Garanti BBVA Shares AI Search Category Leadership At 64% Visibility
Garanti BBVA enters the generative answer in all five tracked banking queries. The baseline shows the real opportunity lies in source ownership.
AI visibility was treated as a measurable layer in Garanti BBVA's digital growth programme. Working with Webtures on SEO and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), the brand tracked its presence in organic search and in generative answer surfaces within a single framework. A baseline measurement, run over a question set covering loan, card and banking intents, showed that the brand shares category leadership at 64% visibility and entered the answer in all five tracked queries. The findings point to a clear priority: the real opportunity is not being visible but having answers sourced from the brand's own content — only 5.6% of the sources cited in generative answers are the brand's own domain. This is not a retrospective growth chart. It is a baseline diagnosis that fixes today's position in data.
In banking, whether the correct information comes from the brand's own source is decisive for both user trust and regulatory compliance. The programme therefore focused not on a single channel but on every surface where an answer can form, and made the brand's AI visibility measurable so that count, position, tone and source could be read together.
Why Garanti BBVA Needed SEO and GEO Support
Garanti BBVA's need arose from four structural challenges specific to the banking category. The common thread is that, even with strong brand awareness, it was not guaranteed that accurate and current information would be read by machines from the brand's own source. These four points were identified at the outset, and the brand partnered with Webtures to strengthen its digital visibility.
- Information freshness and regulation: Pages carrying rates, loan and fee information age quickly within a year. An unmanaged page not only misleads the user but also creates exposure under the regulation governing financial-service advertising.
- Brand and entity clarity: When Garanti BBVA is mentioned alongside BBVA's global structure and sub-brands such as Bonus, generative engines tend to merge these entities. For questions like "which bank issues Bonus," the correct answer had to be learnable from the brand's own content.
- Dense local intent: Hundreds of branches and thousands of ATMs generate high-volume location-based queries such as "find a branch" and "ATM near me." That intent is met with consistent location data, not with classic page optimisation.
- Dominance of third-party platforms: Comparison and complaint platforms rank strongly on brand queries. Because a site's reputation is also assessed from independent sources, the visibility of official support and solution content becomes a direct trust signal.
Goals Set for the Garanti BBVA Project
The project's goals were to surface the brand's own sources on financial queries, make sub-brand and corporate entity relationships correctly understood by machines, meet location-based intent fully, and increase the brand's visibility in AI-assisted search results in a measurable way.
Goals were defined together with the regulatory frame from the start: every statement carrying a rate or a cost was written to hold the level of disclosure the relevant regulation requires. Measurability was set as a separate goal; the brand's AI visibility would be measured regularly against a category-specific question set and reported alongside the competitor band and the source composition.
How Webtures Approached SEO and GEO for Garanti BBVA
Webtures applied a strategy that combined technical SEO, content optimisation and generative AI visibility. The premise is simple: there is no separate mechanism for appearing in generative answers; being indexable and snippet-eligible is the precondition for being cited on those surfaces. The strategy advanced across four workstreams.
Technical SEO and AI Accessibility
Crawlability was reviewed so that both search engines and AI systems could parse the content. The brand's own infrastructure already showed notable maturity here: its robots.txt names generative crawlers explicitly and grants them access. This satisfies the most basic precondition for being cited on AI surfaces. The work built on that foundation through indexability, page experience and structured-data layers, because the measurement showed that open access alone does not deliver source share.
Content and Semantic Authority
Content was developed around the questions people actually put to search engines and AI assistants. In banking, these questions largely stem from pre-transaction information needs: the difference between a wire and an EFT, what an IBAN is, how to raise a credit score, what happens when only the minimum payment is made. Answering these from the brand's own pages, in passages that read correctly out of context, is decisive both for the user and for how generative engines decide what to cite. On product content such as loans and deposits, accuracy and freshness came before volume.
GEO and AI Visibility
Work was carried out to strengthen the brand's presence across AI-assisted search experiences such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. A category-specific question set was defined; generative answers to those questions were monitored, and the questions where the brand was cited as a source were separated from those where it was not. Measurement was placed within a framework that tracks mention rate, position within the answer, sentiment score and — most importantly — source citation, together.
Experience and Conversion
Page structures and journeys were arranged so visitors could reach the information a decision requires in the right order. In banking, this rarely means shortening a form; it means showing conditions, total cost and required documents in the right sequence. High-intent surfaces such as calculators and branch or ATM finders were treated with this lens.
Measuring Garanti BBVA's Visibility in AI Search
Garanti BBVA's visibility in AI search was fixed as a baseline measurement over a question set covering loan, card and banking intents. This is not a retrospective trend but a diagnosis that establishes today's position in data; it shows how often, in what position and from which sources the brand is cited in generative answers. The findings below form the reference point against which subsequent measurements, using the same question set, will be compared.
Visibility in All Five of Five Banking Queries: 100% Coverage
Garanti BBVA entered the generative answer in every one of the five tracked banking queries; coverage is 100%. The question set covers the category's high-intent topics: home loans and interest rates, loans for solar-energy investment, pension salary promotions, credit-card instalment advantages, and the best mobile banking app. Intent ran along three axes: Informational, Commercial Investigation and Local. Answers were monitored across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity for the Turkish market. There is no coverage gap for the brand; this shifts the real value of the measurement onto the position and source layers.
