A whole industry has sprung up around Answer Engine Optimisation — getting your brand surfaced and cited in AI answers. It's worthwhile work. But it's the front half of the problem, and the front half is the easy half.
Discovery without transactability is just expensive visibility
An agent finds you, queries your catalogue, and then hits a missing price, a vague spec, or a next step that needs a human. It routes away — silently. You spent on content and optimisation to be found, and lost the sale at the last step anyway. Every pound of visibility work upstream is wasted if the purchase can't complete downstream.
The gap is post-discovery — and nobody's watching it
Visibility tools tell you you're mentioned. They go quiet after that. They don't tell you that the agent who clicked through couldn't confirm fit, or hit a checkout it couldn't finish. That stretch — from “found you” to “bought from you” — is unmeasured for almost everyone, which is exactly why it's where the money leaks.
Optimise for the finish line
Treat discovery and transactability as one funnel, not two projects. Send an agent through the full journey to checkout, find the stage it falls out, and fix it. Do that first, and your visibility work finally converts. Skip it, and you're buying traffic that can't transact.