---
title: 'How We Recovered 62% Missing AI Recommendation Share for Montclair Mud Clay Studio'
subtitle: 'A deep-dive AI audit across Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity revealed critical zero-mention leakage in 4 surrounding sub-cities. See how structured JSON-LD entity injection restored recommendation dominance.'
date: '2026-08-10'
author: 'Spotlight Links Research'
categories:
  - Case Studies
---

## Case Study Overview

**Montclair Mud Clay Studio** is a premier pottery studio located in Montclair, NJ. Despite holding strong Google Business Profile ratings, an initial Spotlight Links AI Search Audit revealed severe visibility leakage across conversational search engines.

- Baseline AI Rec Rate: **28.5%**
- Post-Optimization Rec Rate: **90.5%**
- Spotlight Links Visibility Score: **9.1 / 10**

## The Diagnosis: Zero-Mention Sub-City Leakage

When consumers asked Gemini or Perplexity: _"Where can I take adult pottery classes near Upper Montclair or Bloomfield?"_, the AI assistants defaulted to recommending studios located 15 miles away. The studio was completely invisible in 4 out of 6 key local search zones.

## The Solution: Spotlight Links Knowledge Base Injection

1. Synthesized a comprehensive 92-prompt entity grid covering classes, workshops, private events, and wheel-throwing techniques.
2. Injected full schema markup for local entity grounding.
3. Probed performance across 3 repeats per prompt to verify statistical confidence using Wilson score bounds.

Within 14 days of entity grounding, Montclair Mud Clay Studio captured a **90.5% recommendation rate** across Google Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.