Case Study: Sama Improves AI Mode Citations By +6,000% In 6 Months
Background
Sama is an AI data annotation and model evaluation company that helps enterprises build more accurate, production-ready AI systems. The company specializes in human-in-the-loop data services across computer vision, multimodal AI, and related machine learning workflows, combining automation with expert human validation to improve model performance, reduce rework, and support reliable scaling.
Sama came to Nectiv wanting more support from SEO. While they had an existing marketing team in place, they hadn’t been able to work with a partner to get them the results they were looking for.
Support
Nectiv partnered with Sama on a multi-month SEO and AI search program designed to improve visibility across both informational and commercial search opportunities. Acting as an extension of their team, we fully managed the SEO program end to end: leading strategy, reporting, content planning, and ongoing execution across the engagement. Our work spanned reporting and dashboard setup, prompt tracking for AI engines, technical and brand review, roadmap development, content strategy, content production, content refreshes, commercial page planning, and structural site enhancements.
Beyond strategy and content, we also worked cross-functionally across design and development to help move initiatives into production. That included supporting page structure updates, publishing workflows, implementation planning, and broader site improvements needed to strengthen organic performance.
Results
In just 6-months time, Sama saw strong increases in both their organic presence in Google and key AI engines.
When starting support, Sama was consistently seeing negative YoY results from organic search. Nectiv was quickly able to completely reverse that trend resulting in positive organic traffic & clicks when compared to the previous year.
These results also trickled into key AI systems such as AI Mode. When starting support, Sama was invisible in AI Mode with only 1-3 citations. However our targeted efforts resulted in +200 citations in Google AI Mode.
When evaluating their assets, we discovered that five of their ten most cited pieces of content had been refreshed or fully created by the Nectiv team.
