Case study: from 12% to 42% Share of Voice in power tools
How a professional tool manufacturer became the number-one recommendation in AI answers — and turned the AI channel into a 10× traffic source for its dealer network.
- Niche
- Professional power tools
- Period
- Oct 2025 — Mar 2026 · 6 months
- Coverage
- 7 AI models · 340 prompts
- Status
- Ongoing · NDA
A strong brand, invisible to AI models
The client manufactures professional power tools and runs an established distribution and service network across Russia and the CIS. The brand was comfortable in classic search, but buyers were increasingly asking AI models for advice instead.
The audit was blunt: for queries like “which professional tool should I choose for construction work”, the models consistently recommended two competitors. The client's brand appeared in only 12% of answers — and almost never in the top three.
Objective
- Break into the top three recommendations for the commercial prompts in the niche
- Grow AI-sourced traffic to the site and to the dealers
- Build measurable reporting: SoV, Citation Rate, leads
Six months of systematic work
- Month 1 — Audit and launch
- Visibility map across 340 target prompts in 7 AI models
- Technical audit: Schema.org, llms.txt, product page structure
- Analysis of the sources the models cite in this niche
- Months 2—3 — Content and sources
- 24 expert articles on external platforms carrying the brand's substance
- Rewrote key site pages around the questions models actually get asked
- Q&A platforms, and the first mentions inside answers
- Months 4—6 — Scaling up
- PR placements and review work on aggregator sites
- Monthly SoV measurements and content-plan corrections
- End-to-end analytics: from mention to visit to lead
Six-month trajectory
Aivo Lab AI visibility data across a pool of 340 target prompts, plus Yandex.Metrica data. The project is ongoing.
- AI Share of Voice: 12% → 42% (+30 pp in 6 months)
- AI traffic / month: 150 → 1,486 (10× in 6 months)
- Citation Rate: 8% → 31% (+23 pp in 6 months)
- Top-3 recommendations: 2 → 14 (of 25 key commercial prompts)
What worked
Sources decide it
Models cite authoritative external platforms far more often than the brand's own site. Most of the growth came from expert articles and reviews, not just owned content.
A 6—8 week lag
For the first six weeks the metrics barely moved — indexing has inertia. Growth started in month three and accelerated from there.
Facts, not slogans
What makes it into answers is specifics: motor lifespan, service network, warranty. Models ignore marketing phrasing.