When you're managing multiple business verticals, staying ahead of the competition requires constant vigilance. For Amadeusz Gawino and his team at IGLeads, that vigilance led to discoveries that traditional SEO tools had completely missed.
"Using your tool, we discovered that a major competitor, Clay, had written about us on their blog, something we could have missed otherwise" reveals Amadeusz. This wasn't just a mention, it was intelligence gold that opened doors to understanding competitive dynamics they never knew existed.
But this competitor's mention was just the beginning of what Writesonic's GEO platform would reveal about their invisible presence in AI search.
The Challenge: Tracking Success Across Multiple Business Lines
As SEO experts managing multiple business verticals, IGLeads faced a new challenge. "In the industry today, ranking in AI matters just as much as ranking in Google," explains Amadeusz. "We needed a way to track AI visibility the same way we already track SEO."
Their portfolio included:
- A SaaS platform for lead generation that extracts emails and phone numbers from public profiles
- Multiple client properties across different industries
Traditional SEO tools showed them keyword rankings and backlinks, but couldn't answer critical questions: Were their brands being recommended by ChatGPT? Which competitors were dominating AI responses? Where were the gaps they could exploit?
"My coworker Marc and I specialize in SEO, building and ranking our own websites," Amadeusz explains. "But we realized it was time to go beyond traditional search and start measuring AI visibility."
Uncovering Hidden Intelligence That Traditional Tools Missed
Within weeks of implementing Writesonic, IGLeads discovered competitive intelligence that had been completely invisible to traditional SEO tools.
The breakthrough moment came when they discovered Clay had written about them. "It was a brand citation, very significant to us, because a leading tool on the market had chosen to feature IGLeads in their own content," Amadeusz explains. "It was a blog post highlighting the top lead generation tools, and IGLeads was listed among them."
This discovery was game-changing for multiple reasons:
Immediate Value: Clay had essentially validated IGLeads as a legitimate competitor worth discussing
Partnership Potential: The mention opened doors for potential collaboration or reciprocal coverage
Intelligence Gathering: It revealed Clay's content strategy and how they positioned competitors
SEO Opportunity: They could leverage this mention for link building and relationship development
"Just two weeks earlier, we wouldn’t have noticed this. Your tool flagged it instantly, bringing visibility we didn’t have before," Amadeusz emphasizes.
Systematic Discovery of Citation Opportunities
Beyond the Clay discovery, Writesonic revealed a systematic approach to finding missed opportunities that traditional tools had overlooked.
"We exported the list of missed citations using your tool, and now our team is reaching out to those blogs for partnerships," shares Amadeusz. This proactive approach revealed over a hundred potential citation opportunities where competitors were mentioned but IGLeads was missing.
The process became systematic and actionable:
Step 1: Gap Identification "Many URLs were list-style articles, like ‘Best Tools in the Market.’ In several of these, our competitors were featured, but IGLeads was not there." Amadeusz notes. The platform showed exactly which high-authority sites mentioned competitors but not IGLeads.
Step 2: Competitive Intelligence
They discovered competitors appearing in specific forums, industry publications, and niche websites they'd never considered. Each gap represented a potential citation opportunity.
Step 3: Outreach Strategy "This was extremely useful, because finding these opportunities manually or with other tools would have been much more difficult." explains Amadeusz. Instead of cold prospecting, their outreach team now had a precise target list of sites already discussing their industry.
Early Results Show Promise Despite Modest Scale
Within their first month of implementation, the results began materializing in measurable ways:
AI Traffic Growth: Monthly users from AI platforms increased from 221 to 277, a 25% month-over-month growth
Business Impact: "Generated a few confirmed purchases directly from AI-driven traffic in the first month, validating the potential of AI visibility as a scalable acquisition channel." from AI traffic
Discovery Intelligence: 100+ citation opportunities identified across multiple business verticals
Competitive Insights: Deep understanding of where competitors dominate and why
"We track everything meticulously in Google Analytics, with a custom dashboard built to monitor AI and LLM traffic separately from traditional SEO." explains Amadeusz. This dual-tracking approach proved invaluable for measuring both traditional and AI-driven performance.
While the numbers were promising, Amadeusz remained realistic about the scale. "While early results are naturally modest, the real strength lies in IGLeads’ steady 25% monthly AI traffic growth and over 100 high-value citation opportunities uncovered in just the first month. These opportunities represent long-term business value far beyond immediate traffic spikes."
However, the trend was clear and growing. "It's a slow incremental raise in users," notes Amadeusz. More importantly, the citation opportunities represented potential business value far exceeding the current traffic numbers.
From Reactive to Proactive: Building an AI-First Strategy
The transition required a fundamental shift in thinking. While maintaining their strong traditional SEO foundation, IGLeads began incorporating AI visibility metrics into their core strategy.
"The two are connected, if something doesn’t rank well in SERPs, it often won’t show up in LLMs either," Amadeusz notes, emphasizing how traditional and AI search overlap.
Their approach became systematic:
Content Strategy Evolution: Creating content designed for both traditional and AI consumption Monitoring Integration: Weekly tracking of AI visibility alongside traditional SEO metrics
Outreach Precision: Targeting specific publications where competitors gain citations but they don't Technical Optimization: Ensuring their sites are properly crawlable by AI platforms
The team particularly valued understanding the volatility of AI search results. "The visibility graphs were eye-opening , shifting dramatically from one day to the next, dropping to zero and then rebounding. It showed us just how volatile AI results can be." Amadeusz observed, learning to focus on weekly and monthly trends rather than daily fluctuations.
Looking Forward: Building Long-Term Competitive Advantages
Six months after implementation, IGLeads sees AI visibility as a competitive moat rather than just another metric to track.
They're particularly excited about the Action Center features for systematic improvement. “This is very interesting… previously we struggled to track down relevant discussions. Now we get a clear list of posts where our industry is being talked about, so our team can join the conversation in a meaningful way,” says Amadeusz, highlighting how the platform streamlines what used to be a manual process.
The company is now applying their learnings across:
- SaaS lead generation tools: Optimizing for business software recommendations
- Systematic outreach: Using citation gap analysis for strategic relationship building
For companies looking to establish AI search presence, Amadeusz emphasizes patience and systematic execution. "The growth curve is just beginning, but the consistent improvement each month confirms a strong positive trajectory. It's a slow incremental raise, and that's what matters for long-term success."
The real value isn't just in the current traffic numbers, it's in the competitive intelligence and systematic opportunities that traditional tools simply cannot provide. "Finding this intel manually with other tools was difficult," Amadeusz concludes: "Now we have a systematic way to discover what we were missing."
