559 media placements
AI Notice as a source
45 branded, 174 non-branded
The Business
The client is a commercial structured cabling contractor and technology integrator specializing in copper and fiber optic cabling for corporate offices, campuses and data centers. Its services also include managed Wi-Fi, security and AV systems.
Before awarding a project, IT and facilities teams need confidence that the cabling infrastructure will perform reliably for years. The pilot tested what AI engines tell these teams when they ask how to evaluate contractors and what qualifications to look for. Because cabling infrastructure outlasts the hardware it supports, the client emphasizes technical credentials and documented test results ahead of price.
The Objective
The AI visibility optimization pilot aimed to get the client cited in AI answers about selecting and evaluating commercial cabling contractors. It used two published assets and measured the results once after launch. Specifically:
- Focus on buyer questions about contractor credentials, test documentation and network design, where the buyer is close to a decision
- Publish one Anchor Article on the client’s domain to build its authority on commercial structured cabling
- Publish one AI Notice on the wire to carry the same certified-cabling case into third-party sources
- Track the client’s AI visibility on five AI engines, with a fixed set of buyer prompts for each asset
- Measure share of voice and prompt coverage against competing structured cabling contractors
Core Challenges
Competing With Cabling Contractors Already Established in AI Answers
During the pilot, three rival contractors and integrators were each named more than 90 times in the AI Notice prompt set. The sources the engines leaned on most were social media platforms and community forums. Engines tend to recommend the brands these sources already discuss, so the client needed a source of its own.
Buyers Ask AI How to Vet a Cabling Contractor
Buyers in this category ask exact questions, such as what a BICSI credential proves or whether to install Cat6 or Cat6A. The client needed content that answered these technical questions and gave AI engines a reliable source to cite.
Tracing New AI Visibility Back to Its Source
With two assets in market, both telling the same certified-cabling story, a total citation count would not have shown which one the engines were citing. Only per-citation attribution could separate them, so the pilot traced every appearance back to the page behind it.
The Strategy
Prompt Selection Around the Buying Moment
The pilot wrote its buyer prompts in the voices of the people who hire a cabling contractor, from VP of IT to CFO. The prompts mixed two kinds of questions: what the category’s terms mean, such as single-mode and multi-mode fiber, and how to choose and hire a contractor. Together they followed a buyer from learning the terms to picking a firm.
One Anchor Article
A long-form guide on the client’s site walks buyers through hiring a commercial cabling contractor, from the questions to ask before hiring to why one integrator should own the whole low-voltage scope. Because the client owns the page, AI engines can keep crawling and citing it after the pilot ends.
One AI Notice
The AI Notice went out on the wire and named certifications and documented test results as the key criteria for choosing a contractor.
Day-Zero Launch, Day-7 Measurement
Seven days after the AI Notice launched, the pilot ran its buyer prompts across five AI engines and tracked citations to both the AI Notice’s placements and the Anchor Article. All results reflect this single post-launch measurement.
AI Visibility Optimization Results
113 mentions
Article on three engines
the AI Notice first
from unprompted questions
The campaign report shows how far the AI Notice traveled in the media and how often AI engines cited it.
Share of Voice Among Structured Cabling Contractors
With 113 mentions, the client finished ahead of every rival contractor in the AI Notice prompt set. The next two were named 109 and 107 times. Only the industry’s professional association and three cable manufacturers received more mentions.
Prompt Coverage by Question Type
Engines named the client in 82 of the 300 buyer prompts. Half of them asked how to hire a contractor or which providers to consider.
Unprompted Discovery
Of the 82 prompts that named the client, 61 never mentioned the brand. They asked about topics such as how to run a copper-to-fiber migration in an occupied building, what written test results a contractor should hand over and how to check a contractor’s BICSI credentials before a critical infrastructure project. Engines brought up the client in those answers without being asked. Overall, outside brand-direct prompts, the client had its strongest coverage in prompts comparing types of solutions, at 37%, and specific providers, at 34%.
| Buyer awareness stage | Coverage | Named the client | Prompts in stage | Avg position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unawarehas not identified the problem | 10% | 3 | 29 | #1.5 |
| Problem-Awareknows the problem, still scoping solutions | 15% | 12 | 78 | #2.6 |
| Solution-Awarecomparing types of solutions | 37% | 20 | 54 | #4.7 |
| Product-Awarecomparing specific providers | 34% | 21 | 62 | #2.2 |
AI Visibility by Engine
Every mention the report scored was positive, and it logged no negative mention. Grok named the client most often, in 76 of the 300 prompts. It ranked the client first 12 times, at an average position of #2.5. Claude, ChatGPT and Perplexity also named the client. The report marked Claude and ChatGPT as recommending it and Perplexity as rating it a top pick.
