At Home is one of the largest home decor and furnishings retailers in the United States, known for a wide assortment across rugs, patio furniture, seasonal decor, and accent furniture. The brand sells through its nationwide store footprint and at athome.com. It has built a loyal following among shoppers who furnish and refresh their homes with quality pieces at an exceptional value.
At Home began working with Evertune to establish how often AI models recommended the brand across its core retail categories and to determine whether new content was influencing those answers. The six-month pilot started with broad measurement across home decor, rugs, patio furniture, wall decor, and seasonal categories. As the work progressed, the team moved into more focused subcategories, published citation-generating net new content, and identified a separate brand-reputation problem caused by outdated information and store-closure coverage. By July, At Home ranked #5 among home decor brands in ChatGPT, up from #10 at the January baseline.
Challenge 1: Determining whether new content was changing AI recommendations
At Home entered with an active content plan, particularly around rugs, but needed a reliable way to see whether that work was being found and used by AI models. Broad category scores alone could not explain which topics, pages, or formats were contributing. Early calls therefore focused on establishing the right tracker set, separating broad retailer questions from more specific shopping needs, and understanding how foundational and live-search models responded differently to new information.
Evertune helped the team move from broad measurement into subcategory analysis, beginning with Area Rugs and more specific needs such as high-traffic, pet-friendly, and indoor-outdoor rugs. At Home published more than 30 focused content pieces, removed crawler barriers, and used citation data to see which pages were being reused in AI answers. New rug guides generated thousands of new citations.
Evertune helped At Home identify where owned content could and could not carry the result. Focused pages performed best when shopper questions closely matched the content. For broad questions such as where to buy a rug, more than 80% of citations came from third-party publishers, exposing an earned-media gap that content on athome.com alone could not resolve.
Challenge 2: Strengthening the Brand Narrative
At Home found that outdated and inaccurate information was influencing how search engines and AI platforms described the company. Older articles and outdated store coverage information were still appearing prominently in responses about the brand’s status.
The issue emerged as the team analyzed brand sentiment, citation patterns, and the questions consumers were asking. Evertune’s source-level reporting revealed which articles and domains were shaping AI-generated answers, while search data showed increased interest in questions related to store status and whether At Home remained open in regional areas.
These findings gave At Home and their PR team a clear and coordinated plan. The team refreshed FAQs, store information, and official brand messaging; began addressing inaccurate Wikipedia and third-party content; and used Evertune data to prioritize publisher outreach. Consumer PR supporting new collections, seasonal launches, and ongoing company activity also created stronger signals that At Home was open, active, and continuing to serve customers.
“Outdated store-closure coverage was quietly shaping how AI platforms described us. Once we could see which sources were driving that narrative, we had a clear, coordinated plan to correct it — and the sentiment shift proved it worked."
Mathew Vermilyer, Sr. Director of Ecommerce, At Home
The strategy produced encouraging results across search and AI visibility. At Home experienced growth in organic impressions and keyword rankings, helping more consumers find accurate and current information about the brand. Sentiment across the broader Home Décor report also improved from -9 to +12, demonstrating meaningful progress and establishing a strong foundation for continued visibility, consumer confidence, and brand growth.
Challenge 3: Building seasonal visibility before peak demand
Seasonality was part of the measurement plan from the beginning. In February, At Home was already discussing when to increase the Halloween tracker cadence and how to evaluate content ahead of its spring and fall promotions. The initial Halloween Decor visibility score was 17% in ChatGPT, giving the team a baseline well before peak demand.
As the season approached, At Home shifted most of its content attention toward Halloween while maintaining a smaller cadence for rugs and patio. Evertune helped the team identify the attributes already working for the brand, including selection, value, and availability, and the sources most likely to influence seasonal recommendations. The reporting also surfaced a new risk: AI models sometimes interpreted products selling out quickly as an availability concern, giving the team a specific message to investigate.
By July, Halloween Decor visibility had doubled from 17% to 35% in ChatGPT and reached 54% in Google AI Mode. The timing gives At Home a stronger position heading into its most important seasonal window, while the continued measurement provides a way to see whether that momentum holds through peak season.
"Building our Halloween visibility months ahead of peak season, rather than reacting to it, is a different way of operating. Doubling our score before the season even started gives us a real head start this year."
Mathew Vermilyer, Sr. Director of Ecommerce, At Home
Results
- Moved from #10 to #5 among home decor brands in ChatGPT.
- Average Home Decor visibility increased from 36% during the initial measurement and build phase to 63% after the first wave of new content went live.
- Visibility Score for topics such as Price rose from 38% to 84%, Convenience from 39% to 68%, and Online Presence from 7% to 39%, showing how AI's perception of At Home changed during the engagement.
- New rug guides generated thousands of new citations and continued appearing as sources months after publication; Halloween Decor visibility doubled to 35% in ChatGPT and reached 54% in Google AI Mode.
- Home Decor sentiment improved from -9 to +12 (on a range of -100 to +100).
Looking ahead
At Home is continuing the program with a clearer division of responsibility across its teams and partners. Owned content will remain focused on specific categories and seasonal needs where initial results showed durable citations. PR and affiliate outreach will address the third-party sources that shape broad retailer recommendations and brand-status answers. Evertune will continue measuring which sources influence AI responses, whether the closure narrative changes, and where subcategory, seasonal, local, and additional-model coverage can guide the next decision. The result is a more practical operating model: use monthly data to decide what to publish, correct, or pitch, and evaluate performance across a longer horizon.
Evertune is the first Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) platform built to explore, measure, act and advertise across the entire AI customer journey, connecting brands directly to ChatGPT Ads and programmatic advertising partners like The Trade Desk and Index Exchange. Where most GEO tools sample each prompt once a day, Evertune samples every prompt 100 times per model across 11+ AI models, delivering statistically significant visibility data at half the cost of competing platforms. Evertune's agents do the work for you: a prompt agent mines over 150 million real user conversations to find the exact questions buyers ask, an insights agent tells you what to do next each week, and an ads agent builds a complete ChatGPT campaign around your visibility gaps. From there, Evertune closes the loop with website optimization, data-driven content creation, source-level influence mapping and paid activation through affiliate and programmatic AI retargeting partners. Founded by the team that pioneered programmatic advertising at The Trade Desk, now building the next marketing channel.
