Why Gemini Matters for CMOs
Gemini reaches users across Google Search, Workspace and the Gemini app. When those buyers ask it which vendor to use, it answers from content Googlebot crawls, subject to your Google-Extended setting for Gemini grounding, so your brand is either in that answer or a competitor is. For a CMO that turns Gemini into a share-of-voice channel you can track alongside organic and paid, not a technical detail to delegate.
The Gemini Mistake to Avoid
Treating Google-Extended as a crawler. It is a robots.txt token with no user agent of its own: disallowing it opts content out of Gemini training and grounding, while a Googlebot block removes pages from Google Search and Gemini alike.
Action Items for CMOs
Write 20–30 buying-intent prompts your customers would ask Gemini and record which brands it names
Report Gemini share of answers next to organic and paid share of voice every quarter
Have your web team confirm the basics: Allow Googlebot in robots.txt
Brief content owners on the prompts where Gemini names competitors but not you
Set a quarterly target for brand mentions on your priority Gemini prompts
What CMOs Should Track in Gemini
Share of your Gemini prompt set that mentions your brand
Your position when Gemini names several vendors
Accuracy of how Gemini describes your positioning and pricing
Competitors Gemini names where you don't appear
Frequently Asked Questions
How should a CMO measure Gemini visibility?
Keep a fixed set of buying-intent prompts, run them in Gemini on a schedule, and log how often your brand is named, where it sits among named vendors, and whether the description is accurate. A stable prompt set is what makes quarter-over-quarter changes meaningful.
What decides whether Gemini can mention our brand at all?
Gemini has no separate crawler: Googlebot does the crawling, and the Google-Extended robots.txt token (not a separate user agent) controls whether that content is used for Gemini training and grounding without affecting Google Search. Pages a user hands to Gemini are fetched by Google's user-triggered fetchers, which generally ignore robots.txt. Beyond access, Gemini can only repeat what your public pages state clearly, so a vague positioning page limits what it can say about you.
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