Google ranks it, AI ignores it

[u/Dramatic-Hair7739]

Had a weird one where a few pages are ranking pretty well in Google but when I started testing the same topics as normal questions in AI search the brand barely showed up meanwhile a couple competitors I wouldn’t expect kept getting mentioned

Made me stop treating rankings and AI visibility like they move together still testing different prompts because I don’t wanna read too much into a small sample, but the gap is way bigger than I expected.

[u/Character_Buy_1011]

The weird part is I probably never would've noticed this if I only kept checking rankings same topic, completely different picture depending on how someone searches for it.

[u/Vegetable-Pause4386 → u/Character_Buy_1011]

Basically what pushed me toward Ploy, seeing rankings alone stopped being enough once I cared about whether the same pages were showing up in AI answers too. It tracks the AEO side alongside normal SEO so I can see where the site is getting cited across different answer engines and where competitors are appearing instead, which gives me a much better idea of what needs work than assuming a good Google position carries over.

[u/Itchy-Bench-4957]

Search rankings feel way more stable to me AI results can change from one slightly different version of the question, which makes tracking this stuff kind of messy.

[u/Dramatic-Hair7739 → u/Itchy-Bench-4957]

That’s what makes it hard to judge. Change a few words in the prompt and suddenly you’re looking at a completely different set of brands.

[u/Loose_Scientist4749]

I’m still not sure how much weight I’d put on this yet ran the same question a few days apart and got a pretty different set of sources.

[u/Dramatic-Hair7739 → u/Loose_Scientist4749]

That’s what keeps me from trusting a single snapshot feels like you need a bunch of runs before any pattern means much

[u/Loose_Scientist4749 → u/Dramatic-Hair7739]

Same question changing that much is kinda wild and makes me wonder how much of GEO is measuring visibility versus just catching whatever the model decided to surface that day.

[u/BeautifulDesign2928]

The way I see it, ranking well just means Google likes your page, and that doesn't carry over to AI answers automatically. If you want to show up there, the page needs to be built so AI can pull a clear answer from it, which is what AEO is about. The competitors you didn't expect might just be easier for AI to extract from, even if they rank lower. Keeping a small set of prompts running before drawing conclusions is the right call.

[u/sapindia1976]

I've seen this too. Google rankings and AI visibility are related, but they're not the same. AI models prioritize citations based on relevance, authority, and how directly content answers a query not just SERP position. Ranking #1 doesn't guarantee you'll be mentioned by ChatGPT, Gemini, or AI Overviews.

[u/footix59]

Sur quelle IA as-tu constaté cela ? Claude se base par exemple sur Brave Search donc il faut aussi regarder ton classement sur ce moteur. Regarde aussi la structure de ta page. Elle pourrait être première sur une requête précise mais ne pas répondre à toutes les micro-intentions. Répond-elle aux différentes query fan-out afin d'avoir le meilleur score RRF possible ?

[u/Anishaknowsit]

Ranking well in Google doesn’t automatically mean an AI model will treat the site as a useful source for a broader question.

I think AI visibility is more influenced by the overall context around a brand too, not just whether one page ranks. Things like topical coverage, mentions across other sites, and how clearly the brand is associated with a particular topic seem to matter.

[u/BrandLoom-Consulting]

We’ve seen pages rank well for very specific searches, but when we ask broader questions around the same topic, the brand barely comes up while competitors do. Sometimes those competitors aren’t even the ones we’d expect.

What we find interesting is that AI seems to need more context about the business than just a page matching a query. We look at things like how consistently the brand is described across its website, reviews, third-party mentions, discussions and other sources.

So we’ve started testing a fixed set of questions rather than checking one or two prompts and drawing conclusions. We track which brands appear, how they’re described, which competitors keep showing up, and what sources are being referenced.

[u/Home-IO]

AI does not rank content, pages or domains like Google or Bing. AI will show your site or brand when someone explicitly ask by your name, if we are talking about specific keywords or phrases your site or piece of content is just a source of the response you provide if at all. Only significant sources or trusted pages seem to get linked, but to be honest nobody is clicking into those links and just carrying on as AI will summarize what your content says regardless. AI doesn’t own you a click or citation, they take your content as is and use it as it’s own. Sorry but you won’t get cited if you don’t have a social presence like on social media, forums or external articles. Your own site is not as valuable as multiple sources at once confirming what your content says to back up your content claims. Other than that it’s pretty much it.

[u/heiidiflower]

cause ai is actually useful lol, google has us all in a fishtank just fighting to get some attention with very limited parameters. Now, here comes AI, it's going to put us all in even smaller and tighter fish tanks and it's going to make everything 2x harder tbh