I Teardown My Own Category: Zero Google Rankings, Zero AI Citations

Q: Does ranking in Google get you cited by AI in the fractional CMO lane?

Not in my own case. Across the same 16 fractional-CMO, GEO, AI-SEO and marketing-consultant queries, andrewbyzov.com ranked in Google's top 10 zero times and was cited by AI zero times across 32 answers. So in this benchmark the two outcomes were both absent for my domain, on two surfaces, at one moment. It is a visibility reading, not a quality verdict, and it does not tell you which sources Google's AI Overview pulls from.

Q: Who ranks in Google for fractional CMO and GEO queries?

In my top-10 organic capture, the domains that showed up for my lane included reddit.com, digital-hunch.com, linkedin.com, geisheker.com, growtal.com, kalungi.com, sitepoint.com, movingminds.io, seranking.com and directiveconsulting.com. These are the domains Google ranked for these specific queries on this date. It is a visibility list, not a ranking of who is best, and I am drawing no conclusion about content quality from it.

Q: Who does AI cite in this category, and is it the same list as Google?

In my earlier AI-only benchmark, the engines cited a different cast, including Growtal, Profound, Scrunch, rankedcmo and Directive. Only Growtal and Directive clearly overlap with the Google-ranking set I saw. So the two surfaces lean on largely different domains in my lane, which is the same directional pattern I found across the wider B2B SaaS sample. Treat both as snapshots that will move when I re-run them.

Q: Does zero on both surfaces mean a domain has no authority?

No. Zero means zero in this benchmark, on these 16 queries, on these surfaces, on this date. My domain is only a few weeks old with almost no inbound links or crawl history, so zero is the expected baseline for a new site, not a verdict on the person or the work. It is the honest before reading of a zero-to-N case, and I am publishing it on purpose.

Does ranking in Google get you cited by AI in my own category? For my domain, the answer is no on both counts: I checked Google rankings and AI citations for the same 16 fractional-CMO, GEO, AI-SEO and marketing-consultant queries, and andrewbyzov.com appeared in neither. I am Andrii Byzov, an AI-native fractional CMO and GEO consultant for B2B SaaS, and this post extends my earlier AI-only zero-citations benchmark by adding the Google side. The combined reading: across 16 lane queries, my domain ranked in Google’s top 10 zero times and was cited by AI zero times across 32 answers. Invisible on both surfaces, in this snapshot. Here is who did show up, and what I am doing about it.

Key takeaways

Across 16 fractional-CMO, GEO, AI-SEO and marketing-consultant queries, andrewbyzov.com ranked in Google top 10 zero times and was cited by AI zero times across 32 answers.
All 16 queries triggered a Google AI Overview, so AI is sitting on top of the organic results page for my lane, not off to the side.
Domains that ranked in Google for these queries included reddit.com, digital-hunch.com, linkedin.com, geisheker.com, growtal.com, kalungi.com, sitepoint.com, movingminds.io, seranking.com and directiveconsulting.com.
The AI-cited cast from my earlier benchmark was largely different: Growtal, Profound, Scrunch, rankedcmo, Directive. Only Growtal and Directive clearly overlap.
Zero means zero in this benchmark, not zero authority. The domain is weeks old. I am running the GEO playbook on myself and will re-run both measurements.

What I checked, and what came back

I took the same 16 queries a buyer in my lane would actually type: fractional CMO, GEO, AI-SEO and marketing-consultant searches, phrased as questions and comparisons rather than bare keywords. For the Google side I captured the top 10 organic results per query and recorded the ranking domains. For the AI side I reused the cited domains from my AI-only zero-citations benchmark, which ran 32 answers across two engines. The point was never to find myself. It was to see who the two surfaces treat as the answer when someone with my buyer profile goes looking.

My domain came back zero in Google’s top 10 and zero in the AI citations. Both surfaces, the same nothing.

One detail stood out on the Google side: all 16 of these queries triggered a Google AI Overview. Every single one. So for my own category, the generated answer is not a fringe feature you can ignore. It sits at the top of the page, above the organic links, on every query I tested. That matters because it changes what zero means in practice. Being absent from organic is one thing; being absent while an AI Overview occupies the most valuable real estate on the page is a second layer of the same problem.

Who does show up in Google for my lane

Here is the honest competitive picture. The domains Google ranked in the top 10 for these queries included reddit.com, digital-hunch.com, linkedin.com, geisheker.com, growtal.com, kalungi.com, sitepoint.com, movingminds.io, seranking.com and directiveconsulting.com.

I want to be careful about what that list is and is not. It is a visibility list: these are the domains Google chose to rank for these specific queries on this date. It is not a quality ranking, and I am drawing no conclusion that any of them have better content than I do. I have not measured their content. I measured visibility, and on visibility they are present and I am not. That is the only claim the data supports.

