It’s no secret that AI Engines are rapidly growing and are now a critical part of finding and discovery. SEMrush predicts AI search visitors will surpass traditional search traffic in 2028, with the value of those visitors worth 4.4 times higher.
While many SEO and marketing experts believe prompt visibility comes from traditional SEO methods or are unknown, Robert Drumm has had success showing up in ChatGPT and other LLM’s, even for brand new companies.
Robert Drumm’s Success with AI AI Engine Traffic
In 2025, Robert Drumm began working with a brand-new company with a brand-new website. While I can’t reveal that company here, we can walk through some of the early insights and successes with AI engines compared to traditional SEO.
The client entered a highly competitive industry with much larger competitors, and a limited marketing budget. It felt like moving a mountain to gain meaningful visibility on Google quickly.
While we started with standard SEO optimizations, the strategy shifted from getting Google rankings quickly to targeting LLM’s as a source of organic traffic. The results speak for themselves. In the last 30 days we’ve seen –
- LLM traffic accounts for 6.25% of total traffic and 11.11% of engaged sessions
- Traditional SEO is just 5.13% of total traffic and 9.87% of engaged sessions
- With studies showing fewer than 10% of prompts leading to clicks on cited websites, it’s highly likely that ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other LLMs are driving significant brand visibility and direct traffic
How Robert Drumm Drove LLM Prompt Citations
Most experts agree that traditional SEO plays a major role in what LLM’s pull into prompts. But there’s some secret sauce that seems to tip the scales. Here’s what we focused on:
- Structured data is essential. LLMs use structured data to better understand your site and to format content in ways that work well in prompt responses.
- Technical SEO still matters. Beyond schema, we made sure crawlability, semantic HTML, and internal linking were all in place.
- FAQs and conversational content are critical. Creating Q&A formats that mimic how people talk to AI helps LLMs extract and reuse your content more easily.
- Off-site SEO still counts. While the site in question has fewer than 50 inbound links, the ones it has are highly relevant and contextually strong within its niche.
What This Means for New Brands in AI Search
The SEO playbook has shifted from search ranking to discovery. Brands, and new brands specifically, can no longer rely solely on Google rankings that may take 12 to 24 months to materialize. Instead, LLM’s provide a new avenue into the market by elevating content that is clear, accurate, and well-structured, even if it comes from a new or lesser-known source.
The SEMrush article underscores this trend. Over 70% of LLM citations come from sources ranked 21 or lower in traditional search. ChatGPT and Perplexity don’t require full landing pages or brand authority to cite your company/content. If your content is unique and genuinely helpful, LLM’s can extract a sentence or two and give your brand a valuable mention inside the response.
To learn more about how your brand can show up in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other LLM’s, contact Robert Drumm now.