earning a seat in AI-powered search.

A 4 months engagement. Google and Bing AI performance, built from zero.

SEOAI Search / GEO 4 months
100 Site health score, zero crawl errors
84 Pages indexed, up from ~63
8.2K Google AI Overview impressions
2K Bing AI citations, 3-month period

Sources: Ahrefs, Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools

The challenge

A site that published regularly - and went nowhere.

Despite consistent content output, organic visibility had stalled. Traffic was flat. In the world of AI-generated answers, the site was completely absent.

  • Technical debt holding the site back

    Site health in the mid-80s with active crawl errors across key URLs - a hard ceiling on any ranking work built on top of it.

  • Flat traffic despite ongoing publishing

    Content was being produced, but not performing. Older articles were declining. Newer ones weren't gaining traction.

  • Zero AI citation presence

    Absent from both Google AI Overviews and Bing Copilot answers, in a category where competitors had already claimed that space entirely.

What we did

Four phases, in order.

  1. Technical foundation

    A full technical audit and rapid remediation, pushing site health from the mid-80s to a clean 100. Crawl errors eliminated across every key URL. Indexation extended to every commercially relevant page.

  2. Intent-gap analysis

    Every priority page stress-tested against actual search intent - mapping the gap between what a page currently served and what it needed to serve, commercially and informationally.

  3. Deep page optimisation

    Core commercial pages rewritten and restructured to close that intent gap - improving entity coverage, topical authority, and the kind of declarative, structured content AI models draw on.

  4. Content refresh

    Existing articles with real relevance but declining performance were identified and optimised - recovering their standing and building a broader content footprint.

The results

AI citation presence, built from scratch.

After four months, the site moved from complete AI absence to being cited across both major AI search surfaces.

Google AI Overview impressions Google Search Console
Month 1 Month 2 Month 3 Month 4 Month 5 Month 6
Bing AI citations Bing Webmaster Tools
Month 1 Month 2 Month 3 Month 4
Pages indexed over time Google Search Console
0
21
42
63
84
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
66 pages cited in Google AI Overviews Google Search Console
36 pages cited across Bing AI surfaces Bing Webmaster Tools
4 avg pages cited per Copilot response Bing Webmaster Tools
17 organic keywords tracked, up 5 Semrush
Bing query intent breakdown
43%
27%
15%
11%
4%
  • Navigational 43% 371 queries
  • Other 27% 234 queries
  • Informational 15% 130 queries
  • Research 11% 97 queries
  • Learn & Solve 4% 40 queries

Source: Bing Webmaster Tools

Next step

Want to know if your site is invisible to AI search too?

We'll test your current visibility across Google AI Overviews and Bing's AI surfaces, show you exactly where you stand, and what closing that gap would take.

Results reflect a 4 months engagement period. Data: Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, Ahrefs, Semrush.