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Is AI Visibility a Marketing BoonDoggle?

SparkToro· by Rand Fishkin ·2026-10-22

— The SEO Cover · Daily Brief · Oct 23, 2026

On "Is AI Visibility a Marketing BoonDoggle?"

The pushback is overdue. Marketers are panic-spending on AI visibility because they're terrified of missing something, but three studies saying "probably not" isn't enough to kill a trend fueled by vendor hype and budget anxiety—you're going to keep seeing spend flow toward AI optimization even if the ROI signal is murky. What matters for practitioners is recognizing this as a classic fear-driven arms race: everyone's building an AI SEO strategy because everyone else is, not because they've proved it moves the needle. Until you see real conversion data tying AI tool appearances to business results, treat this like you'd treat any emerging channel—allocate cautiously, test ruthlessly, and don't let FOMO override what's actually working for your funnel.

From the source: Should every marketer be putting 80% of their effort into AI visibility? Should we be throwing billions at tracking AI recommendations? Should companies restructure their budgets around appearing in AI tools? Probably not. Three new studies came out in the last week showing us so

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