How Sonos Became a Leader in AI Search with Conductor
About Sonos
Sonos, Inc. is a leading American audio equipment manufacturer, specializing in premium home audio and theatre products for global consumers. The company supports customers around the world through a robust digital ecosystem spanning eCommerce, product education, and support experiences. That digital presence plays a critical role in how customers discover, evaluate, and engage with the Sonos brand.
The challenge
Two years ago, Sonos lacked a centralized SEO platform to support its global operations. Its one-person SEO team was managing search across markets with manual processes—piecing together insights without the infrastructure needed to track performance or understand how the site was behaving at scale.
The website operated at enterprise scale across multiple regions, with technical complexity that required constant attention. Without clear visibility into how search engines were crawling and indexing content, the team was often reacting to issues instead of proactively managing performance.
Sonos needed a platform that could bring performance data and technical insight together and scale globally, which is why they chose Conductor.
![Aleks Merkovich, Senior SEO Manager, [object Object]](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/tkl0o0xu/production/51a62d9565c6c4ab4aacb89811077bfe1d36c929-3350x3350.jpg?fit=min&w=100&h=100&dpr=1&q=95)
The international reporting ability is one of the biggest differentiators of Conductor versus other tools. Being able to track keywords and AI SERPs globally, and at scale, is huge for us.
That decision became especially important as the search landscape shifted. AI search engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity rewrote how discovery works. While other brands worked to understand what was happening, Sonos already had an enterprise AEO platform in place to see the impact and respond.
How Conductor helped
Conductor gave Sonos a way to see traditional and AI search performance as a system, not a set of disconnected signals. By bringing technical site health, organic visibility, and AI-driven discovery together, the team could pinpoint what was driving visibility across markets. That meant Sonos could see where to invest, where to pull back, and where technical issues were limiting impact.
- Real-time insight into search and AI bot behavior: Conductor Monitoring gave Sonos 24/7 visibility into the technical health of a large, complex website. With log file analysis, the team could see exactly how search engines and AI bots were crawling the site, surfacing overlooked sections that influenced visibility and clearly linking technical health back to performance.
- Clear visibility into AI-driven discovery and brand sentiment: As AI-powered search became more influential, Conductor’s AI Search Performance feature helped Sonos understand how its brand was appearing across AI engines. The team gained visibility into AI citations, brand mentions, and sentiment—particularly within heavily cited sources like Reddit—making it easier to see which conversations and third-party sources were shaping discovery and where Sonos was gaining ground.
- Global view of branded and non-branded search demand: Conductor enabled Sonos to track branded and non-branded keyword/topic visibility across regions, providing a clear picture of how search performance varied by market. With international reporting built in, Sonos could identify growth opportunities, monitor market share changes, and prioritize efforts globally—without relying on fragmented tools or manual analysis.
Featured Conductor capabilities: 24/7 monitoring, AI crawler activity, AI search performance, Competitor research tracking, Sentiment analysis, Keyword details report, Explorer
Featured Conductor products: Intelligence, Monitoring
Before | After |
|---|---|
Fragmented SEO insights across global markets | Unified visibility into search performance across global markets |
Limited technical insight into AI bot crawler behavior | Always-on site monitoring with log file analysis for search & AI bots |
Rankings were the primary measure of success | Unparalleled visibility into AI citations, mentions, and sentiment |
Little clarity into third-party influence on discovery | Clear view of how external sources shape AI search results |
Conductor is the most fully fleshed-out SEO platform I’ve used so far. These are enterprise-level innovations at scale that I don’t really see or hear about anywhere else… Conductor is on the breaking edge of what's new to come, both within the AEO and the SEO space.
The results
Increased non-branded visibility, AI search visibility, and market share across regions
Since partnering with Conductor, Sonos increased non-branded keyword visibility across all tracked regions. Page one keyword visibility improved broadly, and market share for non-branded terms grew as Sonos expanded its presence beyond branded search—both in the U.S. and internationally.
The three main things we look at in Conductor are keyword visibility, market share, and AI search performance—and we’ve seen improvements across all three since partnering with Conductor.
Sonos emerged as a top-cited brand in AI search
As AI-powered discovery became more prominent, Sonos emerged as one of the most frequently mentioned brands in its category. Conductor’s AI Search Performance insights showed improvements in brand citation and mention rates across AI engines, reinforcing Sonos as a clear leader in AI-driven search experiences.
That visibility has also been reflected at a broader industry level. In the 2026 AEO / GEO Benchmarks Report, Sonos ranks among the top five Consumer Discretionary brands by AI brand mention market share, reinforcing its position as a clear leader for branded, high-intent AI queries.
Having access to all the tools in Conductor has helped guide our strategy and ultimately led us to become one of the most visible brands in our category.
Clear visibility into how Reddit and third-party sources shape AI discovery
With Conductor, Sonos gained concrete visibility into how external sources, particularly Reddit, were shaping AI search results. Understanding which threads, publishers, and conversations were being cited helped the team evaluate sentiment, identify risk areas, and better align SEO, PR, and social efforts to drive increased discoverability.
Historically, it was really difficult to understand how Reddit conversations impacted SEO and AI search. Now we can see exactly which threads are influencing AI results.
Log file analysis surfaced content most frequently crawled by AI bots
Conductor’s log file analysis revealed that AI bots were heavily crawling sections of the Sonos site that had previously received little attention. That insight helped the team identify overlooked content, reassess its role in discovery, and prioritize content updates that supported both SEO and AEO performance.
Log file analysis was a big unlock for us. It showed us exactly which pages AI bots like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity were actually crawling. It surfaced parts of the site we hadn’t paid much attention to, but that AI engines kept coming back to.