Sharing Category Leadership at 64% Visibility
In in-category visibility, Garanti BBVA sat in the top band at 64% share of voice, sharing the lead with one competitor. Its total of 9 mentions is again at the top of the category. The band continues with two more brands at 57% and 29% visibility. This shows the brand has no visibility gap in generative search but is, on the contrary, positioned among the category leaders. The table below summarises the competitor comparison from the baseline measurement (competitor brands have been anonymised).
| Brand | Visibility (Share of Voice) | Total Mentions | Average Position | Sentiment Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Garanti BBVA | 64% | 9 | 3.67 | 61 |
| Competitor A | 64% | 9 | — | 64 |
| Competitor B | 57% | 8 | — | 55 |
| Competitor C | 29% | 4 | — | 39 |
Source: Brantial AI visibility measurement, baseline snapshot. Visibility is the brand’s share of voice across the monitored generative answers. A lower average position is better. Sentiment is scored 0-100.
Quality of Mention: Average Position 3.67 and Sentiment 61
On quality of mention the picture is two-sided. The brand's average position within the answer was measured at 3.67; that is, Garanti appears in every query but is not always cited first. In some queries — for example, the credit-card instalment query — a competitor holds the top of the list. This shows that even when coverage is complete, the next goal is not "being everywhere" but "being the first name cited"; content and entity clarity directly affect this position.
On sentiment the brand is strong but not at the summit. Garanti BBVA's sentiment score of 61 is the second-highest in the category; the other brands in the band sit at 64, 55 and 39. This shows the brand is mentioned with a positive perception, yet there is also a measurable margin toward becoming the most positively cited brand. Read together, position and sentiment make the priority clear: how the brand is mentioned is in good shape; the improvement area is appearing more prominently and from its own source where it is mentioned.
Only 5.6% of Sources Are the Brand's Own Domain
The most critical finding of the baseline measurement is on the source side. Garanti BBVA is mentioned in generative answers and its own domain is cited as a source; but that share is low. The brand's own domain (garantibbva.com.tr) accounts for 5.61% of the sources cited in generative answers and is the third most-cited single source. By contrast, the single most-cited source is a competitor bank's domain (7.48%), followed by an independent finance comparison portal (6.54%). Looking at the source composition as a whole, the brand's own content holds a limited share.
| Source type | Citation share | Citation count |
|---|---|---|
| Independent finance and comparison portals | 43.9% | 47 |
| Competitor and other bank domains | 32.7% | 35 |
| News, forum and general-content sites | 16.8% | 18 |
| Brand's own domains | 6.5% | 7 |
This distribution sets a clear priority in a category like banking, where accuracy and freshness are decisive. The bulk of answers is fed by independent portals and competitor bank domains; the brand's rate, fee and condition information circulates through these sources second-hand, with currency outside the brand's control. Content gaps take concrete shape here too: reproducing verifiable corporate information in citable form on the brand's own HTML pages increases both source share and the accuracy of the information.
What Was Carried Out in the Garanti BBVA Project
Webtures delivered work tailored to the brand's needs across technical SEO, content architecture, site structure, structured data and GEO. The main workstreams prioritised closing the position and source-ownership gaps the baseline measurement pointed to.
- Crawl and indexation audit, including verification of generative crawler access
- Freshness and compliance review of pages carrying financial figures
- Question-led content architecture with context-independent answer passages
- Corporate entity and sub-brand relationships clarified through structured data
- Moving verifiable corporate data into HTML to raise the own-domain source share
- Consistent business data for location-based intent
- Question-set monitoring of visibility, position and source across generative surfaces
- Page experience and Core Web Vitals improvements
What the Baseline Measurement Revealed
The programme was tracked not through a single metric but across three reinforcing visibility layers: organic search performance, location-based visibility, and citation in generative answers. The baseline measurement gave a clear reference point for the generative-answer layer. This is not a growth chart; it is the zero point against which subsequent measurements will be compared.
64% Visibility and 100% Coverage in the Top Band
With 64% visibility and 100% coverage across five queries, Garanti BBVA is in a strong starting position in generative search. The brand is not invisible; it is among the category leaders. This shifts the measurable goal away from increasing visibility toward quality of mention and source ownership. For the brand, the goal is no longer "entering the answer" but appearing more prominently and from its own source in the answers it already enters.
Upward From 5.6%: The Growth Area in Source Ownership
The clearest growth area is in source ownership. The brand's own domain accounts for only 5.6% of the sources in generative answers, while the single most-cited source is a competitor bank's domain. In banking this is not merely a visibility matter but one of accuracy and trust: rate and condition information should be read from the brand's own current source. Because the baseline measurement puts this share into a number, the progress achieved by moving corporate data into HTML becomes measurable with the same framework.
The Outcome of the Garanti BBVA and Webtures Partnership
The SEO and GEO strategy Webtures applied addressed Garanti BBVA's organic search performance and its visibility in AI-assisted search experiences together. The baseline measurement showed the brand in a strong position: it shares category leadership at 64% visibility and enters every tracked query. Against that, there are two measurable gaps: it is not always cited first in the answers where it appears (average position 3.67), and only 5.6% of the sources in answers are the brand's own domain. In a category like banking, where information ages quickly and every claim sits inside a regulatory frame, durable visibility is held through a discipline of freshness and source ownership; the next measurement round will show that progress over the same question set.