If you’re not familiar with otters, you’re missing out on one of nature’s quirkiest marine creatures.

As members of the weasel family, these charismatic sea critters aren’t fish-like in the least (more like rodents with personalities). In fact, they have the thickest fur of any animal, with up to a million hairs per square inch. This keeps them comfortably insulated in cold water habitats.

Otters are also unusual for another reason: they’re one of the few mammals that use tools, turning rocks into anvils to break open hard-shelled treats like clams and mussels. This evolutionary advantage is what enables otters to thrive in their ecologies. Take a minute and watch these guys sing for their supper:

Like otters, marketers rely on tools to compete in a hyper-competitive ecosystem, and search has been a hairy channel. For decades, Google has been at the center of the search experience, connecting users with results while mucking with its algorithm.

And just like otters, marketers have cracked open the proverbial “search clam” to reveal context and insight, utilizing platforms like Semrush to monitor and enhance SEO, PPC, social, and other digital marketing initiatives. Within the pantheon of these marketing activities, HubSpot maintains that SEO is still the primary focus for marketers.

But along came AI. Suddenly, consumers were searching on ChatGPT or Perplexity and bypassing Google altogether. It’s like a “black box” preventing companies from getting a full picture of how search is being used in AI apps, or how their brands are positioned. How do you track a click-through – if there is one – when results are coming from an AI prompt field?

Last year, many websites saw a precipitous decline in their organic traffic. Some of this was due to changes in the Google algorithm (again), but the main culprit has been the rise of AI-powered search features. This includes Google's AI Overviews, which provide users with direct answers within search results. This significantly reduces the need to click through to individual websites, leading to a phenomenon called “zero-click searches.”

We all use AI Overviews – it's undeniable. But they have consequences for a brand. Example: If I ask for the age of a celebrity (let’s say George Clooney, because he's still kind of relevant), Google will provide an answer directly at the top of the page and potentially expose a cited source to new audiences. But it also robs the originating “Church of Clooney” website of realizing that traffic.

According to Spitfire, early testing showed a decrease of anywhere between a fifth and two-thirds of traffic as consumers embrace generative AI-powered search for informational-type queries. By 2028, Gartner predicts that it could drop by 50% or more. That’s enough to send shivers down any brand’s spine.

So how do marketers adapt to this new reality? By embracing their inner otter.

More accurately: they get Otterly.AI.

Founded last year in Austria by SaaS veterans Thomas Peham, Klaus-M. Schremser, and Josef Trauner, the bootstrapped startup recently exited stealth mode after signing up over a thousand customers in December (that number has likely increased after some glowing coverage in TechCrunch). This included agencies, brands, and tech firms – logical categories for a platform that generates valuable data for marketing.

Otterly's founders, left to right: Klaus-M. Schremser, Josef Trauner, and Thomas Peham. Source: Otterly.AI website

In a nutshell (or mussel shell, as it were), Otterly provides regular insights into brand visibility, link mentions, and sentiment across popular AI tools like AIO, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. This allows marketers and brands to better optimize their online presence in an ecosystem where AI-powered search engines are becoming the norm.

I had a chance to connect with CEO Thomas Peham, who I knew from his previous gig as VP of Marketing at Storyblok, a leading headless CMS that's blazing its own trails. During his tenure, Thomas guided the company’s messaging and marketing strategy, which resulted in significant growth and an $80 million Series C in 2024.

Needless to say, he knows his stuff, and his deep experience as tech marketer during the age of generative AI informed him of these gaps in search. Like an otter, he sought to create a new tool to help solve the problem – one that I found to be quite compelling, and should probably be in every marketer’s toolbox.

Evolving from SEO to GEO

Otterly has been buzzing since last year when it initially launched on Product Hunt – a popular proving ground for SaaS startups. While still at Storyblok, Thomas was already seeing the gap that existed around AI search, and that led to some experimentation.

“People started adopting ChatGPT, and it was really becoming a thing, and we all know how massively it grew its user base,” he recalled. “I realized that as a marketing leader, I didn’t have any understanding as to whether my audience is even on that channel, and how visible Storyblok is as a brand. How visible is our website on ChatGPT? Because in some way, it's just a different search engine – an answer engine. So I started doing some research, and when I couldn’t find any solution on the market, I started tinkering around a bit on the side and building prototypes.”

Otterly’s stock in trade is the emerging space of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), which, like SEO, is all about optimizing content and website structure. The difference is that it’s specifically targeted at AI-driven search originating from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overview.

