Brands have spent years optimizing for Google. Now there’s a new visibility problem, and most of them don’t know they have it.
Trustpilot’s latest report, What AI Says About You, analyzed over 800,000 responses across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode. Brands with no Trustpilot profile appear in just 1% of AI-generated answers. Those that actively collect and respond to reviews? 75.3%.
In this video interview with CX Today, Alicia Skubick, Chief Customer Officer at Trustpilot, unpacks what that means for CX teams, and argues the stakes go well beyond marketing:
“AI models rely on social proof and third-party reviews in the same way that humans do. They’re looking at that content to really just understand: is this business trustworthy?”
The conversation covers why responding to reviews matters as much as collecting them, with brands that respond regularly seeing citation rates climb from 53% to 75%.
Skubick also makes the case that negative reviews, handled well, can work in a brand’s favor, since AI systems reward specificity and genuine engagement in responses, much like human consumers do.
There’s a sharper take in there too. Skubick suggests open-platform review systems are beginning to displace NPS surveys for many businesses, delivering the same real-time customer insight while adding an AI visibility boost on top.
For CX leaders short on bandwidth, the entry point is lower than it sounds. Setting up a profile and inviting customers to review can push AI citation rates from near-zero to over 53%, often within weeks.
With 58% of consumers now using AI tools to find and evaluate products, that gap between visible and invisible brands is only going to get harder to close.