A few patterns are worth naming, lightly. Some are big aggregators and platforms, like Reddit and LinkedIn, that Google leans on across many categories. Some are direct or adjacent players in fractional-CMO and B2B marketing work, like Geisheker, Growtal, Kalungi, Moving Minds and Directive Consulting. Some are tooling and publisher domains, like SE Ranking and SitePoint, that rank for the AI-SEO end of the query set. The common thread is not that they out-wrote me. It is that they have accumulated the visibility signals a weeks-old domain has not earned yet.

Two different lists, one absent domain

Now layer the AI side on top. In my earlier AI-only benchmark the engines cited a different cast: Growtal, Profound, Scrunch, rankedcmo and Directive. Compare that to the Google-ranking set above and the overlap is thin. Growtal appears on both. Directive appears on both. The rest mostly do not.

I am not going to overclaim from that. It is a small, lane-specific sample on a single date, and I am explicitly not saying who Google’s AI Overview pulls from, because I did not capture the Overview sources, only that it fired on all 16 queries. What I can say, directionally, is that the two surfaces lean on largely different domains in my own category. That mirrors the wider B2B SaaS pattern in GEO is not SEO, where only 165 of 508 AI-cited domains also ranked in Google’s top 10. Different lists, scoring different things.

The one domain absent from both lists is mine.

What zero and zero does and does not mean

This is the part I am most careful about, because it would be easy to overplay in either direction.

Zero on both surfaces does not mean I have no authority. I am a working fractional CMO with real clients and real outcomes. The engines and Google have not judged my expertise and found it wanting. They have barely assessed me at all, because there is almost nothing yet to assess. My website is only a few weeks old. It has thin crawl history, few inbound mentions and limited structured entity data.

In that situation, zero and zero is not a surprising failure. It is the expected baseline for a new domain. Google rewards accumulated organic signals; AI engines reach for sources with established entity authority. A site that has not existed long enough to earn either starts at the bottom of both by default. So I read this as a starting line, not a verdict. There is also no causation in this data: I cannot say why any rival ranks or gets cited, only that they appear and I do not.

This is, almost exactly, the before reading of the work I do for clients. The first thing we establish is the honest baseline on both surfaces. Mine happens to be zero and zero, the cleanest possible before for a zero-to-N case I intend to finish in public.

What I am doing about it

The plan is the GEO playbook, run on myself, in the order that tends to move the needle fastest.

Fix the foundation. Entity clarity and structured data first, so both Google and the engines can resolve who I am, what I do and what I am known for. Highest leverage for a new domain.
Ship answer-shaped content. Pages that directly answer the 16 queries I tested, written so a buyer, an engine, or an AI Overview can lift a clean answer. This post is part of that.
Build source authority. Earn the third-party mentions and category coverage the ranking and cited domains already have. The slowest layer, with no shortcut.
Re-run both measurements. Same 16 queries, Google top 10 and AI citations together, on a recurring cadence, so both numbers become metrics I track rather than one-time snapshots.

This is the work I do as a GEO consultant for B2B SaaS, and the discipline itself is laid out in my generative engine optimization service. If you want a quick read on your own domain before committing to anything, my free AI visibility score tool gives you a starting number.

The honest caveat

This is a measurement, not a promise. No one controls how Google ranks or how the engines choose sources, so the realistic goal is improved odds of being visible over time, not guaranteed placement. The sample is small and lane-specific, one date, US context, top-10 organic on the Google side and two engines on the AI side, and the numbers will move when I re-run them. I expect some of these queries to stay stubborn. That is fine. The point of publishing zero and zero is to commit to showing the real trajectory, up or flat, and to be the proof that I read my own data the same way I would read yours. I will report back. If you want to talk through where your category stands, I am on LinkedIn.

FAQ

Does ranking in Google get you cited by AI in the fractional CMO lane? Not in my own case. Across the same 16 queries, andrewbyzov.com ranked in Google’s top 10 zero times and was cited by AI zero times across 32 answers. Both surfaces were absent for my domain on this date. It is a visibility reading, not a quality verdict, and it does not say which sources the AI Overview pulls from.

Who ranks in Google for fractional CMO and GEO queries? In my top-10 capture the domains included reddit.com, digital-hunch.com, linkedin.com, geisheker.com, growtal.com, kalungi.com, sitepoint.com, movingminds.io, seranking.com and directiveconsulting.com. That is a visibility list for these queries on this date, not a judgment of whose content is best.

Who does AI cite in this category, and is it the same list as Google? In my earlier AI-only benchmark the engines cited Growtal, Profound, Scrunch, rankedcmo and Directive. Only Growtal and Directive clearly overlap with the Google-ranking set, so the two surfaces lean on largely different domains in my lane.

Does zero on both surfaces mean a domain has no authority? No. Zero means zero in this benchmark, on these queries and surfaces, on this date. My domain is only weeks old with almost no links or crawl history, so zero is the expected baseline for a new site and the honest before reading of a zero-to-N case.