Case Study · Baby Products & Retail
How a European Baby Products Brand Found Where Its Content Was Helping Competitors in AI Search
AI Search Audit & GEO Strategy for a European Baby Products Brand
SERVICES
AEO & GEO Monitoring · Citation & Mention Analysis · Competitor & Source Analysis · Technical & Content Audit · AEO / GEO Strategy
CLIENT
European Baby Products Brand
INDUSTRY
Retail
MARKET
Europe
PROGRAMME
5 weeks
Key Findings
100%
Citation-to-mention gap across pushchair queries
82%
Citation-to-mention gap across nursery furniture queries
78%
Citation-to-mention gap across toys & gifts queries
38%
Of product-page content invisible to AI crawlers
927
Broken and redirected page and resource URLs
The Challenge
The company is a European baby products brand selling pushchairs, car seats, nursery furniture, feeding products and other baby products.
The project started with an audit of the brand's visibility in AI search: where it appeared, which brands were being recommended and which sources were being used in the answers.
When citations were compared with brand mentions, a second issue appeared. The company's own pages were being cited across a number of product queries while the brand itself was missing from the answer. In some of these answers, other brands were recommended while the brand's own content was used as a source.
The objective was to understand where these gaps were happening, what was contributing to them and what needed to change across the website, content and external sources.
The Baseline
AI search monitoring was run across product categories and buying queries.
The initial analysis covered:
- Brand mentions and category visibility.
- Brands appearing in recommendations.
- Pages and domains cited in AI answers.
- The company's own pages appearing as sources.
- Product and brand positioning.
When citations were compared with brand mentions, gaps appeared across several product categories. The analysis was then extended to identify the affected queries, pages and categories.
Website analysis was added to check whether crawler access, content visibility and technical issues were contributing to the problem.
What Was Done
1
Ran AI search visibility monitoring
Brand mentions, recommendations and cited sources were measured across product discovery, comparison and buying queries.
2
Identified citation-to-mention gaps
The monitoring showed cases where the company's pages were cited but the brand was missing from the answer. These queries were then grouped by product category.
3
Analysed category gaps
Pushchairs, nursery furniture, toys & gifts and other product areas were compared to identify where the gaps were highest.
4
Analysed recommendations
Brands appearing in these answers were reviewed to see who was being recommended when the retailer's own pages were cited.
5
Analysed cited pages and external sources
The company's cited pages were reviewed alongside the third-party domains appearing in the same answers.
6
Audited AI crawler access and content visibility
3,712 pages across 27 URL templates were analysed to identify content unavailable to AI crawlers.
7
Audited technical website issues
Broken and redirected URLs, mobile performance, sitemap coverage, metadata and structured data were reviewed.
8
Built an AEO / GEO strategy
Our team combined the AI visibility data, citation gaps, source analysis and technical findings to prioritise the required changes.
HIGH LEVEL OUTLOOK
Citation & Website Audit Findings
The initial AI visibility audit showed that the brand was already appearing across product and buying queries.
A comparison of citations and mentions then identified a different problem: in several categories, the company's pages were being used as sources without the brand appearing in the answer.
The gap reached 100% across pushchair queries, where the site was cited but the brand was not mentioned. In nursery furniture, the gap was 82%, while toys & gifts recorded a 78% gap.
The technical audit found that 38% of product-page content was unavailable to AI crawlers. It also identified 927 broken and redirected page and resource URLs.
AEO / GEO Strategy
Based on the findings, our team developed an AEO / GEO strategy across three areas.
Product and category content. Connect buying guides more directly with the brand's products and categories, particularly where those guides were already being used as sources.
Technical. Improve crawler access and fix URL, performance, indexability, metadata and structured-data issues.
External presence. Increase the brand's presence across publications, review sites and communities appearing in AI recommendations.
Ongoing monitoring was included to track changes in cited pages, brand mentions and citation-to-mention gaps.
What Changed
The project started as an AI visibility audit and identified a separate issue: the company's own content was being used in answers where the brand itself was missing.
The project resulted in a prioritised AEO / GEO strategy covering the pages and categories with the largest citation-to-mention gaps, technical fixes and external-source work.
The internal team received a page- and category-level list of actions for implementation.
In marketing since 2009. In AI search since it became a category.
Our team has worked with international brands across SaaS, e-commerce, fintech and professional services for over fifteen years, originally as ContActive Tech Communications.
Today, that same senior team applies its strategic and technical expertise to answer engine optimisation, generative engine optimisation, and AI search visibility.
If AEO and GEO are on your radar, we would be glad to talk.