How We Recovered 62% Missing AI Recommendation Share for Montclair Mud Clay Studio
A deep-dive AI audit across Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity revealed critical zero-mention leakage in 4 surrounding sub-cities. See how structured JSON-LD entity injection restored recommendation dominance.
Spotlight Links Research · August 10, 2026 · 1 min read
Case Study Overview
Montclair Mud Clay Studio is a premier pottery studio located in Montclair, NJ. Despite holding strong Google Business Profile ratings, an initial Spotlight Links AI Search Audit revealed severe visibility leakage across conversational search engines.
- Baseline AI Rec Rate: 28.5%
- Post-Optimization Rec Rate: 90.5%
- Spotlight Links Visibility Score: 9.1 / 10
The Diagnosis: Zero-Mention Sub-City Leakage
When consumers asked Gemini or Perplexity: "Where can I take adult pottery classes near Upper Montclair or Bloomfield?", the AI assistants defaulted to recommending studios located 15 miles away. The studio was completely invisible in 4 out of 6 key local search zones.
The Solution: Spotlight Links Knowledge Base Injection
- Synthesized a comprehensive 92-prompt entity grid covering classes, workshops, private events, and wheel-throwing techniques.
- Injected full schema markup for local entity grounding.
- Probed performance across 3 repeats per prompt to verify statistical confidence using Wilson score bounds.
Within 14 days of entity grounding, Montclair Mud Clay Studio captured a 90.5% recommendation rate across Google Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.