The service aims to ask AI hundreds of questions, mimicking queries a consumer might ask about a product. Often the same question is asked multiple times.
“Cognitively, AI is a bit similar to us,” said Matias Garrido-Garcia, AI Shelf Space founder. “And like people, if you ask the same questions, they are going to tend to answer the same things similarly, but not perfectly. That’s why if you just poll people a few times, it’s not going to be very accurate. That’s why you need a lot of repetitions.”
The platform explores visibility, or the percentage of times an AI engine names a specific brand after a search. The platform also measures rank, the position on the metaphorical shelf where a brand appears as well as the standing order by visibility against other brands on the shelf.
The platform also assesses movement, or change between measurements. An alert fires when a brand drops out of a shelf’s top ten, when a rank change holds across two consecutive weekly measurements or when a new competitor enters the shelf.
AI Shelf Space tracks 185 supplement shelves, including product categories like magnesium glycinate, prenatal multivitamin, lion’s mane or collagen.
“The point is how we can be more recommended by AI,” Garrido-Garcia said. “AI Shelf Space gives you a diagnosis of where you are now.”
Optimization
AI visibility, also known as Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) or Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), is still in its early stages but understanding a company’s rank can better inform PR strategy, content marketing strategy, and improve the frequency that the AI assistants recommend a brand.
Keeping that in mind, Garrido-Garcia says Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, still matters because it helps build content that AI agents trust. That translates into companies having more information on websites about the quality and added value of their products.
“We are moving from a world of emotional marketing toward a world of fact-based and proof-based marketing,” Garrido-Garcia said. “And I like to summarize it as ‘trust is the new traffic.’”
Garrido-Garcia did not initially come from an AI background. He graduated from college with a degree in biology, a discipline he says he never practiced. He changed his professional path and went into web development before landing AI consulting roles.
Although he still consults, his primary focus is AI Shelf Space, a platform he developed after a supplement founder showed him a ChatGPT screenshot recommending the brand. The founder wanted to know if the brand was promoted each time someone searched. Matias determined that hundreds of questions were needed, every week and counted the same way each time to conclude whether the recommendation was consistent.
AI gathers information based on two sources: a real-time search of the internet and its innate knowledge it was “born” with, created by engineers the day the model was formed, Garrido-Garcia said.
“It’s like its core set of original ideas about reality, about brands, about who is who,” he added.
AI will develop an even greater understanding of brands as it enters the agentic commerce world, where technology will chaperone shopping decisions. Garrido-Garcia said this shopping revolution is another reason brands need to know their standing.
