5% → 23% AI Visibility · Peak 27% · 21 Days Above 20% · 8,439 Sessions From AI · +105% AI-Referred Users MoM
Introduction
The way traders discover and evaluate prop firms is changing. More users are no longer starting with a long Google search or manually comparing dozens of firm websites. Instead, they are asking AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Mode direct questions and using those answers to guide their next move.
Hola Prime entered this shift with a strong trader-first offer: one-hour payouts, a 95% profit split, and funding up to $4M. The brand already had a competitive product, clear positioning, and a growing community of funded traders who valued speed, fair conditions, and reliable payouts.But inside AI-generated answers, that strength was not yet showing consistently. When traders asked which prop firm to trust, Hola Prime appeared in only around 5% of tracked AI responses, meaning the brand was visible occasionally, but not often enough to influence the conversation.
During June 2026, Growth-onomics ran a focused AI visibility campaign designed to change that. The goal was to strengthen Hola Prime’s presence across the sources, prompts, and topics that AI systems rely on when answering prop firm questions.By the end of the month, Hola Prime had moved from a 5% baseline to a stable average daily AI visibility of around 23%, peaking at 27% and staying above 20% for 21 consecutive day
The Challenge
Three things shaped how we approached this:
A market with an entrenched benchmark. Prop trading is crowded and led by a handful of household names, with FTMO sitting at the top of AI visibility at around 52%. Getting cut-through required something more deliberate than another optimized landing page.
Discovery had already moved. High-intent traders were bypassing traditional search entirely. Questions like “What’s the best prop firm right now?” or “Which firm has the fastest payouts?” were being asked directly to AI assistants, and the answers those assistants gave were shaping where real capital went.
Mentions aren’t enough. Showing up occasionally in an AI response isn’t the same as being recommended. The brand needed to be present, well-positioned, and cited 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 traders actually research firms inside AI platforms. That meant working across several areas at once:
- Citation-domain research: identifying the exact sites and platforms AI models cite most often when answering questions in this category.
- Prompt development: building around the real, commercial-intent questions traders ask, anchored to Hola Prime’s core USP of one-hour payouts and a 95% split.
- Third-party authority: strengthening Hola Prime’s presence on the highest-cited external sources AI systems draw from.
- Topic expansion: extending visibility beyond payout-focused queries into new, unclaimed subject areas.
- AI performance monitoring: tracking visibility, citations, and referral traffic on a weekly basis across Gauge and GA4.
Execution
The program ran as a connected, compounding effort rather than a series of isolated pushes. Work began with citation-domain research to pinpoint where AI models source their answers, followed by strengthening Hola Prime’s presence on those domains.
At the same time, new prompts were built around the brand’s strongest selling points, and coverage expanded into two entirely new topic areas, Trading Rules Framework and Technical Strategy Resources, both untouched territory for Hola Prime a month earlier.
Performance data came in weekly, which meant the strategy could be continuously refined to prioritize the prompts, domains, and topics generating the most visibility and referral traffic.
The Results
Measured across June 2026, the campaign produced clear, consistent growth across every metric we tracked.
Snapshot: 5% → 23% AI Visibility · Peak 27% · 21 Days Above 20% · 8,439 Sessions From AI · +105% AI-Referred Users MoM
A permanent step-change in AI visibility
This wasn’t a spike. Before June 10, Hola Prime averaged around 5% visibility, roughly one AI answer in twenty. On June 10, it jumped to 20% and never dropped back. For the rest of the month it held a stable ~23% average, peaked at 27% on June 15, and stayed above 20% for 21 consecutive days with zero return to baseline.
Closing the gap on the category leaders
By the end of June, Hola Prime had moved up the competitive field, overtaking Tradeify and closing in on FundingPips, The5ers, and FundedNext with a 23% visibility share. FTMO remains the benchmark at ~52%, a reminder of how far there is still to go, but also of how quickly the gap is closing after a single month of focused work.
Winning the questions that matter most
We built new prompts around Hola Prime’s ultra-fast-payout and 95%-split positioning, the questions traders ask when they’re actively comparing providers. Two of them immediately became the best-performing prompts in the entire category, outperforming every pre-existing prompt in the set.
The AEO payoff: real traffic from AI
Better visibility translated directly into website visits. GA4 recorded 8,439 sessions arriving directly from LLM answers across five AI platforms, with ChatGPT alone driving 7,807, 92.7% of all AI-referred traffic. Hola Prime is now being surfaced and clicked directly from AI answers.
AI-referred users: 6x growth since April
Users arriving from AI platforms were flat through Q1, then broke out in May and June, tracking the same step-change seen in Gauge. Month-over-month, AI-referred users grew 105%, a 5.7x increase across April to June, lifting average engagement time to 4m 37s.
The bottom line: purchases up 653%
Everything converged on the metric that matters most. As AI visibility, traffic, and user growth compounded through May and June, actual purchases climbed sharply, finishing the period more than 653% above the previous one. This is where AI visibility stops being a vanity metric and starts showing up in the numbers a business runs on.
Strategic Value
A few things drove these results, and they’re worth keeping as a framework for any brand trying to build AI visibility.
Citation-domain research was the foundation: understanding exactly where AI models source their answers, then building presence there rather than guessing. That was paired with USP-led prompt development, building around the actual conversational questions traders ask, not just search keywords. Strengthening authority across the sources AI systems learn from meant the models encountered the brand from multiple angles at once. And weekly, data-led optimization meant every decision was adjusted based on what visibility, citations, and traffic were actually showing.
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 in the category. The brands that build authority here now will be the names AI assistants recommend when this channel matures.
Conclusion
In a single month, Hola Prime moved from an inconsistent AI presence to a consistent, daily one in answers about prop trading firms. The shift came from a structured program combining citation-domain research, prompt development, topic expansion, and digital authority building, not from a single tactic or shortcut.
- 5% → 23% average daily AI visibility (+18 points), peaking at 27%, held above 20% for 21 straight days
- Moved up the competitive field, overtaking Tradeify and closing on the leaders
- Two new prompts became the best-performing in the entire category
- 8,439 sessions from AI answers and a 6x increase in AI-referred users since April (+105% MoM)
A strong offer is the starting point. A structured AI visibility strategy is what turns it into the answer a trader receives when they ask which firm to trust.
Ready to Become the Company AI Recommends?
Your customers are already asking ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google’s AI Mode which company to trust, which product to buy, and who’s worth their money.
The question is: when they ask, does your brand come up – or your competitors?
Book a meeting with Growth-onomics to see exactly where your brand stands in AI answers today, uncover the high-intent questions you’re missing, and build a strategy that makes your brand the one AI names.
