AI Search Is Changing How Customers Find You. Here's What to Do About It

More and more buyers ask an AI assistant before they ever open a website: "Who's the best accountant for a small online shop?" or "Which roofing company in Manchester has good reviews?" The AI answers with a short list of names. Being one of those names is the new page one.

Traditional SEO still matters

AI Overviews and most AI assistants lean heavily on pages that are already indexed, trusted and clearly written. If Google can't crawl or understand your site, AI tools usually can't either. AI SEO builds on a solid SEO foundation rather than replacing it.

What AI engines look for

• Clear answers. