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Last Updated: August 7, 2026

We're New Zealand's first Otterly.AI Partner

Otterly tracks whether AI tools actually recommend you. We're now the first New Zealand agency partnered with them.

We're New Zealand's first Otterly.AI Partner
Author
Isaac Farrow

By Isaac Farrow

August 7, 2026

August 7, 2026

Table of contents

Search isn't just Google anymore

What IF Web has joined Otterly's agency partner programme, and as far as we can tell we're the first agency in New Zealand to do it. Otterly is the platform we use to track whether a business actually shows up when people ask AI tools a question, so this is less a badge and more a signal about how we work.

Here's why it matters to you.

Search is splitting into surfaces. There's still Google, but there's also ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot, and a growing number of people who ask those tools a question and never click through to a website at all. If your business is the answer and the AI doesn't mention you, you're invisible in a place you can't see.

Otterly is how we measure that. It tracks how often you get mentioned and cited across the major AI engines, who's getting cited instead of you, and whether the work we do shifts those numbers. Being a partner means we're plugged in properly: earlier access, direct support, and a closer read on how AI search is moving month to month.

This sits underneath our AI Search service. We track the real prompts your customers are actually typing, benchmark where you stand today, do the content and authority work to get you cited, then report on whether it worked.

Want to know whether AI tools currently recommend you or your competitors? That's what our free AI Search audit is for. It's the front door, and it's genuinely free.

Frequently Asked Questions

What gets a business cited by AI?

The biggest thing is original content: your own data, first-hand expertise, and a clear point of view, structured so AI can read it easily. Clear headings and proper tables make that easier. Being mentioned on other sites the AI already trusts matters too, so your story matches up wherever it looks.

Is AI search the same as SEO?

No. Traditional SEO still matters and shares a lot of the same foundations, but AI search is a different game. Domain authority and backlinks carry less weight than they do in classic SEO, especially on Perplexity, while things like entity recognition, extractable structure, and presence on the right third-party platforms matter more. We treat it as a related but distinct discipline.

How do you measure AI search visibility?

With a fixed set of real buyer-question prompts, run every month across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot. For each one we log whether you were mentioned, whether you were cited with a link, how prominently, and which competitors showed up instead. We baseline before making changes and re-measure after, so we can actually prove what moved. Checking a single engine misses most of the picture, since the engines barely agree on who they cite.

Is AI search a one-off project or ongoing?

It behaves much more like SEO than a one-off project. Visibility decays, freshness fades, competitors move, and the engines constantly re-weight what they cite. Keeping traction means an ongoing rhythm: fresh content, steady authority building, monthly measurement, and a re-audit each quarter as both your site and the AI landscape change. That is why we run it as a retainer rather than a set-and-forget job.

Is getting cited by AI the same as ranking on Google?

No, they are separate jobs. In a large 2026 study, only 38% of pages cited in Google AI Overviews ranked top-10 for the original query, so a strong organic ranking does not buy you AI citation, and a page can get cited by AI while ranking nowhere organically. You have to aim at both surfaces on purpose.

How long does AI search optimisation take to work?

It is the slower half of the work, so expect a few months rather than a few weeks before the off-site authority side compounds. On-page fixes that improve how you are extracted can show up faster. This is why we measure from day one and work to a rhythm: you can see progress in the tracking well before it fully matures.

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