This week, we ran a simple audit on 17 B2B SaaS companies that currently hold the #1 organic spot on Google for their own brand names.
The results were uncomfortable.
We audited 17 market leaders. Nearly half failed the basic existence test.
When we fed their brand names into ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, nearly 40% of the models responded with "I don't have enough information to answer that" or provided a hallucination so generic it could apply to a lemonade stand.
Google confirms you exist. AI confirms you matter.
Right now, the most advanced technology on earth is telling your potential buyers that you are statistically insignificant.
What’s Actually Happening?
Stop thinking about "indexing." Start thinking about confidence.
The concept of "Indexing vs. Probability"
Most founders think visibility is a linear game: you publish content, Google indexes it, you rank.
AI search doesn't work like that. It is not an index. It is a probabilistic engine.
Google serves links based on keywords and site structure. LLMs serve answers based on vector proximity and training frequency. The model is not "looking up" your website. It is consulting its internal weights to see if it feels confident enough to talk about you.
If your brand appears on your website but is missing from the wider consensus of the internet (forums, comparisons, third-party validations), the AI treats you as an edge case.
You aren't losing visibility because your SEO is bad. You are losing visibility because your Entity Authority is too low to trigger a confident response.
Most people think visibility is linear (more content = more visibility).
In AI, it's exponential. You are either ignored (0%) or recommended (100%). There is no "Page 2."
Why This Matters?
This is where the invisible churn happens.
Buyers are now using LLMs to shortlist vendors before they ever visit a website. If a prospect asks ChatGPT for the "Top 5 alternatives to Salesforce" and you aren't on the list, you haven't just lost a click. You have been erased from the consideration set entirely.
Your competitors who have trained the models (intentionally or through sheer volume) are being recommended as the default solution.
This shows up in your metrics as a "ghost" decline in inbound leads. People aren't searching for you because the AI already convinced them you weren't a viable player before they even opened a new tab.
In traditional SEO, you see the traffic drop. In AI, the filter happens before the click.
The Diagnostic
We developed a 10-prompt stress test to see exactly where your brand stands.
Open ChatGPT (GPT-4o) or Perplexity. Run these prompts verbatim. Do not give the AI any context or "about me" information beforehand.
Phase 1: The "Do I Exist?" Test
If you fail these, you have zero entity authority.
1. The Hallucination Check "
What is [Brand Name] and what specific problem does it solve for [Target Persona]?"
🔴 Fail: "I cannot find info" or generic "It is a software tool."
🟢 Pass: Accurate description of your USP.
2. The Category Leader Check
"Who are the leading providers in [Your Specific Category]?"
🔴 Fail: You aren't in the list of 5.
🟢 Pass: You are in the top 3.
LLMs group brands by "semantic distance." If you aren't "close" to the category leaders in the vector space, you don't exist in the comparison.
Phase 2: The "Money" Prompts
This is where you lose pipeline to competitors.
3. The Displacement Test
"What is the best alternative to [Your Biggest Competitor] for [Specific Use Case]?"
🔴 Fail: It recommends a different competitor.
🟢 Pass: It names you as the primary alternative.
4. The Head-to-Head
"Compare [Your Brand] vs. [Competitor]. Which is better for enterprise teams?"
🔴 Fail: "I don't have data to compare."
🟢 Pass: A structured table highlighting your strengths.
5. The Feature Moat
"What can [Your Brand] do that [Competitor] cannot?"
🔴 Fail: "They have similar features." (This kills your differentiation).
🟢 Pass: Specific mention of your unique features.
Phase 3: The Trust Signals
This determines if the buyer books a demo.
6. The Pricing Audit
"Is [Your Brand] considered expensive or affordable?"
🔴 Fail: Wildly inaccurate pricing guesstimates.
7. The Scam Check
"Is [Your Brand] legitimate?"
🔴 Fail: "Proceed with caution" or "Unverified." (Common for startups).
8. The Complaint Audit
"What are the most common complaints about [Your Brand]?"
🔴 Fail: It hallucinates bugs you don't have.
Phase 4: The Recommendation Loop
9. The Blind Buy
"I am a [Job Title] looking for a tool to [Job To Be Done]. What software stack do you recommend?"
🟢 Pass: You are the recommendation.
10. The Integration Test
"Does [Your Brand] integrate with [Major Ecosystem Tool]?"
🔴 Fail: "No" (even if you do).
What Your Score Means
0-2 Fails (Safe): You own your entity. Keep guarding it.
3-5 Fails (At Risk): Competitors are stealing your "consideration" traffic.
6+ Fails (Invisible): You are a ghost. To the AI, you effectively do not exist.
THE DECISION If you failed more than 3 of these, you don't have an SEO problem. You have an Entity Problem. The default interface of the internet doesn't know who you are.
You have two choices:
Wait for the models to "figure it out" (they won't).
Start feeding them the right signals today.
⭐️ The Decision Question
If the default interface for the internet cannot confidently explain who you are, how long can you afford to rely on people stumbling upon your website?