What Are the 3 Levers for Improving AI Optimization (AIO)? – Gumshoe

Just ran your first Visibility Audit (formerly known as a report) and wondering “Now what?” Acting on your three levers is the next step. It's how you make sure your brand shows up when models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity generate answers. Gumshoe measures your AI visibility and points out where to improve.

After running your Visibility Audit, there are three main levers you can pull to start lifting your visibility results.

1. External influence

AI models rely heavily on trusted external domains when deciding which brands to mention. If your competitors appear more often, it's often because they are cited across industry publications, review sites, blogs, or ecosystem partners.

What to do:

• Get your brand covered in respected publications and comparison articles.
• Partner with ecosystem platforms to publish integrations or case studies.
• Pitch thought leadership and neutral explainers that highlight your expertise.

This increases the number of citable mentions AI models can pull into their responses.

For more guidance on influencing third-party citations, see our Help Center articles on Citations and third-party content strategy.

2. Technical

Even if you already have great content, AI models may miss it if your site isn't structured properly. Models look for machine-readable formats and structured facts they can extract directly.

What to do:

• Add schema markup (e.g., FAQPage, Product/Service, SoftwareApplication).
• Improve content-to-code balance on your pages.
• Use semantic headings and clear fact blocks instead of burying information in long prose.
• Ensure your site is crawlable by AI bots like GPTBot, Google-Extended, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot.

This helps AI models read and trust your site more effectively.

See our Help Center articles on the Technical Audit for more guidance.

3. Content

Your own site remains the foundation for AI visibility. Without clear, authoritative first-party content, third-party mentions and schema won't be enough. AI models need to see you explain your solutions directly.

What to do:

• Publish detailed FAQ-style pages that answer the exact questions buyers (and AI models) are asking.
• Create structured explainers.
• Maintain fresh, factual content across solution pages, integration pages, and case studies.

This gives AI models the core facts and narratives they need to include your brand in recommendation answers.

See our Help Center article on using content generation in Gumshoe for more guidance.

How do these come together?

The three levers (external influence, technical, and content) work best when combined. Set small achievable goals between each Visibility Audit run and see how your improvements impact your visibility.