How Cerebro Achieved over 15x Growth in Visibility with Crossfill

Key Results

Overview

Cerebro Capital helps mid-sized businesses access commercial lending solutions while serving as a trusted source of strategic insight and educational guidance on financing decisions. However, as search behavior shifted toward AI-generated answers on platforms like ChatGPT, Google AI, and Perplexity, Cerebro’s expertise was no longer reaching their key customers and decision-makers.

Traditional SEO strategies weren’t built for this new environment. Cerebro needed a way to make its trusted insights easier for AI systems to find, interpret, and cite across this emerging layer of AI discovery platforms—while also strengthening search visibility in traditional results, without having to rebuild its entire content strategy.

Analyzing Cerebro’s AI Visibility

Crossfill began by examining how generative systems interpreted and surfaced Cerebro’s financing insights. Using its Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) framework, the team identified where Cerebro appeared and where it was missing across major AI discovery platforms.

The analysis revealed three key findings:

1. Relevance gaps: Certain high-value topics were not being surfaced because content didn’t fully align with the specific questions businesses and customers were asking.

   
   

2. Formatting limitations: Important takeaways were buried in long-form paragraphs rather than clear, extractable structures.

   
   

3. Citation blind spots: Competitors were being cited more frequently because their content was easier for AI to parse.

This visibility audit established a data-backed baseline for Cerebro’s AI discovery presence and guided where structural refinements would have the most impact.

How Cerebro Took Action

Guided by Crossfill’s recommendations, Cerebro took actions across three key areas:

1. Refocused content on key topics
   To strengthen visibility across AI discovery platforms, Crossfill helped Cerebro reframe how its financing expertise showed up in AI-generated results and answer summaries. Guided by our insights, Cerebro refined and expanded key pages to address the exact questions businesses and customers were asking, allowing its authority to surface more naturally across AI discovery platforms.

   
   

2. Streamlined structure for AI comprehension
   To improve how Cerebros insights were interpreted by AI systems, Crossfill helped rewrite key content in a structure optimized for LLMs, using our research backed methods. These refinements made its expertise easier for AI systems to interpret and reference, strengthening visibility across financing-related searches.

   
   

3. Strengthened visibility signals and credibility
   To address citation gaps where competitors were being referenced more often, Crossfill applied its research-based content optimization pipeline to guide Cerebro in reinforcing trust signals across key content. These refinements helped solidify Cerebro’s authority within AI discovery platforms, leading to significant gains in mentions and citations.

Three cornerstone pieces—Financing Pain Points for Mid-Sized Businesses, Expert Guidance Through the Acquisition Process, and When to Seek Financing for a Business Acquisition—became standout examples of this approach, showing how structured communication and precise query alignment can drive sustained visibility across both traditional and generative search.

Cerebro’s Results with Crossfill

Cerebro’s partnership with Crossfill addressed a fundamental growth barrier: despite deep in-house expertise, the company’s content wasn’t being surfaced or recognized by the discovery systems users now rely on. Crossfill’s visibility framework began reshaping how Cerebro’s insights were interpreted and surfaced—delivering triple-digit improvements in visibility, significant lifts in citations and mentions, and sustained growth in impressions across its key content pieces.

When to Seek Financing for a Business Acquisition illustrates the broader impact of Crossfill’s Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) framework. Within two months, overall AI visibility improved by 161%, supported by 2.7× more citations and 9× more mentions across leading AI discovery platforms including ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity. These improvements reflected a clear expansion of Cerebro’s authority across financing-related queries and continued upward momentum.

These gains were also clearly reflected in Cerebro’s own Google Search Console data, providing independent confirmation of Crossfill’s impact. Impressions increased by more than 1,400%, with the blue line indicating when optimizations were published and visibility began compounding.

Comparable growth patterns followed across other areas of Cerebro’s educational content:

• Expert Guidance Through the Acquisition Process
  Recorded a 100% lift in AI visibility, supported by 2× more citations and 10× more mentions. Search visibility followed, with impressions surging 2,176%, proving that improved clarity and structure made Cerebro’s guidance more recognizable to both users and AI systems.

• Financing Pain Points for Mid-Sized Businesses
  This piece delivered some of the strongest early results. Overall AI visibility rose by 66.7%, supported by 1.7× more citations and the first appearance of mentions across AI-generated results. Google search visibility saw parallel gains, with impressions increasing by 870% and clicks rising 7× within one month. Even at its lowest points after optimization, performance remained above pre-optimization benchmarks showing lasting visibility improvements with Crossfill’s GEO framework.

Top Citation & Mention Example

Below is an example of Cerebro appearing in Google AI Overviews for a high intent mid market lending query. This visibility came from optimizations made to Cerebro’s Lender Matching blog, and it appeared in less than half a month after updates were published. Before optimization, competitors held these placements, but here, Cerebro is surfaced in the first position, with another recently optimized blog earning the second position.

Query: “best lender network for middle market business loans”

Cerebro’s results clearly outline how Crossfill helped the company solve a key business challenge by turning its existing expertise into content that is consistently discoverable and recognized as authoritative across the evolving landscape of AI-driven search.

The Outcome

By applying Crossfill’s framework, Cerebro turned its existing insights into a scalable visibility engine that expanded its reach across both AI-driven and traditional search. Within weeks, the company achieved over 1400 percent growth in search visibility, doubled its AI citations, and gained ten times more mentions. Cerebro now earns consistent visibility and citations across leading AI discovery platforms like Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, reflecting stronger authority across key financing topics.

AI is a company-wide priority at Cerebro Capital as we help middle market business access debt capital solutions. Partnering with Crossfill has given us a clear, data-driven view into how we appear across platforms like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity and how to improve it. We're now seeing consistent, measurable gains in citations and mentions that position Cerebro as an early leader in AI visibility within our industry."

- Michele Hsu, VP of Marketing at Cerebro Capital

This partnership showed that meaningful visibility does not come from producing more content. It comes from refreshing and structuring existing expertise so it can be surfaced when and where it matters most. Today, Cerebro has a repeatable playbook for sustained visibility growth and a stronger foundation for thought leadership in an evolving search landscape. As the discovery ecosystem continues to shift toward AI platforms, Crossfill empowers brands to translate their expertise into lasting visibility and authority across the next generation of search.