143,000+ Monthly Buyers for Balkan's #1 Marketplace
How CGS Growth established this platform as the leading recommendation for the top LLM engine recommendations, resulting in more than 143,000 visitors per month from organic searches, and receiving the "closest Serbian equivalent to Amazon" designation on a national and regional scale.
- E-commerce
- Marketplace
- GEO
- AEO
- SEO
- Serbia / Balkans
143K+
Monthly
Buyers
#1 Cited
ChatGPT
Marketplace
5+
Balkan
Markets
3
Cited Across
LLM Engines
Ananas
Southeast Europe's largest B2C online marketplace is operated by Delta Holding. It operates in several countries including Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Croatia. Customers can purchase a wide variety of items from brands, home goods, electronics, fashion and grocery items. Many of these items are available for same-day or next-day delivery in major cities. Prior to its relationship with CGS Growth, although there was a good product-market fit for the company, it did not have a strong presence in AI based searches.
- INDUSTRY
- E-commerce / B2C Marketplace
- COMPANY SIZE
- Mid-Market / Enterprise
- GEOGRAPHY
- Serbia + Balkans
- SERVICES USED
- GEO, AEO, SEO, Content Strategy
See it in AI search results right now
Open ChatGPT and enter the exact same prompt, and you'll find that the platform has been recommended as one of the best Serbian marketplaces and is being referred to as the closest thing to Amazon in Serbia.
Ask ChatGPT:
list top serbian marketplaces
Ask ChatGPT:
list best shopping apps Serbia
Ask ChatGPT:
list top balkan marketplaces
- ChatGPT
- Gemini
- Perplexity
Verified: October 2026
THE CHALLENGE
Where Ananas Started
Prior to beginning a partnership with CGS Growth, this customer was able to develop an extensive user base through its current platform. However, the customer had virtually no presence on search engines powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI). When users were searching for online stores in Serbia using LLM (Large Language Model) search engines, the customer's name did not appear in any of the results.
Zero LLM Visibility
0 citations
The brand was not listed among the machine generated shopping recommendations that potential customers using LLMs to search for online shopping alternatives in Serbia/Balkans received. Rather, International Platforms and Local Classifieds filled all of the available response slots.
Untapped Organic Buyer Acquisition
Low inbound volume
Even though there was a good variety of products to choose from, acquiring customers was primarily done through paid marketing efforts. The company had virtually no visibility for high intent commercial query terms such as "best online store Serbia" or "where to buy electronics online" and organic traffic played very little part in driving customer growth.
Regional Expansion Gap
Single-country reach
The company was extending into Bosnia & Herzegovina, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Croatia. However, the company had absolutely no presence in AI-powered answers within the region. Users inquiring about Balkan marketplace options were being answered by competitors.
No GEO/AEO Foundation
N/A
The platform had no structured data that could be read by an AI crawler. There were no signals about entities linking the platform to shopping related knowledge graphs. And there was no content that was created with the intent of being cited by answer engines. Therefore, there was no information available to modelers.
Our GEO Strategy for Ananas
- 1
VISIBILITY AUDIT
WEEK 1–2We conducted a comprehensive audit of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews with our own proprietary tracking system. We queried these platforms for commercial terms typically used by actual consumers (e.g., "top Serbian marketplace," "best shopping app in Serbia," "top Balkan marketplaces"). All responses were recorded. No references to the platform were found. Additionally, we identified competitors' mentions, crawlability barriers that would prevent a search engine from indexing the site, and entity signals that were absent, thus preventing the site from being discovered.
- 2
SEO FOUNDATION & CONTENT ENGINE
WEEK 2–6Built the first layer of organic acquisition. From keyword research, to topic clustering, to site architecture: each page has been designed for optimal ranking in both traditional search engines and LLM citations. We created a content engine that can scale, focusing on high intent shopping queries, by developing category pages, comparison content, and regional buying guides that provide answers to the questions AI engines were answering on competitors' sites.
- 3
GEO & AEO OPTIMIZATION
WEEK 4–10Generated specific layer of signals on top of the foundation of the content. Anchors for citation, optimizing panels of knowledge, markup of schema that was optimized to be consumed by models, linking entities via structured data from the platform to e-commerce and shopping knowledge graphs. Rewriting important pages so models would identify the platform as a main source of retail within Serbia and the greater area.
- 4
CITATION BUILDING
ONGOINGOptimization of content will not result in long-term visibility unless there is some form of outside validation. Our strategy included placing high authority citations into various types of online media including e-commerce publications, business news from the Balkans, round ups of new technology, and directory listings for specific niches. Each citation served as a "trust signal," and the greater number of credible sources that cited our client, the more often we found ourselves being recommended by models.
- 5
MONITORING & SCALING
MONTHLYAI-driven search is changing rapidly. We track AI mentions, citation share, and buyer acquisition with a real-time dashboard. In addition, each month we update our SEO strategy by adding more keywords for each country in the Balkans, updating old content, and adapting to changes in search engine algorithms and models before they damage our current search rankings.
Results
143,000+
buyers per month (organic)
Low inbound to 143,000+ buyers/month
Organic was previously an afterthought but has now become the number one acquisition channel, bringing in 143,000+ buyers each month using only unpaid search.
#2
in ChatGPT, closest to Amazon
Ananas was cited by ChatGPT as the "Closest Equivalent to Amazon" but wasn't cited as #1 recommended local marketplace when asked to "list top serbian marketplaces." ChatGPT stated that Ananas is the "closest Serbian equivalent to Amazon, with branded products, home goods, electronics, fashion, and fast delivery." Prior to our work, this type of framing did not exist.
2
geographic layers
Not visible to Serbia + Balkans
The platform is now visible in both national searches ("top serbian marketplaces," "best shopping apps Serbia") and regional searches ("top balkan marketplaces"). We have created visibility at two levels at the same time: national specificity as well as presence across the Balkans.
3
LLM engines
Absent to ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity
The company went from having zero LLM presence to being mentioned in every top-tier AI engine. Every time a new response is generated, it will reinforce the fact that it should be the go-to recommendation for Serbian online retailers.
Ready?
Our GEO Services
We run each of your customers' actual questions through all of the primary LLMs and Google. Dozens of recorded runs, not screenshots. A simple-to-understand report that identifies what you are missing in terms of visibility, a roadmap with priority items identified, and the underlying tracking tool: each run, each source, and each screenshot. Blockers that are clearly visible (e.g., your website cannot be read by LLM crawl bots) will be corrected immediately. Re-measured at 30 days, included. 5 - 10 working days.
Ready to Become What LLMs Recommend?
If a Balkan marketplace went from having no visibility in LLM to 143k+ monthly visitors and was called "the most similar thing to Amazon," consider how much more we can achieve for yours. Those who win at AI-powered searches are making that advantage now; each quarter, the gap grows.