Where the AI Visibility Came From
When Gemini, Grok and Perplexity answered these buyer questions, the client’s own website was the sixth most-cited source and the most-cited contractor website, with 506 citations. The next four contractor websites were cited 405, 338, 289 and 282 times. The report holds no citation data for Claude or ChatGPT.
The most-cited copy of the AI Notice was the wire release itself, with 153 citations. A financial news site’s copy followed with 57, and a social media post that shared the release added 9. Together they gave the AI Notice 219 placement citations, nearly three times the 75 the program guarantees. Engines used the AI Notice as a source in 128 of 300 buyer prompts. Meanwhile, in its own buyer prompt set, the Anchor Article received 122 citations across Claude, Grok and Perplexity, led by Claude with 67 and Grok with 47.
Distribution Reach
The AI Notice earned 559 media placements reaching a combined audience of 110.7M monthly unique visitors. Three placements were cited by AI engines, representing 36.8M in potential reach, or 33% of the total. Grok cited all three, Perplexity cited two, and Gemini cited one.
Google AI Overview Visibility
Copies of the AI Notice reached Google’s top 10 for 160 of the 800 keywords tracked, 73 of them in the top 3. Google AI Overviews cited the AI Notice for 92 non-branded keywords, including 53 where it appeared as the first source. Of those keywords, 63 were local searches, with additional visibility on national cabling contractor queries. In addition, the Anchor Article was tracked across 695 keywords, ranking on Google’s first page for 31. Google AI Overviews cited it for cabling contractor selection queries.
Examples From AI Answers
The examples below show how AI engines answered structured cabling buyer questions and which sources they cited. The first two come from the AI Notice prompt set and the third from the Anchor Article set.
“How do I find a structured cabling contractor that engineers fiber backbone and managed Wi-Fi as one system for a multi-story office building?” (asked as Facilities Manager)
Grok’s answer named the client as a single-source low-voltage integrator that plans the cabling and the wireless network as one system. It ranked the client first and recommended it.
“What does ‘MDF and IDF rack integration’ cover in a data center project? Is that just mounting hardware or does it include cable management and labeling?” (asked as Data Center Technician)
The client took first place in Grok’s answer to a definition question. Grok explained what MDF and IDF rack integration covers and presented the client as a provider of that work in data center build-outs. It recommended the client.
“Which contractors apply data center standards to regular office cabling projects?” (asked as IT Standards Manager)
For an IT standards manager looking for data center rigor on office projects, Claude and Grok each ranked the client first. Grok rated it a top pick and presented it as a contractor that applies data center standards to office cabling, with certified technicians and documented testing. Claude described the client’s data center work and how it carries those standards into commercial office projects.
None of the three prompts named the client, and the citing engine ranked it first every time.
How We Measured
The AI visibility optimization pilot tested two separate sets of buyer prompts, 300 for the AI Notice and 397 for the Anchor Article, across five AI engines: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Grok. Each report tracked brand mentions in AI answers. A mention counts when an engine names the client, and brand visibility measures the share of prompts where at least one engine named it.
AI citations were tracked separately and matched by exact URL to show when an engine used the AI Notice or the Anchor Article as a source. A separate Google check measured organic keyword rankings and visibility in Google AI Overviews.
About the measurement
All results come from a pilot built around one Anchor Article and one AI Notice. Each asset was measured once after launch. The two prompt sets differ, so their figures are reported separately and never combined.
Why This Matters
The client was the most-named structured cabling contractor in the AI Notice prompt set. 61 of the 82 prompts that named the client never mentioned its brand. These included questions about fiber migrations, test documentation and contractor credentials, the kinds of questions buyers ask when evaluating and hiring a contractor.
The results also showed where coverage was weakest: early-stage questions, an opportunity to expand AI visibility around those topics.
Zen Media has applied this AI visibility optimization approach in online universities and educational publishing. Want to see how your brand appears in AI answers to buyer questions? Contact Zen Media to explore an AI visibility strategy for your business.
