If you happen to’re a CMO, I really feel your ache. For years, many years even, model visibility has largely been an website positioning arms race towards your rivals. After which alongside comes ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude, to not point out Google’s new AI-powered search options: AI Mode and AI Overviews. All of a sudden, you’ve additionally received to think about your model’s visibility in AI-generated responses as properly.
Sadly, the technical shortcuts that helped your model adapt shortly and keep aggressive over time have most definitely left you with numerous legacy points. This gathered technical website positioning debt may probably devastate your AI visibility.
After all, each legacy subject or technical drawback could have an answer. However your largest problem in addressing your technical website positioning debt isn’t complexity or incompetence; it’s assumption.
Assumptions are the white ants in your search technique, hollowing out the crew’s ways and finest efforts. Every little thing may nonetheless appear structurally sound on the floor as a result of all of the injury is going on contained in the partitions of the home, or between the traces of your website positioning objectives and workflows. However then comes that horrific day when somebody inadvertently applies a bit of further stress within the incorrect spot and the whole thing caves in.
The brand new calls for of AI search are making use of that stress proper now. How stable is your technical website positioning?
Sturdy Search Rankings ≠ AI Visibility
One of the vital harmful assumptions you may make is considering that, as a result of your web site ranks properly sufficient in Google, the technical foundations should be sound. So, if the various search engines don’t have any drawback crawling your web site and indexing your content material, the identical also needs to be true for AI, proper?
Mistaken.
Okay, there are literally a few assumptions in there. However that’s usually the best way: One assumption supplies the deceptive context that results in others, and the white ants begin chewing your partitions.
Let’s take care of that second assumption first: In case your web site ranks properly in Google, it ought to get pleasure from comparable visibility in AI.
We just lately in contrast Ahrefs information for 2 main lodging web sites: Airbnb and Vrbo.
Once we take a look at non-branded search, each web sites have seen a downward development since July. The newest information level we have now (Oct. 13-15, 2025) has Airbnb displaying up in ~916,304 searches and Vrbo displaying up in ~615,497. That’s a ratio of roughly 3:2.
However after we take a look at estimated ChatGPT mentions (September 2025), Airbnb has ~8,636, whereas Vrbo has solely ~1,573. That’s a ratio of ~11:2.
Picture from creator, October 2025I ought to add a caveat at this level that any AI-related datasets are early and modeled, so must be taken as indicative slightly than absolute. Nonetheless, the info suggests Vrbo seems far much less in AI solutions (and ChatGPT particularly) than you’d count on if there was any correlation with search rankings.
Due to Vrbo’s presence in Google’s natural search outcomes, it does have a modest presence in Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode. That’s as a result of Google’s AI options nonetheless largely draw on the identical search infrastructure.
And that’s the important thing subject right here: Engines like google aren’t the one ones sending crawlers to your web site. And you’ll’t assume AI crawlers work in the identical manner.
AI Search Magnifies Your Technical website positioning Debt
So, what about that first assumption: In case your web site ranks effective in Google, any technical debt should be negligible.
Google’s search infrastructure is very subtle, taking in a a lot wider array of alerts than AI crawlers presently do. The cumulative impact of all these alerts can masks or compensate for small quantities of technical debt.
For instance, a web page with well-optimized copy, robust schema markup, and first rate authority may nonetheless rank increased than a competitor’s, even when your web page masses barely slower.
Most AI crawlers don’t work that manner. They strip away code, formatting, and schema markup to ingest solely the uncooked textual content. With fewer different alerts to stability issues out, something that hinders the crawler’s means to entry your content material could have a better influence in your AI visibility. There’s nowhere in your technical debt to cover.
The Want For Pace
Let’s take a look at simply probably the most frequent types of technical website positioning debt: web page velocity.
Sub-optimal web page velocity hardly ever has a single trigger. It’s often all the way down to a mixture of things – bloated code, inefficient CSS, massive JavaScript bundles, outsized pictures and media recordsdata, poor infrastructure, and extra – with every occasion including just a bit extra drag on how shortly the web page masses in a typical browser.
Sure, we could possibly be speaking fractions of a second right here and there, however the accumulation of points can have a adverse influence on the person expertise. Because of this sooner web sites will typically rank increased; Google treats web page velocity as a direct rating think about search.
Web page velocity additionally seems to be a major think about how usually content material seems in Google’s new AI Mode.
Dan Taylor just lately crunched the info on 2,138 web sites showing as citations in AI Mode responses to see if there was any correlation between how usually they have been cited and their LCP and CLA scores. What he discovered was a transparent drop-off in AI Mode citations for web sites with slower load instances.
Picture from creator, October 2025
Picture from creator, October 2025We additionally checked out one other fashionable technique web site homeowners use to evaluate web page velocity: Google’s PageSpeed Insights (PSI) device. This aggregates a bunch of metrics, together with the above two alongside many extra, to generate an total rating out of 100. Nonetheless, we discovered no correlation between PSI scores and citations in AI Mode.
So, whereas PageSpeed Insights may give you useful diagnostic data, figuring out the assorted points impacting your load instances, your web site’s Core Internet Vitals are a extra dependable indicator of how shortly and effectively web site guests and crawlers can entry your content material.
I do know what you’re considering: This information is confined to Google’s AI Mode. It doesn’t inform us something about whether or not the identical is true for visibility in different AI platforms.
We presently lack any publicly obtainable information to check the identical idea for different agentic assistant instruments reminiscent of ChatGPT, however the clues are all there.
Crawling Comes At A Price
Again in July, OpenAI’s Sam Altman instructed Axios that ChatGPT receives 2.5 billion person prompts day-after-day. For comparability, SparkToro estimates Google serves ~16.4 billion search queries per day.