GEO is already considered the next evolution of traditional SEO, focusing more on understanding how AI models process information and context rather than just keywords alone. It endeavors to refine how brands are accurately represented and prominently featured in their generated responses – essentially aiming to increase visibility in this new era of AI-powered search where information is synthesized from multiple sources to answer queries comprehensively.

“There are many SEO tools out there, like Semrush,Ahrefs,and others that help monitor search engine optimization. But no one is monitoring AI search. That's really our goal.”

“At the end of the day, my ambition was to become the Semrush of AI search,” Thomas said, a tool he frequently relied on at Storyblok. “There are many SEO tools out there, like Semrush, Ahrefs, and others that help monitor search engine optimization. But no one is monitoring AI search. That's really our goal.”

Despite some early wins on Product Hunt, the fledgling beta hit a wall: Google. Just as Otterly was making headway, AI Overview came online and disrupted its original instrumentation. Thomas recalled how this forced a “rewiring” of the platform.

“I think it was mid-May when Google introduced AI Overview in the U.S.,” he said. “I was like, ‘Oh gosh, my product isn't working. What do I do about it?’ This was a big change on the Google side. But in the summer, I made the decision to step away as VP of Marketing at Storyblok, and together with my two co-founders, fully rebuild the product to support Google as well as the latest public search from ChatGPT and now Perplexity.”

That ecosystem is key, as it touches the most relevant gateways to AI-generated search. With Google, Otterly answers critical questions like whether AI Overview is triggered for your specific topics and whether your website – or your competitor’s website – is visible. With ChatGPT and Perplexity, it monitors to see where links to your website are included and how prominent they are. It also keys in on the sentiment and positioning of brands that are mentioned.

It’s the gold that marketers are digging for in an AI-first era.

Dynamite dashboards for brand and content monitoring

Like Semrush, Otterly lets you track facets of your brand automatically. This includes things like links and brand mentions. For marketing folks, this will feel incredibly familiar, as you’re still able to perform keyword research and surface what your audiences are searching for on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google. You can also customize how you track across brands and sources for each channel.

A screenshot of a computer

AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: Otterly.AI

One thing that immediately popped out for me is the intuitive UX. Even at this early stage in the product’s genesis, the dashboards are clean, clear, and easy to understand. As a Semrush user myself, it can sometimes feel a little overwhelming, but Otterly is off to a solid start by keeping your data easy to read and interpolate. There are certainly some areas that could use refinement, but overall, the table is nicely set.

Otterly functions in a composable fashion, leveraging the API fabric to pool data resources from different endpoints. Similarly to Semrush, it audits the sources, compiles, and normalizes the data in a visual construct.

“We work with several APIs, crawlers, and data sources to take a snapshot from a historical standpoint,” Thomas described. “It begins the moment you start tracking. For example, if a brand adds hundreds or thousands of search prompts at that moment, we're going to start the monitoring and tracking.”

Otterly lets you monitor relevant keywords and prompts in one place, allowing you to use that data to optimize your content and SEO. You can see how well-positioned your website is by tracking all the link citations across search platforms and collating everything into a weekly report. This makes the insight incredibly actionable.

A graph with colored lines

AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: Otterly.AI

There’s also enhanced brand ranking and sentiment tracking – a slick feature that enables you to derive context around your perception across AI apps. For example, it reports on search prompts like “Best CRM software for small businesses” and positions where products like Zoho, HubSpot, and Salesforce fit from a positive, neutral, or negative perception.

A screenshot of a web page

AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: Otterly.AI

I was blown away by some of the more granular tools, including a resource for search prompt analysis. This enables users to sandbox the text output directly in Otterly across all three AI channels and create date-based variable ranges.

Source: Otterly.AI

Digging into this data also provides the added benefit of knowing when each AI app might be greater variability or instability. That can be useful when analyzing general trends, and Thomas pointed out a specific issue they spotted using Otterly’s results.

“Google wasn’t triggering AI Overview in December,” he explained. “We could see there was a change going on based on the different links. This is interesting because it gives a marketing and SEO team a ‘first indication’ of how fluid the change is, or what the frequency might be. It’s important to remember that Google and ChatGPT are constantly optimizing, and for some topics and industries, you will see very stable and clearly static results versus some that are changing quite a bit.”

Partnering with Semrush

I've referred to Semrush throughout this review and (hopefully) distinguished between SEO and GEO from a foundational level. Even based on Thomas’ goal of “Being the Semrush of AI search,” one might consider them competitors – at least on some level.

But in fact, the two are now partners. Last week, Otterly announced that its AI Search Monitoring App is available in the Semrush App Center – the go-to resource for digital marketers looking for best-in-class marketing solutions. As the industry leader in SEO, Semrush offers Otterly a dynamic platform for introducing AI Search Monitoring to its user base. The partnership also represents a significant step in empowering marketers with cutting-edge tools for AI-driven search optimization – and complements what marketers rely on from Semrush as a platform.

