AdvisorFinder Intelligence grades RIAs' AI visibility

AdvisorFinder, a fintech founded in 2022 by Jason Friedman, a former Merrill Lynch advisor in Virginia, has begun selling RIAs a service that shows them exactly where they stand in AI-generated answers. The product, AdvisorFinder Intelligence, scores an advisor's visibility across ChatGPT, Claude, Google's Gemini and Perplexity. Subscribers receive a Digital Presence Report that grades search visibility, website health, online credibility and local presence, and includes a roadmap for improving the scores. Pricing starts at $99 a month and rises with the number of geographic locations and AI search queries a firm wants tracked.

Friedman argues that AI visibility is becoming a competitive battleground for advisors, and that firms undermine their chances when they describe themselves too broadly. Calling a business "a comprehensive wealth management firm for high-net-worth individuals or families" is generic, he said, and a large language model will not volunteer a generic firm. He calls that one of the largest mistakes he sees across firms of all sizes. The variables an advisor can control, he said, are the inputs: accurate firm data on the website, proper heading structures, schema markup, and consistency between how the firm appears in a directory listing and how an article describes it. Traditional Google search leaned mainly on a firm's own website; AI answers pull from a wider set of sources, including press mentions, directory listings and articles. Even though Google remains dominant, its search results now open with AI overviews powered by Gemini, which Friedman calls the front door for financial advice.

AdvisorFinder has company. Wealthreach builds content and landing pages for advisors trying to improve their AI search presence. The premise of AdvisorFinder's tool is straightforward: a firm a chatbot never cites is a firm a prospect never encounters. For RIAs, the service is a measuring stick at a moment when the channels that bring in new clients are in flux.