Cybersecurity vendors get named in AI answers when assistants can find specific, checkable facts about them: ungated product and integration pages, fair comparison pages, a public trust center with compliance and disclosure details, verified reviews on sites like G2 and PeerSpot, and mentions in independent coverage. Vague "AI-powered platform" copy gives assistants nothing to repeat.
Key takeaways🔗
- Security buyers ask AI tools narrow questions ("EDR for a 300-person company on Microsoft 365 with a 24/7 MDR option"). Your pages need those specifics in plain text.
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Comparison and alternatives prompts are where shortlists form. Write fair "you vs competitor" pages before someone else writes them for you.
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Review sites built for B2B software, such as G2 and PeerSpot, give assistants independent opinions. Each has its own rules for asking customers.
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A public trust center (SOC 2 status, vulnerability disclosure policy, security advisories) answers the due-diligence prompts buyers run late in the deal.
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Gated PDFs are invisible to most crawlers. Put the core facts on ungated HTML pages.
What do security buyers ask AI?🔗
Security buyers ask AI tools to define a category, build a shortlist, compare finalists and check due-diligence facts. Each stage uses different prompts, and a vendor can win one stage and vanish in the next.
| Buying stage | Example prompt | What the assistant needs to find |
|---|---|---|
| Learn the category | "What is the difference between EDR, XDR and MDR?" | Clear definition pages, ideally yours |
| Build a shortlist | "Best EDR for a mid-size company with a small IT team" | Third-party lists, reviews, your use-case pages |
| Compare | "[Vendor A] vs [Vendor B] for a healthcare company" | Comparison pages, review-site comparisons, Reddit threads |
| Check fit | "Does [Vendor] integrate with Okta and Splunk?" | Ungated integration pages and docs |
| Due diligence | "Is [Vendor] SOC 2 Type II? Has it had a breach?" | A public trust center, security advisories, news coverage |
Write 20 to 30 prompts like these for your category, with company size, industry and tech stack in them. Run each on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google, and note who is named, how you are described, and which pages are cited. Our competitor AI visibility analysis guide shows how to turn that log into a gap list.
Why do cybersecurity vendors get left out of AI answers?🔗
Cybersecurity vendors get left out of AI answers mostly because their websites say very little that an assistant can quote. Three patterns show up often on security sites.
Vague positioning. "A unified, AI-driven platform that stops threats" could describe fifty companies. An assistant answering "best email security for a 200-person law firm" needs to know that you protect Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace mail, what you catch, how you deploy, and who you are built for.
Gated facts. Datasheets, architecture guides and analyst reports often sit behind forms. Crawlers do not fill in forms. If the only page that lists your supported integrations is a PDF behind a lead form, assistants will not know about them.
Blocked crawlers. Security teams are cautious about bots, and some sites block AI crawlers at the firewall or CDN. OpenAI says sites that opt out of its search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers" (OpenAI). Its training crawler, GPTBot, is separate, so you can block training and still allow search. Check your robots.txt and WAF rules with whoever owns them.
Which review sites matter for cybersecurity vendors?🔗
The review sites that matter most for cybersecurity vendors are the ones built for B2B software, because assistants look for independent opinions when a buyer asks which tool is best or whether a vendor is any good.
| Site | Who reviews | How reviews are checked | Rule to remember |
|---|---|---|---|
| G2 | Software users across categories, including security | "Validated Reviewer" and "Current User" labels; current users upload a screenshot of their usage | Incentives are capped at $100 USD, and you cannot ask only happy customers or tie incentives to positive reviews |
| PeerSpot | Enterprise technology buyers and users | PeerSpot says "every reviewer is verified as a real user of the product within the last 12 months" | Covers security categories such as SIEM, EDR, firewalls and vulnerability management |
Gartner Peer Insights is another review site many security buyers know. We could not open its current vendor rules for this post, so read them on Gartner's site before you ask customers for reviews there.
G2's rules on conflicts are worth knowing before you ask partners for help. G2 says reviews from business partners get a "Business Partner" label and "do not count toward the G2 Score," and employees of the vendor or a direct competitor "may not leave reviews" (G2 community guidelines).
Federal rules apply on top of each site's policy. The FTC's consumer review rule, announced in August 2024, bans fake reviews (including AI-generated ones), bans paying for reviews that express a particular sentiment, and requires insiders such as officers and managers to disclose their connection (FTC).
A review program that holds up: ask every customer at the same point (for example 90 days after go-live), use the review site's own request tools, and keep any incentive within the site's limit and not tied to a rating. Our B2B SaaS roadmap covers how review profiles fit into a wider 90-day plan.
How should a cybersecurity vendor write comparison pages?🔗
A cybersecurity vendor should write comparison pages that a skeptical security engineer would accept as fair: dated, specific, and honest about where the competitor is the better pick. Buyers ask "[you] vs [competitor]" and "[competitor] alternatives" constantly, and an assistant will quote whichever page answers it most clearly.
