E-commerce Brand Discovers 3x Visibility Gap on Chinese AI Platforms

The Challenge

A mid-size e-commerce brand selling consumer electronics had invested heavily in traditional SEO and Google Ads. Their Google rankings were strong, but they had no visibility into how AI search engines talked about them — especially Chinese platforms like DeepSeek, where their products had a growing customer base.

The brand's marketing director had a nagging suspicion: "We're probably invisible on these AI platforms, but we don't know how to check at scale."

The Discovery

Using CitedMe, the team ran an initial audit across 7 AI platforms with 50+ target queries. The results were revealing:

• ChatGPT: Mentioned in 40% of relevant queries — decent, but behind the top competitor at 65%
• Perplexity: Strong citation presence due to their content marketing efforts
• DeepSeek: Mentioned in only 12% of queries — compared to their main Chinese competitor at 45%
• Yuanbao and Doubao: Nearly invisible

The gap on Chinese AI platforms was the biggest surprise. Despite having a Chinese-language website and strong sales in China, their content wasn't reaching the AI models that Chinese consumers increasingly relied on.

The Approach

Based on CitedMe's insights, the team:

1. Prioritized Chinese content creation — Invested in original Chinese-language content on Zhihu and their official blog
2. Optimized for AI-friendly formatting — Restructured product pages with clear specs, comparisons, and FAQ sections
3. Monitored weekly — Used CitedMe's recurring monitoring to track progress

The Results

After 8 weeks of focused optimization:

| Metric | Before | After | |--------|--------|-------| | DeepSeek visibility | 12% | 38% | | ChatGPT visibility | 40% | 55% | | Overall AI visibility | 28% | 52% | | Chinese platform average | 10% | 35% |

The 3x improvement on Chinese AI platforms was the most significant finding. The team discovered that their competitors had been actively optimizing for DeepSeek for months — and that catching up was possible with the right data.

Key Takeaway

You can't optimize what you can't measure. Without AI search monitoring, this brand would have continued investing in traditional SEO while missing an entire channel where their customers were increasingly making decisions.