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    Case Study

    Driving A 53% Increase in AI-Referral Traffic for Fractional Jobs

    "Working with Petra has allowed me to focus on what I do best while they drive results in the background. It felt real when customers started saying that they found me on ChatGPT." – Taylor Crane, Founder of Fractional Jobs.

    Fractional Jobs maintains the largest network of senior fractional talent, globally. They enable employers to discover and hire fractional executives, and empower fractional professionals to make the most out of their career. Taylor Crane, founder, started noticing increased referrals from AI search and asked Petra Labs to help turn that momentum into a repeatable acquisition channel.

    After partnering with Petra Labs, Fractional Jobs saw dramatic results within just 3 weeks of the first interventions:

    +53%Lift in AI-referred traffic
    2xChatGPT visibility across key prompt segments

    Here's how we did it, and why AI search is worth chasing.

    Why Fractional Jobs Turned to Petra Labs

    Fractional Jobs noticed AI referral traffic starting to climb and they wanted to double down on this growth channel. At the same time, interest in fractional talent as a market in general was exploding. Many companies were learning about fractional work for the first time and looking for trusted brands to work with.

    But when Taylor tried searching for common queries in his space like "how to hire a fractional CMO" or "where to get a great fractional CFO," Fractional Jobs wasn't being recommended. He needed a partner to uncover exactly what buyers were asking, why models were overlooking FJ, and to just take this off his plate. He knew it was growth that he didn't want to leave on the table, but he also wanted real experts doing the work and driving results independently.

    The Results We Delivered in 3 Weeks

    "In a space with a lot of buzz and noise, it was really refreshing to have a partner that just did the work, and held themselves accountable to results. I've been surprised by how much the Petra team accomplished on their own in just a few weeks." – Taylor Crane, Founder of Fractional Jobs

    By building a custom prompt corpus and a plan tailored to FJ's offering and competitive set, we achieved:

    • AI-Referred Site Traffic: +53% (3 weeks post vs. 3 weeks pre)
    • Google-Referred Site Traffic: +6% in the same span (control comparison)
    • Visibility: 2x overall increase across the tracked search landscape
    • Query-level wins:
      • "Best place to find a fractional executive": 3.8% → 8.8% (+167%)
      • "Best place to find a fractional executive for a startup": 0.3% → 10.0% (+3233%)
      • "Site to hire fractional talent for startups": 4.2% → 33.3% (+693%)

    How We Did It

    We started by building a set of prompts that simulate how FJ's buyers actually search in ChatGPT. We integrated data sources including FJ's site analytics, traditional search data, real AI search datasets, and industry‑specific sources (e.g., LinkedIn hiring conversations) to get as close as possible to true user search.

    From there, we analyzed what content formats and signals LLMs favored for those segments and built a plan. We then produced highly specific content for each targeted prompt, whether that be CFO vs CMO or fractional talent vs fractional execs.

    We were optimizing for AI search, but we also know that Taylor manages a weekly newsletter with 20,000 fractional executives subscribed. Content that Taylor puts out gets read. We studied Taylor's LinkedIn posts, former blogs, and former ads. We learned his tone and hand-wrote content that we knew he'd be proud to publish - not just for GEO, but for his brand.

    Chain of Thought Analysis

    Using Petra's proprietary chain‑of‑thought analysis, we looked beyond the citations appearing in final answers to the sources the model consulted in its intermediate reasoning. This surfaced "arbitrage" domains: low‑SEO, low‑traffic sites with high generative authority that rarely appeared in SERPs but consistently influenced the model's thinking.

    These domains weren't appearing in the final answer, only in the LLM's intermediate thinking steps. If you search on ChatGPT yourself, you'll never see them pop up in the "sources." This means that Petra's customers gain a unique edge in understanding how these models make their decisions.

    We prioritized those domains, handled outreach and negotiation, and earned references to Fractional Jobs where they mattered most. This unlocked immediate visibility gains precisely because the engines were already relying on those sources behind the scenes.

    Why AI Traffic Converts Better

    "Now, about 1-2% of my site traffic comes from ChatGPT referrals, but anecdotally almost a fourth of my actual inbounds tell me that they heard about me from one AI tool or another." – Taylor Crane, Founder of Fractional Jobs
    +35%More time spent on site by ChatGPT visitors vs. Google visitors

    Generative engines pre‑qualify buyers: by the time users click through, they've compared vendors, asked about pricing, and read reviews inside the chat. They arrive deeper in the funnel and more ready to act.

    What's Next? Measure, Iterate, and Expand.

    We're still working with Fractional Jobs today, expanding coverage across personas and verticals, improving rank depth in core prompts, and A/B testing interventions weekly.

    We'll keep measuring, iterating, and doubling down on the tactics that reliably move the needle, and drive new customers.