How Lake.com 5x’ed Branded Traffic by Tapping Into AI Search Behavior

Lake.com, a vacation rental platform specializing in lakefront and waterfront stays, is proving that deep focus beats broad scale, especially when AI search is involved.

In just a few weeks of working with Profound, Lake.com transformed its content strategy, improved its AI visibility, and saw a 5x spike in branded organic traffic during peak season.

Here’s how they did it and what other travel brands can learn.

“

We’ve always known the vacation planning journey breaks into three micro-moments: ‘I want to know, I want to go, I want to do.’ Profound gave us the visibility to see that pattern happening in AI search too.

”

David Ciccarelli, Founder and CEO of Lake.com

A focused alternative to Airbnb

Lake.com was built around a simple observation: most vacation rental platforms ignore the real experience of staying by the water.

The team behind Lake.com noticed a pattern. Many lakefront homes sat empty most of the year, despite clear demand from travelers looking to escape cities for rural, drive-to destinations. Rather than competing with Airbnb and Vrbo on quantity, they built a platform that focused deeply on one type of traveler: the outdoor traveller with an affinity for being by the water.

Key differentiators:

• Properties within 15 minutes of water (walk, drive, or hike)
• Rich amenity data: kayaks, boat rentals, life jackets
• Designed around “drive-to” rural travel, which accounts for 50% of all vacation rentals
• Long-term vision to expand into events and experiences, not just lodging

Why Lake turned to Profound

As AI becomes the first touchpoint for vacation planning, Lake.com wanted visibility into how real people search across tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews.

Their goals:

• Validate how users search for lake travel across “want to know, want to go, want to do” moments
• Benchmark their visibility vs. larger platforms
• Identify emerging content opportunities from real conversation trends

Profound helped Lake.com map this AI-driven journey using Conversation Explorer and Answer Engine Insights.

Within days, Lake’s team had a clear picture of how their brand was surfacing in AI results and, more importantly, where it wasn’t.

The results

By aligning content strategy with real prompt data, Lake.com drove significant gains:

• Unbranded terms: Now visible 30+% of the time
• Lake house-specific terms: ~50% visibility across key prompts
• Branded Organic traffic: Increased 5x leading into July 4 compared to the same period last year

These improvements started by understanding what people were asking for in ChatGPT and creating content for it.

“

We weren't sure if we could beat Airbnb, but we knew we needed to be in the consideration set. Profound helped us see where we stood — and where we could win.

”

David Ciccarelli, Founder and CEO of Lake.com

How they did it: from micro-moments to macro wins

Lake.com focused on three high-intent stages of vacation planning:

1. “I want to know” — Researching destinations, events, lakes, and inspiration
2. “I want to go” — Comparing vacation rentals and amenities
3. “I want to do” — Finding activities post-booking, like boat shows or local festivals

Using Conversation Explorer, the Lake team uncovered prompt patterns aligned with each of these phases — then created content to match.

They introduced:

• Event-driven articles tied to fishing tournaments, music festivals, and regattas

• Destination content for “drive-to” lakes within 2 hours of major cities
• Evergreen guides that didn’t require rebuilding URLs or re-earning SEO authority each year

They also spotted gaps in their coverage. Terms like “summer travel,” “family vacation ideas,” and “outdoor activities near water” were trending — but underrepresented on their site. That changed fast.

“Profound helped us stop thinking only about the booking and start thinking about the entire journey: discovery, decision, and the stay itself.”

What’s next: scaling insight into action

Lake.com is now adopting Actions, the latest feature in Profound, to generate deeply researched content briefs based on their AI footprint. This allows their team to prioritize topics where demand is clear — and where Lake is already emerging in AI search results.

Next milestones:

• Build seasonal content for key booking periods (Memorial Day, July 4, Labor Day)
• Expand coverage of semantically related topics like hiking, camping, and rural events
• Further scale content production

Why it matters

As AI tools become default travel advisors, platforms like Lake.com can’t just optimize for Google clicks. They need to earn presence inside the answer itself.

That’s where Profound delivers value; by exposing the real questions users ask and making it actionable.

“

For unbranded lake house terms, we’re now showing up 50% of the time even against major players like Vrbo and Expedia.

”

David Ciccarelli, Founder and CEO of Lake.com