“If you think about it, Otterly customers have insights on ChatGPT and Perplexity, but what we don't have, is organic insights on ranking and traffic. That's what you get with Semrush,” Thomas said. “At the same time, Semrush users are getting those organic insights, but now in a world where Google is pushing AI-generated answers on top of organic rankings. It becomes so much more important to understand the wider context, so Semrush users will get that with Otterly. That's why it's a natural fit – because our customers can utilize both in one place and make better content and marketing decisions.”

Being listed in the Semrush App Center also offers additional benefits. Subscribers will receive exclusive pricing and free trials, allowing you to test and assess with greater ease. It’s also easily accessible within the Semrush interface using single sign-on access. Finally, it’s wrapped under the Semrush Quality Assurance program, meaning it has undergone a rigorous selection process – giving you peace of mind that it’s a reliable marketing tool.

Pricing

Like most SaaS products, Otterly offers a flexible set of options to meet different personal or business requirements. The Lite plan starts at $29 per month and includes a limited set of features – starting with just 10 search prompts. But all of the other capabilities are there, from monitoring to weekly brand mentions to sentiment tracking.

For more ambitious users, the Standard plan offers up to 100 prompts, so there’s a lot more room to track and assess. At $189 per month, it’s aligned with what I would expect for the feature set.

Teams and enterprises can really dig in with a Pro plan. For $989 per month, you can top off at 1,000 search prompts – plenty of space to do some damage.

All plans offer an unlimited number of users, and there’s a free trial, so you can explore the tool without making any long-term commitments.

Why it matters

If I may be so bold: Otterly is utterly awesome. I don’t often say that, but it’s one of those products that hits you right between the eyes with its potential value and delivery. This is a clear gap in the emerging realm of AI search, and Thomas and his team are on the right track.

This is also a growing space, and I would expect more noise (a competitive platform called Profound is also making novel moves). I’m just speculating, but it could be a great acquisition target for a larger digital marketing platform. Like, I dunno… maybe Semrush?

AI applications aside, I love how a content marketing professional with CMS roots is leading the charge. This is evident in Otterly’s focus on measuring content performance and how the platform is architected.

“Many content and marketing teams are quite detached from what I would describe as content performance,” Thomas reflected. “So how do I measure the impact I'll make as a marketer, as a content professional, and as an editor? I think the whole performance piece is so disconnected and siloed from the actual performance, be it on a website, across other channels, or now on ChatGPT. What excites me about is that our API first approach is we're setting the scene, that market and content folks are now able to measure performance in a more direct way.”

From a content management perspective, I immediately saw a lot of value in deeper integrations with CMSes, all within a composable framework. I asked Thomas about where the intersection might exist and how his experience with Storyblok is guiding the roadmap.

“It’s a future evaluation for us to look at the broader CMS market and see how we can provide those insights at a content level,” he said. “Because that's the place where marketing teams create content, publish content, organize it, review it, and so on. Imagine having analytics on how your content is performing from a web perspective, but also from an omnichannel perspective – and omnichannel these days also means, how is content performing on ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, and Perplexity.”

I also see many possibilities with the general data that Otterly gathers from customers as they utilize the platform. This research could easily be transformed into reports that could elevate awareness of key search trends and patterns – like a wisdom or knowledge resource. Turns out Thomas is on it.

“We’re already thinking about ways to publish and share a lot of our research,” he said. “If we take a look at Perplexity, for example, we're doing cross-reference checks, and we’re now able to analyze patterns across ChatGPT as compared to Google from a link and brand perspective. For example, how are things changing historically? It's funny that you mentioned that wisdom base, because we’re also talking to some universities about research projects, and I'm super excited about this piece.”

One final note on Otterly's brand: This is an example of an experienced technology marketer driving the voice. It's fun, light-hearted, and accessible – making the specter of another complex tool a little less intimidating for non-technical users. I did wonder about the potential confusion with Otter.ai (an AI-powered transcription co-pilot that I use almost daily), but then I remembered how many CMS platforms use the word “Content” in their name and still manage to differentiate their value.

Now that I’ve experienced the demo, I’m already thinking about new ways to leverage the data – and new things I would like to see at a granular level. These are early days, but you have to walk before you can run.

Or in the case of an Otter, learn to paddle before you swim.

You can start your free trial today at https://otterly.ai/

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As AI-generated search grows, Otterly is utterly awesome for marketers. Here’s why