What a useful comparison page includes:
- A one-paragraph summary of who each product suits, in the first lines
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A table of facts a buyer can check: deployment model, supported operating systems, integrations, managed service options, data residency, pricing model
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A "when to choose [competitor]" section that you mean
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The date you last checked the competitor's facts, with links to their public pages
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No claims you cannot support, such as "detects 100% of threats"
Start with your three most common competitors from sales calls, then add "[competitor] alternatives" pages for the large incumbents your buyers are leaving. Our guide to getting cited by ChatGPT explains why fair comparison pages are one of the most reliable ways to get cited.
Practitioner communities matter here too. Security engineers compare tools in public threads, and those threads can show up in AI answers. Our post on Reddit citations in AI answers covers how to take part honestly, as a named employee, without astroturfing.
What trust content should a security vendor publish?🔗
A security vendor should publish a public trust center that answers the due-diligence questions buyers ask late in a deal, in ungated HTML. When a buyer asks an assistant whether you are SOC 2 compliant or how you handle vulnerabilities, your own clear statement is better than a guess.
Pages to include:
- Compliance status. Which audits and frameworks you have completed and when. SOC 2 reports cover controls relevant to "Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, or Privacy" (AICPA & CIMA). You can say you have a current SOC 2 Type II report and how to request it without publishing the report itself.
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Vulnerability disclosure policy. How researchers report issues and what they can expect.
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Security advisories and CVEs. A public list of issues in your own products and how you fixed them.
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Data handling. Where customer data is stored, subprocessors, retention.
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Incident history. If you had a public incident, a factual page about what happened and what changed. Assistants will find the news coverage anyway.
CISA's Secure by Design pledge is a public signal worth a look if you sell enterprise software. It is "a voluntary pledge focused on enterprise software products and services," and signers commit to goals including more multi-factor authentication, fewer default passwords, publishing a vulnerability disclosure policy and transparency in CVE reporting (CISA). CISA publishes the list of signers, which is the kind of independent page an assistant can check.
How should a cybersecurity vendor use schema markup?🔗
A cybersecurity vendor should add Organization schema to its homepage and About page, with sameAs links to its G2, PeerSpot, LinkedIn and Crunchbase profiles, and SoftwareApplication schema to product pages where it can meet Google's requirements.
Google requires name, an offer with a price, and either aggregateRating or review for SoftwareApplication rich results (Google Search Central). Many security products have no public price, so you may not qualify for the rich result. The markup still describes the product clearly. Do not paste in ratings you collect yourself: Google says pages where the entity "controls the reviews about itself" are not eligible for review stars with Organization markup (Google Search Central).
Add FAQ sections to product and integration pages as well. Our schema markup guide covers the details.
How do you measure AI visibility for a security product?🔗
You measure AI visibility for a security product by tracking a fixed set of buyer prompts across several assistants every week and counting how often you are named against your main competitors. Our post on AI share of voice explains the math. Also log how you are described. In security, a wrong fact (an old breach, a discontinued product, a missing certification) can cost more than a missing mention.
For a fast first look, the free TrendlyAI check runs 5 prompts on ChatGPT and Perplexity in about 30 seconds with no signup. Paid plans track ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews weekly, flag prompts where a competitor is named and you are not, and draft fixes such as comparison pages and FAQ pages with schema. I build TrendlyAI, so weigh that. It tracks 4 engines (not Gemini, Copilot, Grok or Google AI Mode), scans weekly with one sample per prompt, and has no prompt-volume data. Enterprise security vendors with large prompt sets may need a bigger tool.
See the GEO hub for the full topic.
Frequently asked questions🔗
Do cybersecurity vendors need to be on G2 to show up in AI answers?🔗
No single site is required, but independent reviews help. G2 and PeerSpot both cover security software. Pick the ones your buyers already read, and follow each site's rules on asking for reviews.
Should a security vendor block AI crawlers?🔗
Decide crawler by crawler. OpenAI's search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, is separate from its training crawler, GPTBot. Blocking OAI-SearchBot means your pages will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, while blocking GPTBot only affects training.
Do we need to publish our SOC 2 report?🔗
No. Say publicly which audits you have completed and when, and explain how customers can request the report. That gives assistants a clear answer to "is [vendor] SOC 2 compliant?" without exposing the report.
Are comparison pages risky for a security brand?🔗
Only if they are unfair or out of date. Date every page, link to the competitor's public facts, say when the competitor is the better fit, and review the page each quarter.
How long does it take to show up in AI answers?🔗
There is no fixed timeline. Our B2B SaaS roadmap plans for about 90 days of work, from baseline to measurement. Track weekly and watch the trend rather than any single answer.