Insights & Strategy
The Renown Blog
AI is talking about you behind your back. We write about what it's saying.
What ChatGPT Actually Searches When You Ask It a Question
You ask ChatGPT one question. It runs three searches you never see. They don't look like your question, and half of them name vendors you didn't.
Six Questions to Ask Your AI Visibility Data
A score is a thermometer. It tells you there's a fever. Six questions that tell you why, and what to do about it.
How AI Chooses Its Sources: 3,543 Citations, Analyzed
AI doesn't read your website. It reads Reddit, YouTube, Wikipedia, and a handful of independent blogs. We have the data: 3,543 citations across two engines and 60 questions.
AI visibility is the new SEO. Here's the data to prove it
In 2010, if you weren't on page one of Google you were invisible. AI search is at that same inflection point, and the data from 91 brands proves it.
How we measure AI visibility: querying 10 LLMs with 100 prompts per category
10 models. 100 prompts per category. Scored for mentions, recommendations, citations, and sentiment. Here's exactly how the data works, including what it can't tell you.
What AI trusts: a citation analysis across 3,000 AI responses
AI search engines cite sources. We tracked which ones across 3,000 responses. The hierarchy is clear, and most marketing content sits at the bottom of it.
Lavender gets recommended 32% of the time it's mentioned. Apollo gets 21%. Why fewer mentions can mean more influence
Apollo: 645 mentions, 21% recommended. Lavender: 59 mentions, 32% recommended. Awareness and advocacy are different metrics, and they need different strategies.
If your brand launched after 2023, most AI models don't know you exist
Five of the 10 major AI models can see you through web search. The other five run on training data and don't know newer brands exist. That's a structural divide.
Grok mentions Cursor 81 times and Codex zero times. Corporate feuds are reshaping AI recommendations
Grok mentions Cursor 81 times. It mentions Codex, built by rival OpenAI, zero times. Every other model knows Codex exists. One model has a very specific blind spot.
Copilot vs Cursor: the closest AI visibility race in any category we've studied
Copilot 55.3. Cursor 55.0. A 0.3-point gap, the tightest race in 91 brands. A 4-year incumbent against a challenger that closed the gap on velocity alone.
How an unknown dev tool became the most-cited source across AI search engines
A brand most developers haven't heard of owns the citation layer for an entire category. 328 citations, more than Wikipedia. Citation dominance is the new link building.
ZoomInfo's blog is cited more than Wikipedia in AI search results for outbound sales
The most-cited source in AI search for outbound sales isn't Wikipedia. It's a vendor blog. ZoomInfo built the canonical reference for an entire category.
AI still recommends Tabnine as a top-5 coding tool. Engineers moved on years ago
Tabnine ranks #5 across 10 AI models. Ask developers and you get a different list. The gap between what AI recommends and what engineers use has never been wider.
91 brands, 3 categories, 1 pattern: AI search is winner-take-most
The #1 brand captures 55-78% of AI visibility. The median sits at 8-10%. The rest fight over scraps. AI search is a power law, not a bell curve.
Apollo dominates every metric when AI recommends outbound sales tools
Apollo leads first-pick rate, total mentions, sentiment, and recommendation rate. The old Outreach-vs-Salesloft duopoly framing is gone. It's Apollo vs everyone else.
Which coding tools do LLMs actually recommend? We tested 10 models to find out
4,209 brand mentions across 30 coding tools. The AI recommendation layer is running 18 months behind developer reality, and one company you've never heard of owns the citations.
Why open-source observability tools are invisible to AI search engines
Commercial vendors publish content as a product. Most open-source projects don't. AI search rewards the difference, and the gap is bigger than developer adoption suggests.
We asked AI models what Datadog costs. The answers should worry every brand
AI models are confident. They state specific numbers. And they're frequently wrong. If buyers ask AI what you cost, the answer shapes the deal before you ever talk.
Datadog captures 78% of AI visibility while most observability tools are invisible
One brand owns the recommendation space. The median tool is invisible. The gap between #1 and the middle is 69 points, the widest we've measured.
AEO vs GEO vs SEO: What's Actually Different
Three acronyms. Three different games. SEO gets you into Google. AEO gets you into ChatGPT. GEO is somewhere in between. Here's how they actually compare.
AI Search Market Share: Who's Actually Using What in 2026
Everyone talks about AI search. Few people know the actual numbers. Here's who's using what, how fast it's growing, and what it means for your brand.
AI Visibility: The Definitive Guide (2026)
AI is recommending your competitors right now. This is the definitive guide to understanding, measuring, and improving how AI sees your brand.
The AI Visibility Tech Stack: Tools You Actually Need in 2026
The AI visibility tool market went from 3 players to 30 in a year. Here's an honest look at what's out there, who each tool is for, and what actually matters.
How ChatGPT Shopping Is Changing E-commerce
ChatGPT isn't just answering questions anymore. It's recommending products, comparing prices, and sending buyers straight to checkout. If you sell anything online, this matters.
The Complete Guide to Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
SEO got you into Google's top 10. AEO gets you into ChatGPT's answer. Different game. Different rules. Here's the playbook.
The Complete Guide to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
GEO focuses on how generative search engines rank and surface content. If AEO is the what, GEO is the how. Here's everything you need to know.
How to Build an llms.txt File (With Examples)
robots.txt tells search engines what to crawl. llms.txt tells AI what to understand. Here's how to build one that actually works.
AI Overviews, AI Mode, and the Slow Death of the Click
58% of Google searches now end without a click. Some publishers have lost 97% of their traffic. The company that wrote the original contract of the internet is rewriting it.
The SEO Playbook Doesn't Work Here. What Does?
The skills transfer. The playbook doesn't. Here's an honest accounting of what changes when the answers come from a language model instead of an index.
Building Renown in the Age of AI
The era of ten blue links has ended. AI is forming opinions about your brand without you. Here's why we built Renown.
What Is AI Visibility, and Why Does It Matter Now?
ChatGPT has 900 million weekly users. Perplexity handles 700 million queries a month. AI Overviews appear on half of Google searches. If your brand isn't in those answers, you're invisible to a growing share of your market.
