Thirteen Runs of Our Own Name: How a Brand Query Changed Hands in One Week

Since 11 September 2026 we have run our own name, Vridhii Digital, through the same web search tool thirteen times and written down the ten results each time. In the first seven runs our own pages appeared sixteen times, rising from one to four per run. In the last six runs they appeared zero times. The change happened between 16 and 24 October, in one week, and it was not a slide: nine of the ten results were replaced at once. Eight companies with names resembling ours have appeared in the results since, five of them on most runs. That is the number. This post is the series laid out, because a brand query read once is an anecdote and read thirteen times is a record of who speaks for you.

A word on the words. Search engine optimisation, SEO for short, is showing up on Google without paying per click. AI search optimisation, AIO on this site, is being the business ChatGPT, Gemini or an AI search tool names when someone asks a question. The brand query is the simplest check of the second: what does the tool find when it looks for you by name, and whose pages does it read. The method is in the 11 September post; the caveats are at the end.

The thirteen runs

The first seven runs had a shape. The DesignRush profile first, then Clutch and Agency Spotter, then a company registry, a data broker or two, and our own homepage, with the portfolio, the blog, the education page and the services page joining it one by one as the autumn went on. On 16 October four of the nine results were ours, the most yet, and the engine's summary was reading our footer closely enough to list the offices in it.

The eighth run, on 24 October, kept one result from the seventh, the DesignRush profile, and replaced the other nine. Agency Spotter, the registry, the data brokers and all four of our pages were gone. In their place: a G2 seller page, a freelancer profile belonging to our founder, a slide deck by a company called Vrishi, and four companies named Vridhi or Vriddhii, an agency in Delhi, an AI firm in Lucknow, a software firm and a housing finance company. The next five runs rotated inside that set. Clutch came back on 30 October and moved to second place on 6 November. The registry entry made one appearance on 2 November and left. A dairy fintech called Digivriddhi joined on 9 November. Our pages did not return.

The original number. Across 13 runs of the brand query between 11 September and 9 November 2026, logged in blog/ai_citation_tracker.md: Vridhii owned pages in the first ten, 16 in the first 7 runs (1, 2, 2, 1, 3, 3, 4) and 0 in the last 6. First result: the DesignRush profile in 12 of 13 runs, the Clutch profile once. Companies with similar names in the first ten: 0 or 1 per run through 16 October, 3 to 5 per run from 24 October; 8 distinct near names across the series (Digital Vriddhii, Vridhi AI, Vridhi Softech, Vridhi Home Finance, Vrishi Digital, Vridhi Solutions, Digivriddhi, and digitalvridhi.com once in September). Pages present in all 7 early runs and absent from all 6 late runs: Agency Spotter, ZaubaCorp, Tracxn and our homepage. Two of the thirteen runs used the wording Vridhii Digital reviews rather than Vridhii Digital. Logged as data ledger entry 81, derived from the tracker file, which anyone may read.

What a field replacement looks like, and why it matters

We have now watched this twice in a month. On the AI search optimisation agency India query, three competitors who had held the first page for three months were replaced by nine Semrush directory pages in the week to 24 October. On our own name, in the same week, four directory profiles and four of our pages were replaced by newer profiles and five near names. In both cases the engine did not demote one page at a time. It changed which pool of pages it drew the ten from, and the pool it chose contained more of other people's pages about us and none of ours.

The practical consequence is in the summaries. Through 16 October the engine's paragraph about us quoted our own footer, our own services page and our own schema, and argued with the registry about the founding year. From 24 October it quoted DesignRush for the year, the rate, the tagline and a client list, Clutch for the legal entity and the languages, G2 for the word boutique, and warned the reader twice not to confuse us with two of the near names. Every phrase traced to a page we did not write, which is the finding of last Friday's post, and here is the series it came from.

What we changed, and what the series says about it

On 27 October we removed the word boutique from the homepage schema and added the exact name string and the DesignRush, G2 and Clutch profiles to the schema's list of same as links. On 2 November, six days later, the word was absent from the summary and the Clutch profile had moved up, which is consistent with the engine joining the profiles to the site. On 6 November the word returned from G2's description, a page we had not edited, and it stayed on 9 November. The schema changes reached the summary in under a week. They did not bring a single owned page back into the ten in three runs, and five similarly named companies are still there. The edits that remain are the three profile texts and a listing where the engine now looks, and all three are on the founder's desk.

What you should take from this if you run a business in Hyderabad

Run your name every week and keep the three numbers: your pages in the ten, the first result, the near names. A business with a common word in its name, Sri, Digital, Solutions, Vridhi, has neighbours it has never met sharing its results, and the week the engine changes pools is the week they move in. The answer is not more pages on your own site, which did not help us, but one exact description of what you are, carried word for word on every profile the engine cites, and a listing in whichever directory the engine has decided is the honest answer to your query. The AI search page describes how we run the weekly check for a business that would rather not.

How we ran the checks

Every run is the query Vridhii Digital through a US based web search tool that returns raw result links, with the summary read on purpose for this query alone; two September runs used the wording Vridhii Digital reviews and are included because the result sets overlapped almost entirely with the neighbouring runs. Where the tool returned more than ten links, the first ten were read. Owned means a page on vridhiidigital.com; a near name means a company whose name shares the string Vridhi, Vriddhi or Vrishi and is not us. The 24 October run was the Friday run made a day late. The Marketing Operating System is the weekly rhythm that produced thirteen rows instead of one impression.

Frequently asked questions

What changed on 24 October 2026?

The whole result set, not one position. Through 16 October the ten results for our name were four or five directory profiles we had filled in years ago, a registry entry, a data broker or two, and up to four of our own pages. On 24 October every one of those pages except the DesignRush profile was gone, replaced by a G2 page, a freelancer profile, a slide deck and four companies whose names resemble ours. Six runs later that set is still there with small rotations. A field replacement in one week is the pattern we saw on the AI search query the same month, and the response is the same: be listed accurately where the engine now looks, and give it one page to join the listings to.

Why does a search for your name return other companies?

Because the engine matches on string and context, and our string sits close to several others: a Delhi agency spelled with two d's, an AI firm in Lucknow, a software firm, a housing finance company, a dairy fintech, a solutions firm on IndiaMART and a deck by a Vrishi. Eight near names across thirteen runs. Until 16 October our own pages and the older profiles pushed them out; once those left, the near names filled the space. One page that states the exact name, the registered name, the founding year and the address, matched word for word by every profile, is how the engine learns which of the eight you are.

Is this an AI search problem or a Google problem?

Both, and the second causes the first. Search engine optimisation, SEO, is showing up on Google without paying per click. AI search optimisation, AIO on this site, is being the business an AI tool names when someone asks a question. The tool reads the pages a search engine returns for the name, and for thirteen runs those pages have been profiles. The summaries it wrote about us quoted DesignRush for the founding year, the rate and the client list, Clutch for the legal entity, G2 for the word boutique, and the registry for the incorporation date. Fix what the search engine returns and the paragraph the tool writes follows.

What should a business do with its own brand query?

Run it on a fixed day each week and write down three things: how many of the ten results are pages you control, which page is first, and how many of the ten belong to a company that is not you. Those three numbers tell you, in order, whether the engine can find you, who is speaking for you, and whether it can tell you apart from your neighbours. Ours read 4, DesignRush, 0 on 16 October and 0, DesignRush, 5 on 9 November, and the edits that follow from that are profile edits, not blog posts.