#3 AI Visibility · #1 Google AI Mode · +88% AI Traffic · +78% AI Overview Citations · 77% Positive Sentiment
Introduction
Something has quietly shifted in how people find and choose online services. A growing number of customers aren’t opening Google and typing a search query anymore. They’re asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, or Google’s AI Mode a direct question and going with whatever comes back.
ThePayStubs is a leading US-based online paystub generator, trusted by thousands of freelancers, self-employed professionals, and small businesses. The platform helps users create professional paystubs, income verification documents, and employment records quickly and easily, with thousands of paystubs generated through its system.
The product was already established, reliable, and widely used across the US market. But when customers asked an AI assistant which paystub tool to use, ThePayStubs wasn’t consistently showing up.
Between February and May 2026, Growth-onomics ran a structured AI visibility campaign with one goal in mind: make ThePayStubs the name that surfaces when someone asks an AI assistant which paystub tool to trust.
Four months later, the brand had gone from inconsistent presence to the #3 most visible brand in AI search and #1 on Google AI Mode.
The Challenge
Three things shaped how we approached this:
A market with no clear winner. The online paystub generator space is saturated. Most players look and sound the same. Getting cut-through required something more deliberate than another optimized landing page.
Discovery had already moved. High-intent customers were bypassing traditional search entirely. Questions like “What’s the best paystub generator for freelancers?” or “Which tool do I trust for income verification?” were being asked directly to AI assistants, and the answers those assistants gave were shaping purchase decisions.
Mentions aren’t enough. Showing up occasionally in an AI response isn’t the same as being recommended. The brand needed to be cited positively, consistently, and at the exact moment someone was choosing a provider.
The Approach
Rather than treating this as an SEO campaign with an AI twist, we built the strategy around how people actually research tools inside AI platforms. That meant working across five areas simultaneously:
- Prompt and audience research: mapping the real, commercial-intent questions people ask AI assistants in this category.
- Content development: building authoritative pages and resources around the topics that matter most at decision stage.
- Third-party authority: expanding the brand’s footprint across credible external sources that AI systems draw from.
- Multi-platform distribution: blogs, forums, Reddit, Quora, YouTube, X, and a network of quality backlinks.
- AI performance monitoring: tracking citations, referral traffic, visibility, sentiment, and prompt-level results on a weekly basis.
Execution
The program ran as a connected, compounding effort rather than a series of isolated pushes. Content was developed around the decision-stage topics that matter most in this category: income verification, instant generators, employment templates, small-business payroll, and compliance questions.
At the same time, the brand built a broader footprint across the platforms AI systems actually learn from. Industry blogs, forums, Reddit and Quora threads, YouTube, X, and a structured backlink program. Core website content was also restructured to make it easier for AI systems to parse, summarize, and cite accurately.
Performance data came in weekly, which meant the distribution could be continuously refined to prioritize the prompts and topics generating the most visibility and referral traffic.
The Results
Measured across a 111-day window (February 1 – May 22, 2026), the campaign produced clear, consistent growth across every metric we tracked.
Snapshot: #3 Overall AI Visibility · 74.9% Google AI Mode (#1) · +88% AI Referral Traffic · 77% Positive Sentiment
Stronger AI citations across every major platform
Compared to the pre-campaign baseline, citations grew across the board. Google AI Overviews was the standout, with citations climbing from 1,400 to 2,500, an increase of +1,100 or +78%. Gemini grew +64% (45 to 74), Copilot +27% (15 to 19), and Perplexity held steady (79 to 80).
AI referral traffic nearly doubled
Better visibility translated directly into website visits. Total AI referral traffic rose from 450 to 847 sessions, up +397 sessions or +88%, almost double the pre-campaign baseline.
Growth across every AI referral source
Every major assistant contributed to the increase. ChatGPT remained the largest source by volume (1.68x), Gemini delivered one of the strongest growth rates (5.33x), and Copilot was the fastest-growing channel at 8.88x.
The #3 brand in overall AI visibility
By May 2026, ThePayStubs had reached #3 overall AI visibility with a 26.4% share across the tracked AI search landscape, ahead of several established payroll, financial software, and paystub generator brands.
Category leadership across Google’s AI surfaces
The brand’s strongest competitive result came on Google. ThePayStubs reached 74.9% visibility on Google AI Mode, taking the #1 position in the category, with 44.1% visibility across Google AI Overviews.
Winning the questions that matter most
Visibility was concentrated on the prompts where it counts, when users are actively comparing providers. ThePayStubs reached 100% visibility on “best pay stub generators online” and held strong positions across the other high-intent comparison queries.
Authority across core customer needs
The brand built relevance across the category’s most commercially important themes, with Income Verification (32.6%) emerging as the leading topic and one of ThePayStubs’ strongest use cases.
Visible and described well
Visibility only has value if the brand is presented favorably. Across AI-generated answers that mentioned ThePayStubs, 77% carried positive sentiment. The brand was consistently framed as trustworthy and reliable.
Strategic Value
Five things drove these results, and they’re worth keeping as a framework for any brand trying to build AI visibility.
Prompt-led research was the foundation: building around the actual conversational questions people ask, not just search keywords. That was paired with a focus on commercial-intent content, prioritizing topics tied directly to decisions and conversions rather than top-of-funnel awareness. Multi-platform authority meant spreading credibility across many sources so AI systems encountered the brand from multiple angles. Consistent distribution let those references compound over the months rather than spike and fade. And data-led optimization meant every decision was adjusted based on what citations, traffic, sentiment, and prompt results were actually showing week to week.
It’s also worth noting the timing. AI traffic is still a small percentage of total search volume, which is exactly what makes now the right moment to move. It’s the fastest-growing, highest-intent acquisition channel on the site. The brands that build authority here now will be the names AI assistants recommend when this channel matures.
Conclusion
In four months, ThePayStubs moved from inconsistent AI presence to a recognized leader in its category. The shift came from a structured program combining prompt research, content development, digital authority building, and multi-platform distribution, not from a single tactic or shortcut.
- #3 overall AI visibility, 26.4% visibility share
- #1 on Google AI Mode, 74.9% visibility
- +78% Google AI Overview citations (+1,100), +64% Gemini citations
- +88% total AI referral traffic, 5.33x Gemini, 8.88x Copilot
- 77% positive AI sentiment
A strong product is the starting point. A structured AI visibility strategy is what turns it into the answer customers receive when they ask which tool to trust.
Ready to Make Your Brand Visible in AI Search?
Your customers are already using ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode and other AI platforms to discover and compare businesses.
The question is: are they finding your brand – or your competitors?
Book a meeting with Growth-onomics to discover where your brand currently stands, identify the opportunities you are missing and build a strategy that increases your visibility across AI search.