The massive language mannequin (LLM) powering every AI platform responds to a immediate in two methods:
- Drawing on its massive pool of coaching information.
- Sending out bots or crawlers to confirm and complement the knowledge with information from extra sources in actual time.
ChatGPT’s real-time crawler known as ChatGPT-Consumer. On the time of writing, the earlier seven days noticed ChatGPT-Consumer go to the SALT.company web site ~6,000 instances. In the identical interval, Google’s search crawler, Googlebot, accessed our web site ~2,500 instances.
Dealing with billions of prompts every day consumes an enormous quantity of processing energy. OpenAI estimates that its present enlargement plans would require 10 gigawatts of energy, which is roughly the output of 10 nuclear reactors.
Every a kind of 6,000 crawls of the SALT web site drew on these computational sources. Nonetheless, a sluggish or inefficient web site forces the crawler to burn much more of these sources.
As the amount of prompts continues to develop, the cumulative value of all this crawling will solely get greater. Sooner or later, the AI platforms could have no alternative however to enhance the associated fee effectivity of their crawlers (in the event that they haven’t already), shunning these web sites requiring extra sources to crawl in favor of these that are fast and simple to entry and browse.
Why ought to ChatGPT waste sources crawling sluggish web sites when it may extract the identical or comparable data from extra environment friendly websites with far much less trouble?
Is Your Website Already Invisible To AI?
All of the above assumes the AI crawler can entry your web site within the first place. Because it seems, even that isn’t assured.
In July this yr, Cloudflare (one of many world’s largest content material supply networks) began blocking AI crawlers by default. This determination probably impacts the AI visibility of hundreds of thousands of internet sites.
Cloudflare first gave web site homeowners the power to dam AI crawlers in September 2024, and greater than 1 million prospects selected to just do that. The brand new pay-per-crawl characteristic takes this a step additional, permitting paid customers of Cloudflare to decide on which crawlers they may permit and on what phrases.
Nonetheless, the distinction now could be that blocking AI crawlers is now not opt-in. In order for you your web site and content material to be seen in AI, you’ll want to choose out; assuming you’re conscious of the adjustments, in fact.
In case your web site runs on Cloudflare infrastructure and also you haven’t explicitly checked your settings just lately, there’s an honest probability your web site may now be invisible to ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. Not as a result of your content material isn’t adequate. Not as a result of your technical website positioning is poor. However as a result of a third-party platform made an infrastructure determination that instantly impacts your visibility, and also you may not even understand it occurred.
That is the uncomfortable actuality CMOs must face: You possibly can’t assume what works in the present day will work tomorrow. You possibly can’t even assume that choices affecting your AI visibility will all the time occur inside your organisation.
And when a change like this does occur, you completely can’t assume another person is dealing with it.
Who Is Accountable?
Most technical website positioning points could have an answer, however you’ve received to concentrate on the issue within the first place. That requires two issues:
- Somebody liable for figuring out and highlighting these points.
- Somebody with the mandatory abilities and experience to repair them.
Spelled out like this, my level may appear a tad patronizing. However be sincere, may you identify the individual(s) liable for these in your group? Who would you say is liable for proactively and autonomously figuring out and elevating Cloudflare’s new pay-per-crawl coverage with you? And would they agree along with your expectation in case you requested them?
Oh, and don’t cop out by claiming the duty lies along with your exterior website positioning companions. Businesses may proactively advise purchasers every time there’s “a serious disturbance within the Drive,” reminiscent of a pending Google replace. However does your contract with them embody monitoring each facet of your infrastructure, together with third-party companies? And does this duty lengthen to bettering your AI visibility on prime of the standard website positioning actions? Except that is explicitly spelled out, there’s no cause to imagine they’re actively making certain all the assorted AI crawlers can entry your web site.
In brief, most technical website positioning debt occurs as a result of everybody assumes it’s another person’s job.
The CMO assumes it’s the developer’s duty. It’s all code, proper? The builders ought to know the web site must rank in search and be seen in AI. Certainly, they’ll implement technical website positioning finest apply by default.
However builders aren’t technical website positioning consultants in precisely the identical manner they’re not internet designers or UX specialists. They’ll construct what they’re briefed to construct. They’ll prioritize what you inform them to prioritize.
Because of this, the dev crew assumes it’s as much as the website positioning crew to flag any new technical adjustments. However the website positioning crew assumes all is properly as a result of final quarter’s technical audit, based mostly on the identical listing of checks they’ve relied on for years, didn’t establish something amiss. And everyone assumes that, if there have been going to be any points with AI visibility, another person would have raised it by now.
This confusion all helps technical debt to build up, unseen and unchecked.
→ Learn extra: Why Your website positioning Isn’t Working, And It’s Not The Staff’s Fault
Cease Assuming And Begin Doing
One of the best time to forestall white ants from consuming the partitions in your house is earlier than you understand they’re there. Wait till the issues are apparent, and the expense of fixing all of the injury will far outweigh the prices of an preliminary inspection and some precautionary measures.
In the identical manner, don’t wait till it turns into apparent that your model’s visibility in AI is compromised. Carry out the mandatory inspections now. Establish and repair any technical points now which may trigger points for AI crawlers.
An enormous a part of this will probably be robust communication between your groups, with accountabilities that clarify who’s liable for monitoring and actioning every issue contributing to your total visibility in AI.
If you happen to don’t, any funding and energy your crew places into optimizing model content material for AI could possibly be wasted.
Cease assuming tomorrow will work like in the present day. Technical website positioning debt will influence your AI visibility. That’s not up for debate. The actual query is whether or not you’ll proactively deal with your technical website positioning debt now or wait till the assumptions trigger your on-line visibility to crumble.
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Featured Picture: SvetaZi/Shutterstock
