Why AI Skips Your B2B Content
*And What to Do About It
I’ve asked ChatGPT more questions than Google this year.
Adobe reports that 77% of people who use ChatGPT use it as a search engine.
That’s because asking AI doesn’t feel like “searching” at all.
I’ve never had to sort through lists of blue links in ChatGPT. Getting answers to my questions felt like a fascinating conversation with a brilliant, patient teacher.
And that’s why AI is now deciding more and more who gets attention, who gets customers, and who gets left behind. If AI can’t find you, you’re invisible to a rising percentage of your customers.
So what’s the fix?
SEO Won’t Save You
Traditional SEO is about being found. You optimize for keywords so Google can crawl your site and list it in search results. It’s about making sure your site is visible in the first place.
GEO—Generative Engine Optimization—is about being quoted. AI doesn’t reward keyword repetition; it rewards clarity. It looks for content it can lift word-for-word into an answer. Pages written in a conversational Q&A style—short definitions, structured explanations, quotable lines—get chosen.
The two are connected: SEO ensures your content can be seen. GEO ensures your exact words are used as the answer when the question is asked.
Put simply: SEO gets you discovered. GEO gets you cited word-for-word.
“Quotable” Criteria
Short, self-contained, high-contrast ideas that are easy to remember.
AI and humans agree these are the most interesting reads. These are the viral nuggets of wisdom that spread themselves—into boardrooms, investor decks, Slack threads, and AI answers.
A quotable sentence delivers a complete idea in one breath. The clearer the idea, the easier it is to remember. Certain strategies make it stick better: contrast old with new, make it timely, give it rhythm, and craft it to stand alone without context. For B2B leaders, this isn’t wordplay—it’s strategy. Quotability turns content into currency.
5 “Quoteable” Qualities
Self-contained: Complete idea in one sentence.
Short & sharp: Easy to repeat, no extra context needed.
Bold Claim: Big claim stated directly.
Universal truth: Applies broadly.
Timely: Frames it in today’s context.
The Wake-Up Call For B2B
If you sell into enterprise, you already know: buyers do most of their research before they ever talk to sales. Now that research happens inside AI engines.
An IT director might ask: “Who are the best cybersecurity vendors for mid-market companies in 2025?”
If your content isn’t clear, current, and structured for AI—you won’t show up in that answer.
AI doesn’t reward volume—it rewards quotability and clarity.
To increase your odds of being surfaced, simplify until your message is clear, short, and memorable. If you’re in semiconductors, cybersecurity, AI hardware, or advanced engineering, you can’t just “be technical” anymore. You have to translate complexity into bite-sized insights.
For technical founders and marketing leaders, this is both a challenge and an opportunity. You no longer need to obsess over keyword density or flood the zone with endless content. By focusing on clarity and effective communication, you not only help AI understand your business—you help your customers do the same. That’s a win-win.
A Practical Example
In 2023, a B2B SaaS company restructured its content specifically for AI search.
Instead of producing dozens of new blog posts, they reworked existing pages into Q&A style with clear headings, comparison tables, and FAQ schema. One page, “What is SOC 2 Compliance?”, started with a two-sentence direct definition followed by structured sections: benefits, steps, and costs.
Within three months, ChatGPT began citing that exact definition word-for-word when users asked about SOC 2. The company didn’t create more content—they designed their content in the most appealing way to AI search.
Visuals Matter To AI
A chart, diagram, or video doesn’t just help your customer understand your product—it determines whether your content is visible to AI. Practitioners in SEO and GEO repeatedly find that structured visuals are far more likely to be indexed, cited, and pulled into generative answers. In other words: visuals aren’t decoration - they’re visibility.
How it Works
Here’s the catch: AI doesn’t “see” an image the way we do.
It scans the scaffolding around it—captions, alt text, transcripts, and the nearby copy. A chart without explanation is a ghost to AI; with the right descriptions, it suddenly becomes both human-friendly and machine-readable, ready to be quoted word-for-word in a response.
a. Caption Text: Captions help AI quote or cite the image. Ex: “This system reduces cooling costs by 40%”
b. Alt Text: Alt text helps AI interpret the image. Ex: “diagram of a cooling system with airflow arrows”
Both matter. But if your goal is to be surfaced in AI-generated answers, captions often carry more weight because they’re part of the visible text AI prefers to lift. And with multimodal AI advancing fast, soon visuals won’t just support your story—they’ll become part of what AI understands directly, making image-ready content a genuine competitive edge.
Best Practices (Images)
Images can’t be read directly, but they boost AI visibility dramatically when paired with clear captions and surrounded by explanatory copy. Every visual should carry its own story: a diagram should explain itself in words, a chart should have a caption that makes the insight unmistakable. Think in modular chunks—step-by-step workflows, side-by-side comparisons, or labeled diagrams—that AI can lift more easily than a dense block of text.
Best Practices (Video)
For video, transcripts are no longer optional—they’re the text AI engines rely on to understand and quote your content. Descriptive titles, short summaries, and on-screen captions all add clarity for both humans and machines. And beyond machine-readability, videos improve engagement metrics—time on page, shares, and backlinks—which feed back into the authority signals AI uses to decide what to surface.
The 6 Core Principles of B2B GEO
Clarity Is King
Forget keyword stuffing. Make sure every section has a quotable line. If it doesn’t, rewrite it.
It Loves Conversations
Write in Q&A format. Use FAQs everywhere. Add an FAQ section at the bottom of blogs, product pages, and even case studies.
Structure for AI
AI favors structure and hierarchy (H1 > H2 > bullets > tables). Schema markup, bullet lists, and clear headings. Organize content like a Wikipedia page: most important facts up top, details layered below.
Prove Authority
AI engines are tuned to surface trustworthy, verifiable content. Add numbers whenever possible, include a stat, percentage, or measurable outcome instead of vague claims.
Stay Fresh
Outdated content gets skipped. LLMs seek the newest, most reliable data. Update case studies, screenshots, or product references with newer versions so the story feels relevant.
Be Everywhere
The more visible your brand is across credible channels, the more likely the AI is to trust your answers. Make sure your brand exists on multiple platforms. At least post on LinkedIn regularly—it signals activity and credibility.
Make It Visual
Use visuals as much as possible. AI ranks them highly. But pair them with alt text so AI engines can parse the message.
The Bottom Line
Clear > Clever.
Structured > Scattered.
Quotable > Keywords
AI is not just changing how people search. It’s changing what content survives. B2B growth will belong to the companies who understand this shift early and build their content to match.
Visibility in AI search is step one—but visibility isn’t value until it connects to pipeline. That’s where tools like Leadsourcing close the loop: turning anonymous visibility into real prospects you can start a conversation with. Pair that with a clear story, and you’ve got the foundation for growth in the generative era.
Implementing This In Your Business
At Machine Mythology, we specialize in doing exactly that. We take complex, technical products and translate them into crystal-clear stories that AI engines and human buyers both understand.
We build product videos, explainers, and content systems designed to be snippable, quotable, and strategically visualized—so your company shows up where it matters most.
If you want to make sure your message doesn’t just get published, but actually gets picked up by AI search and put in front of your next customer, let’s talk.
We can help get your business ready for the age of AI search. Just book a call.