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Hertz Iceland had an unusual seasonal opportunity: growing tourist demand in a country whose winter driving conditions would challenge visitors.

Travelers were increasingly asking AI assistants which rental company to use, whether they needed a 4x4, and what Icelandic winter driving involves. However, Hertz Iceland didn't know how often it appeared in those conversations, how it compared with competitors, or what AI assistants were saying about the brand.

Over three months, working inside Semrush's Enterprise AI Optimization platform, they closed that gap, and did it in a way that ties directly back to reservations.

Here's how they did it. 🚀

Hertz Iceland drives 50% more AI bookings. Hertz Iceland took advantage of fast-growing tourist numbers and AI search usage. Their share of voice gains of 70% in AI Mode and 67% in ChatGPT flowed on to 50% more rental reservations. [Source: Semrush]

84% of citations across ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini come from earned media. Muck Rack's analysis of more than 25 million AI-cited links found third-party coverage dominates citations across those platforms, although the source mix varies considerably by engine and query type. Brand-owned content remains particularly important for fact-finding queries and Google AI Overviews. [Source: Muck Rack]

Iceland is a place of extremes, with endless daylight in summer and genuinely hazardous driving conditions in winter. That split creates a real need for information for tourists who want to know how to handle it and what kind of vehicle they need to do it safely.

Hertz Iceland's challenge was that this exact conversation was happening in ChatGPT and Google AI Mode, and Hertz wasn't part of the answer. Potential customers were asking about 4x4 rentals and winter safety, and competitors were getting cited instead.

You can't prove a lift you never measured, so the first move was tracking.

Hertz Iceland used Semrush's AIO to establish where they actually stood. 21% share of voice was in ChatGPT and 23% in Google AI Mode across their target prompt set. But with an obvious ceiling, competitors were winning more of the conversation than they should have been for a brand with Hertz's scale and local presence.

AIO's competitive analysis let the team see exactly where they were losing ground, and by how much.

Direct comparison against top competitors surfaced specific content gaps, such as winter driving accessories and terrain considerations that kept coming up as areas where rivals had better, more specific answers. 

Rather than guessing at priority, the team cross-referenced topic search volume against those visibility gaps, which let them forecast which fixes would have the most impact and build a prioritized content roadmap instead of a scattered one.

Hertz Iceland refined existing pages and structured around new ones to answer the specific conversational questions travelers were asking. Not "car rental Iceland" keywords, but direct, factual answers to things like whether a 4x4 is necessary and what winter terrain actually demands of a driver. 

The positioning mattered as much as the content itself. Hertz leaned into its local expertise in Icelandic driving conditions rather than relying solely on the strength of the global Hertz brand.

Within three months, Hertz Iceland saw noticeable improvement across every metric it tracked. ChatGPT share of voice climbed from 21% to 35%, while Google AI Mode went from 23% to 39%. The increased visibility translated into an 81% rise in AI referral traffic and a 50% increase in bookings attributed to those referrals.

Improving AI visibility is one thing, but Hertz connected that visibility to people landing on its site and making reservations. For a three-month campaign focused on a relatively narrow topic, that's a meaningful commercial result.

Skydive agents take on work for you, using the same tools your team already uses.

Talk to your agent on the web, Slack, email, iMessage, or right from your terminal. Wherever you pick up the conversation, your agent keeps the context.

Put agents to work across customer support, sales, marketing, engineering, ops, and more.

Give your agent a job. They’ll take it from there.

Make your first agent

Use this prompt to figure out whether your brand has a blind spot, such as a strong traditional presence but being invisible in the AI conversations that precede a booking or purchase.

The scenario:

You're the head of marketing for a business with a seasonal or geography-specific service. You suspect customers are asking AI assistants questions in your category before they ever visit your site, and you want to know whether you'd be part of that answer.

The Prompt:

Act as an expert in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and AI search visibility. I'm going to describe my business, and I want you to identify the specific conversational questions a customer would likely ask ChatGPT or Google AI Mode before booking or buying from a company like mine.

Current Situation:

[DESCRIBE YOUR BUSINESS, YOUR LOCATION/NICHE SPECIFICS, AND YOUR MAIN COMPETITORS]

QUESTIONS

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What Hertz Iceland's three-month sprint shows is that GEO wins come from writing the right content in answer to the exact questions travelers were already asking, in a category narrow enough that AI models can confidently cite one authority.

Hertz picked winter driving in Iceland specifically and let the specificity work for them.

The mechanics are the same regardless of category, from establishing the baseline and gap analysis to targeted content, with the only thing changing being how narrow you're willing to get.

Until next time, keep exploring the horizon. 🌅

Alex Lielacher

P.S. If you want your brand to show up in Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, reach out to my agency, Rise Up Media. That's what we do!