Chime’s Director of Organic Growth, Gisele Goes, on how AI search is reshaping discovery—and how the team is building for what’s next.
To understand what’s gone into Chime’s success in AI search, we sat down with Gisele Goes, Director of Organic Growth. Keep reading to hear how Chime’s channel-based search strategy is adapting to AI search—and what’s next as AI-driven discovery continues to evolve.
Q: How does Chime approach AI search visibility as part of its broader marketing and communications strategy?
We treat AI search as an extension of our organic growth strategy, right alongside Google and YouTube.
The way people search has changed. They’re not just typing into Google anymore; they’re asking questions in ChatGPT, getting recommendations in Gemini, and searching on social platforms.
That shift pushed us to move from optimizing for a single algorithm to building visibility across the entire search ecosystem. What performs well on Google often influences AI answers, and the strength of our YouTube content can shape how Chime shows up in those results.
So instead of chasing one channel, we focus on how they connect and make Chime more visible across both traditional and emerging search engines.
Q: What does it mean for Chime to be the most visible neobank across AI search platforms?
It’s a big validation of how we’ve been building. AI search is still early, and because we started optimizing for it before most brands, we’re showing up where it matters, above both big banks and other fintechs.
Traditional SEO can take years to unseat incumbents with decades of authority. AI search changes that dynamic—it rewards clarity, consistency, and credibility across platforms, not just backlink history.
This visibility shows our approach is working, supported by the work across growth, brand, and content. The way we structure our content, explain our products, and show up across channels helps these platforms understand Chime and make us visible when it matters.
Q: How has the rise of AI-driven search changed your approach to SEO and content?
AI search is shifting how we think about content. SEO has always valued clarity and helpful information, but AI platforms add another layer. They look for stronger associations between a brand and the question someone is asking and how well a product fits that context and whether it meaningfully helps with the problem someone is trying to solve.
That shift has pushed us to lean further into positioning our products and offerings within real questions and needs. Instead of creating more broad, educational content, we focus on showing how Chime fits into the situations people are navigating. This helps AI tools understand where we belong in the conversation and positions us to show up when people are looking for answers.
And as AI search becomes more personalized, it reinforces how important it is to stay anchored in our core audience. What people see depends more and more on their history and behavior, so our content has to reflect their needs, language, and motivations.
Q: How has your audience behavior shifted with the rise of AI search?
We’re now seeing members who first discovered Chime through ChatGPT, and we built a model to attribute those signups. What’s interesting is how similar they look to our organic search audience—they’re highly engaged, valuable members with strong intent.
The shift we’re seeing is really about timing. In the past, people used Google to research and compare before deciding. Now, that discovery and education are happening inside ChatGPT. By the time they reach us, they already know who we are and what we offer.
Trust is just being built earlier in the journey, which changes how we show up for future members. Our role isn’t limited to driving clicks. We also help shape what people learn about Chime before they ever land on our site.
Q: Let’s get meta about this. How is your team using AI to optimize for AI search?
We use AI to scale smarter, not to replace people. We brought in AirOps to power our content workflows, running more than a hundred AI-driven steps from keyword discovery to briefing and optimization, with editors ensuring every piece meets our quality bar.
Our first focus was re-engineering our content library for how LLMs read and cite information, which is very different from Google. That work tripled our AI citations and increased content velocity by 70 percent.
But the real unlock is the team. They built the sprint model long before AI entered the picture, so when the tools arrived, they knew exactly how to train them, test them, and keep standards high. The technology works because the team does. That’s the difference.
Q: What’s next for Chime in this space?
What’s next is staying sharp as AI reshapes how people discover and evaluate brands. These tools are becoming part of how people learn, compare, and make decisions, and they open up new ways for people to discover Chime. We want to show up with intention in those interactions.
That takes tight coordination across product, brand, and marketing so what we build, what we say, and what people find all reinforce the same story. When that alignment is strong, growth follows.
