Blog.

A recent study by AIVO says citations are noise. Run the same prompts three times, and it reports that the cited sources change 95.8% of the time. They then go on to identify that the brand recommended (after multiple follow-up questions) changes only 14.6% of the time. The implication is that brands measuring how they […]

Most brands don’t. We looked at 62k AI answers to car-buying questions across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overview in the last three months. A few things stood out: • Manufacturers’ own sites are just 6.2% of what AI cites. Media, dealers, leasing sites and forums make up the rest. • Within that small […]

When you think of influencer brand collaborations, you probably think of Instagram, right? Take it back to the noughties, when bloggers were busy building followings and communities around fashion, food, lifestyle and more. Brands quickly took note of their unique, authentic voices and the relationships they had built with their audiences – offering an alternative […]

Reddit is the only forum that really registers (72% of forum citations over the last month) for AI tools, but it’s still a small slice: only about 6% of AI answers cite it. So, what pulls it in? Three question themes lead: practicality, reliability and electric. Together, they account for 37% of all Reddit citations. […]

Ten years ago, our Future of the Sports Fan report highlighted how fans had increasingly high expectations of the live sporting experience. Today, Arsenal’s plans to modernise the Emirates Stadium shows just how seriously some clubs are taking that challenge a decade on. Despite being only 20 years old, the stadium is set for upgrades […]

According to Engine Room, the RAC editorial pages are the fifth-most cited domain in AI search with the likes of ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AIO and Perplexity behind CarWow, What Car?, Auto Express and YouTube. This year saw the launch of the RAC New Car Awards. So how did this impact its AI visibility? RAC announced […]

AI search is now the top of the funnel for car sales. Rather than a page of links and magazines off the shelves, car buyers are asking ChatGPT. And those clicking through from AI are four times more likely to convert. It means understanding how you’re appearing on AI platforms, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and […]

We know that online search is changing as car buyers switch to AI over traditional search engines when researching their next vehicle. So what makes ChatGPT and other LLMs surface one car brand over another? The answer starts with consistency. A consistent brand voice across every digital touchpoint – your own digital content, social media channels […]

Andy Francis explains how LLMs are the ultimate dinner party hosts when it comes to understanding the scrap for AI recommendations Measuring success on how many times your brand website is cited is NOT the goal in the age of AI-assisted search. Let me explain. Picture a dinner party. The LLM is taking your place […]

Harnessing the European car parc to help provide a stable energy grid sounds like the work of science fiction, but Lindsey Reaney explains it could be closer to reality than you think One of the big challenges for electricity grids running off periodic generation sources like renewables is the issue of intermittency: what happens when […]

SEO vs GEO: what communications teams need to know. The gold standard of online automotive content has long been page one visibility, driven by high-quality articles laden with keywords and search terms. In short, SEO (or Search Engine Optimisation). The equation was simple. Rank higher on Google, get more clicks, increase organic site traffic, generate […]

The face of search has changed forever and the pace at which it’s doing so is quicker than ever. At the start of the year, half of UK adults were using LLM-based AI tools to find car information. Now, as we enter H2, that number is already at two-thirds – and growing.   The era of […]

What GEO actually looks like for car brands. SEO gets you on page one. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) gets your content extracted. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) gets your brand woven into the narrative itself. Here is the difference: AEO is about structure: Clean headings, FAQ sections and Schema markup so AI can pull a direct answer GEO is […]

We’re used to seeing the same links appear at the top of  Google searches but one size does not fit all in AI search. Our data shows the sources LLMs are citing and trust change depending on what the buyer asks. Practicality and reliability: YouTube is the 2nd most cited source, while Reddit, Inc. advice sits […]

The car-buying journey just broke. The traditional SEO and paid digital funnel still exists, but there is now a parallel journey happening inside AI search engines. Buyers aren’t clicking through 10 links anymore. They are asking for recommendations and getting a single, compressed response that names brands and products without the user ever visiting a […]

I enjoyed my first visit to FT Future of the Car summit last month, and it got me thinking. While Software Defined Vehicles (SDVs) and connected cars were a hot topic, communicating the benefits of these vehicles to consumers isn’t necessarily straightforward. It’s especially hard when it feels like new tech is simply the enabler […]

Your brand website is no longer the front door to your dealership.​ ​ Two-thirds of UK adults in the car-buying journey are now using LLM-based AI tools to find car information. When a buyer asks Claude ChatGPT Mastery or Perplexity for the ‘most reliable hybrid’, they don’t get a list of blue links.​ ​ They […]

Sam Mercer noticed a running theme at the FT Future of the Car Summit as the complexity and cost of producing modern cars is pushing more and more companies to work together. “Protectionism doesn’t work”. That was the clear statement from one panellist at FT Future of the Car last week. And this sentiment truly […]

It’s not often you stop and stand in awe of sporting achievement, but Sunday morning’s London Marathon stopped me in my tracks. The sub two-hour barrier for a marathon was never meant to be beaten in competition across 26.2 miles. While Red Bull and INEOS’ 2019 event showed it could be done in controlled conditions, […]

We all know that driverless cars are no longer the stuff of science fiction. While both China and the US have embraced autonomous technology, Aisling Fitzgerald looks at why 2026 promises to be a big year for self-driving vehicles here in the UK… This year is set to be a turning point for autonomous mobility […]

While battery technology typically takes the role of frontman in the rock band that is the EV transition, Matthew Kirtley looks at another member of the group that could be about to take centre stage… According to a recent report from Automotive IQ, the total value of EV powertrains produced worldwide is projected to more than […]