Ecommerce
From Social Proof to Training Data: How Reviews Shape LLM Narratives
November 6, 2025
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7 min read
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A brand doesn't just get found by AI anymore - it gets described by it. According to Jordan Brannon, President & COO at Coalition Technologies, that shift changes the question brands need to be asking. It's no longer just "can customers find us," but "what case is the wider web letting AI build about us."
In a live conversation with REVIEWS.io’s very own Luke Creger and Cole Prentice, Jordan walked through why AI systems actively look for the counterargument to a brand's own claims, why scrubbing every negative review can backfire, and what happens when a brand's source coverage is too thin to balance out one loud complaint.
Watch the full recording below, or read on for the key takeaways.
Being visible and being described accurately are two different problems. AI answers don't just decide whether a brand appears - they actively summarise it, compare it with competitors, and explain its strengths and perceived weaknesses. Jordan pointed out that a brand can appear in an answer and still be presented in a way that doesn't reflect how it wants to be seen, because the summary is built from sources the brand doesn't control.
AI systems deliberately go looking for the negative case, not just the positive one. Jordan explained that early AI tools tended to over-praise brands, which made them unreliable for genuine comparison. Large language models have since started running a kind of supplemental search specifically for the counterpoint - the negative review, the complaint thread, the reason someone might not buy. The result: a brand can have a hundred positive reviews and still have a single negative one surface in the answer, simply because the system went looking for it.
Trying to erase every negative review is more likely to hurt trust than help it. Jordan was blunt on this point - perfect ratings can look suspicious, and people tend to distrust reviews that seem too polished. His advice: address valid complaints directly, and let a healthy mix of genuine feedback, including some negative, build credibility rather than undermine it.
When a brand's source coverage is thin, one loud signal can end up defining it. Jordan's framing: if there isn't enough genuine customer evidence spread across reviews, forums and third-party sites, a single Reddit thread or outdated complaint can get disproportionate weight in how AI describes the brand - not because it's representative, but because there's nothing else to balance it against.
Measuring AI visibility means tracking patterns across many sources, not chasing one score. Different AI platforms pull from different sources and measure differently, and those sources shift over time. Jordan described Coalition combining several tracking tools with manual, human-reviewed audits to build a clearer picture - treating it as one input alongside existing traffic and commercial reporting, rather than a single definitive number.
What distinguished Jordan's session was the reframing of AI visibility as fundamentally a reputation exercise, not only a search one. His argument wasn't that brands have lost control of their story - it's that the story is now built collaboratively, from sources a brand doesn't fully own. The clearest illustration was his point about volume versus weight: a hundred positive reviews don't guarantee a negative one stays buried, because AI systems are specifically built to surface a counterpoint. That reframes the task for eCommerce teams - the goal isn't to erase criticism, but to make sure there's enough genuine, current evidence elsewhere that one complaint doesn't get to define the whole picture.
This roundup is one part of REVIEWS.io's wider look at what it takes to get recommended by AI. Jordan's full answer is one of five featured across five leading eCommerce agencies in Get recommended by AI - unlock all five agencies' answers.
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Coalition Technologies is a full-service eCommerce and digital agency with deep expertise across SEO/GEO, digital marketing and web development, supporting high-growth eCommerce brands. Speaker: Jordan Brannon, President & COO.
