The Cloudflare outage that knocked out ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Grok wasn't just an inconvenience—it was a preview of how dependent we've become on AI. And why your brand needs to be visible when it comes back online.

Hey!

This morning felt different.

I opened my laptop at 7am, ready to start work. Went to ChatGPT—down. Tried Claude—down. Perplexity—down. Grok—down.

A massive Cloudflare outage had knocked out nearly every major AI platform simultaneously.

And I just... sat there.

Couldn't summarize that research doc. Couldn't draft the email I needed to send. Couldn't get answers to the three questions I had queued up. Couldn't do the competitive analysis I had planned.

For a few hours this morning, it felt like a snow day.

Not because I couldn't do work—but because I'd become so dependent on AI that I didn't know how to start without it.

I wasn't alone. My entire feed was people saying the same thing:

→ "I literally forgot how to Google things" → "Tried to write an email manually and it took 4x longer" → "Realized I use ChatGPT 50+ times per day" → "Is this what 2019 felt like?"

The outage lasted only a few hours. Everything's restored now.

But it crystallized something I've been thinking about for months.

Here's what this morning made viscerally clear:

AI isn't just a productivity tool. It's becoming the primary interface for how we find information.

When I needed to understand something this morning, my first instinct wasn't Google—it was ChatGPT.

When I wanted to compare options, I didn't open ten browser tabs—I asked Perplexity.

When I needed to research a company, I didn't start with their website—I asked Claude to analyze them.

This isn't just me. The data backs it up:

→ AI search now accounts for ~10% of website traffic for optimized brands → B2B leads from AI search convert 56.3% higher than traditional search → Perplexity delivers the highest volume AND best conversion rates of any AI platform → Users increasingly bypass Google entirely for product research and recommendations

The shift has already happened. We just don't talk about it.

And here's the uncomfortable question:

When someone asks ChatGPT about your category... does your brand come up?

Or are your competitors the ones getting recommended?

There's a term for optimizing your brand to appear in AI-generated responses: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

It's not SEO. It's fundamentally different.

With SEO, you optimize to rank on a results page.

With GEO, you optimize to be cited in AI responses.

When someone asks "What's the best CRM for small teams?" and ChatGPT answers, it's pulling from sources it deems authoritative. Your goal is to become one of those sources.

And here's what most brands don't realize:

Reddit discussions account for over 75% of all citations in major AI tools.

That's not a typo.

When ChatGPT recommends a product, it's often pulling from Reddit threads. When Perplexity answers "What's the best X for Y?", it's frequently citing Reddit discussions.

In fact, Reddit outranks credentialed financial experts 176% of the time in ChatGPT's finance answers.

The implications are massive:

→ Your website content matters less than where you're mentioned → Third-party citations (especially Reddit) drive AI recommendations → The brands appearing in Reddit discussions are the brands AI recommends

Most companies are still optimizing for Google while their competitors are getting recommended by ChatGPT.

I spent weeks creating something to help brands get ahead of this shift.

Visible to AI: The Complete Guide to AI Visibility

This is the operational playbook for becoming discoverable in AI search.

Get the Complete Guide Here →

8 comprehensive sections covering:

1️⃣ How to audit your current AI visibility (and your competitors')
2️⃣ The exact tools to track citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude
3️⃣ Reddit engagement strategies that directly influence AI recommendations
4️⃣ Content frameworks that earn citations, not just traffic
5️⃣ Daily, weekly, and monthly workflows to systematize GEO
6️⃣ KPIs, attribution models, and scaling decisions
7️⃣ Industry-specific playbooks for SaaS, e-commerce, local, healthcare, finance, and more
8️⃣ Budget-tier tool stacks from $20/month to enterprise

But I didn't stop there.

I also built a custom GPT trained on the entire guide.

Access the AI Visibility GPT Here →

Here's how it works:

It asks you 15 strategic questions about your brand, industry, goals, budget, and current visibility.

Then it creates a personalized GEO action plan—specific to your situation.

Not generic advice. A custom roadmap based on everything in the playbook.

→ Which tools you should use (based on your budget tier) → Which subreddits matter for your industry → What content to create first → Daily/weekly/monthly workflows for your team size → KPIs to track for your specific goals

The guide gives you the knowledge. The GPT gives you the plan.

Your product is only as good as the data it’s built on. Outdated, blocked, or missing web sources force your team to fix infrastructure instead of delivering new features.

Bright Data connects your AI agents to public web data in real time with reliable APIs. That means you spend less time on maintenance and more time building. No more chasing after unexpected failures or mismatches your agents get the data they need, when they need it.

Teams using Bright Data consistently deliver stable and predictable products, accelerate feature development, and unlock new opportunities with continuous, unblocked web access.

Power Your AI

Let me give you a few tactical insights from the playbook:

1. Set up F5Bot (free) for Reddit monitoring

F5Bot emails you whenever your brand name, product names, or key competitors are mentioned on Reddit. It's completely free, takes 5 minutes to set up, and immediately shows you what's being said.

2. Run a manual AI visibility test

Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. Ask each one:

Document where you appear, where you don't, and what sources are cited. This is your baseline.

3. Find your high-value Reddit threads

Search Google for: site:reddit.com "best [your category]"

These Google-indexed Reddit threads are the ones most likely to influence AI responses. Identify 10 threads where you should be mentioned but aren't. That's your engagement target list.

4. Check your competitors' Reddit presence

Do the same search for your competitors. Where are they being mentioned that you're not? Those gaps are your opportunities.

The playbook breaks down every tool in the GEO ecosystem. Here's the simplified version:

AI Visibility Tracking: These tools monitor whether AI platforms mention your brand.

Reddit Monitoring: These tools track brand and competitor mentions on Reddit.

Reddit Engagement: These tools help you find opportunities and craft authentic responses.

You don't need all of them. The guide includes budget-tier recommendations so you can start with $20-50/month and scale as you validate the approach.

The Cloudflare outage wasn't just an inconvenience.

It was a preview.

A preview of how dependent we've all become on AI—not just for productivity, but for finding information.

Every hour those platforms were down, people weren't searching. They weren't getting recommendations. They weren't making decisions.

And when the platforms came back online?

The same brands that were visible before became visible again.

The brands that weren't... stayed invisible.

Here's what's coming:

→ More people will search through AI than Google → AI recommendations will influence more purchase decisions → The brands that show up in those recommendations will win → The brands that don't will wonder where their traffic went

The teams that start optimizing for AI visibility now will own those recommendations by 2026.

Everyone else will be playing catch-up.

Both resources are completely free.

The Complete Guide to AI Visibility Download the PDF →

The AI Visibility Custom GPT Access the GPT →

The guide gives you the complete framework—tools, workflows, content strategies, industry playbooks.

The GPT asks you 15 questions and builds your personalized action plan.

Together, they give you everything you need to become visible on AI.

Your competitors are already getting cited.

Time to make sure you are too.

P.S. This morning's outage lasted a few hours. The shift to AI search is permanent. The brands that optimize now will be the ones getting recommended for years to come. The guide eliminates months of trial and error—but only if you actually use it.

P.P.S. If you found this valuable, share it with your marketing team or founder friends. The more people who understand GEO, the faster the industry evolves. And if you want to discuss your specific situation, reply to this email—I read everything