Nearly twice as visible as the nearest competitor

Hemp and CBD brands cannot lean on Google or Meta ads the way other ecommerce stores can. Organic search and AI answers are the main way new customers find them, and the category is crowded with lookalike products.

Industry: Hemp and CBD ecommerce. The client is not named.

A national hemp and CBD brand now leads its category in AI answers, in a market where paid ads are restricted and organic visibility is everything.

• Ran a long-term ecommerce SEO program: category pages, product content, technical fixes and link building.
• Tracked buyer questions in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews with Found in AI every week.
• Turned each answer where a competitor was named into a content brief, then published pages built to be quoted.

The results

64% of buyer questions answered by AI name this brand, #1 of 6 tracked brands.

• 73% of answers cite the brand's own site as a source
• Nearly 2x the visibility of the nearest competitor (64% vs 36%)
• 48% of Google AI Overviews name the brand
• 27 → 12 average Google position, Jun-Aug 2025 vs Sep-Nov 2026

The brand is named in 64% of tracked buyer questions, nearly twice its closest competitor, and its own pages are cited in 73% of answers. On Google, average position improved from about 27 to about 12 and has held near page one for over a year.

Timeline

• Mid 2025: Average Google position around 27: page three.
• Oct 2025: Average position 10.0: onto page one.
• 2026: Held between 11 and 16 every month of the year.
• Oct 2026: Found in AI tracking begins. Named in 64% of buyer questions in the first full week, #1 of 6 brands.
• Oct 2026: Cited as a source in 73% of answers, and named in 48% of Google AI Overviews.

AI tools, one by one (week of Oct 26, 2026)

• ChatGPT: named in 27%, cited in 23%
• Claude: named in 41%, cited in 27%
• Perplexity: named in 32%, cited in 45%
• Gemini: named in 32%, cited in 50%
• Google AI Overviews: named in 48%, cited in 52%
• All five tools: named in 64%, cited in 73%

Google figures: Search Console, May 2025 to Nov 2026. AI figures: Found in AI tracking since Oct 23, 2026. All figures are real and rounded, never adjusted. Measured with Found in AI by 1Digital.