The dramatic arrival of ChatGPT felt a bit like an alien landing on Earth. Its mere presence changed our understanding of what digital technologies can do, and how businesses can use generative AI.
This alien has extensive knowledge of various topics, brands, and people. And it’s not knowledge for knowledge’s sake – it’s powerful. The alien is already being asked to create content, help companies make decisions, automate parts of people’s jobs, and enable consumers to research and buy their favourite products.
ChatGPT was built on GPT-3.5, the predecessor to GPT-4, which is now in use by many businesses. The aliens – by which we of course mean large language models, or LLMs – truly have arrived.
Aren’t you curious about what they know about your brand? Your customers are.
Why auditing LLMs and search engines matter
Search engines and LLMs like GPT-4 draw upon a mind-boggling amount of information. These detailed knowledge networks contain countless data points on your business. It’s important to find out what these are because these platforms are how your audiences engage with your brand online.
Consumers rely on search engines for the research phase of the customer journey. Whether they do so via voice search or classic typing, ensuring accurate representation on these platforms is critical for visibility, credibility, and customer engagement.
LLMs, meanwhile, are trained on vast amounts of web data. They draw upon those sources when prompted to create for others. This means that any inaccurate data on your brand creates potential misinterpretations and inconsistencies in the information provided by these AI tools. Regularly auditing and updating content ensures better representation in LLM-generated responses, helping you proactively manage your online presence.
68% of people use generative AI to answer a question”
These platforms, therefore, have a significant impact on brand perception.
What they show to your customers matters – it’s time to find out what that is.
How Vixen Labs conducts an LLM and search engine audit
It’s time to quiz the alien. Vixen Labs has developed a comprehensive workflow to help brands conduct effective audits, using Bespoken’s voice and conversational AI testing suite.
This exciting process includes:
- Keyword research: we identify the most relevant keywords to your brand, finding out how your content aligns with user queries.
- Analysing Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs): evaluating your brand’s presence in SERPs and comparing it to competitors allows for more successful positioning.
- Evaluating LLM-generated content: assessing how accurately LLMs represent your brand.
- Identifying gaps and inconsistencies: finding discrepancies between your content and LLM-generated responses to work out which areas require optimisation.
- Monitoring brand mentions: we track how your brand is being discussed online, and find where to address any misconceptions or negative sentiment.
- Assessing competitor performance: looking at how your competitors are performing in LLM-generated content so your positioning is competing in the right places.
Optimising your brand presence following the audit process
The audit will give you a 360 view of how your brand shows up in search engines and LLMs.
Next up: actioning areas of improvement, which could look like:
- Optimising current content to better align with customer expectations
- Updating content to improve ranking and generative AI results, making customer interactions more accurate
- Addressing inaccuracies that could be harming your brand image
- Customising user content flows to meet your target audience’s needs
These actions are the equivalent of correcting the alien when it spouts something wrong – and improving the information it draws upon for future interactions.
We round out the process with a look forward: perhaps by scheduling regular audits and content repositions, or by implementing new conversational interactions while staying on brand. This part really does depend on what the business goals are.
HOW VIXEN LABS CAN HELP
As conversational AI becomes more embedded in our every day, it’ll begin to feel less alien. Auditing LLMs and search engines enable a deeper understanding of how your brand is perceived in the digital landscape – as well as how these tools can integrate into a range of business processes.
Brands, as we know, must be managed proactively to enhance consumer trust. As the global leader in full-service Conversational AI, Vixen Labs understands the importance of optimising online presence – and, crucially, how to do so.
Get in contact for a conversation about how we can help.
