Patrick O'Donnell
Cofounder and CTO
Gumshoe.ai
Patrick O'Donnell is cofounder and CTO of Gumshoe.ai, the AI visibility company that tracks how models recommend brands. He co-led the volunteer AI recommendation consistency study with Rand Fishkin, publishing methodology notes and raw data that challenged rank-style AI tracking, including in the category his own company sells.
Co-founding Gumshoe.ai
O'Donnell cofounded Gumshoe.ai as a technical cofounder and CTO focused on measuring how AI systems recommend brands and products. The product sits in the new AI visibility category: instead of only watching classic rankings, teams watch whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, and related surfaces name them when buyers ask for recommendations.
The Consistency Study with Rand Fishkin
With Rand Fishkin, O'Donnell co-led a volunteer-driven project that ran thousands of recommendation prompts across major AI surfaces. The study's low repeat rate for identical brand lists forced a measurement reset: visibility in AI answers had to be discussed as a distribution across runs, not a single stable rank you can screenshot once a week.
The pair published methodology notes and raw data on the study's public data site.
Reception of the Study
The work drew extra attention because Gumshoe sells AI tracking tools, and the findings undercut rank-style tracking. Hundreds of volunteers ran the prompts, and SparkToro published a write-up on AI recommendation inconsistency.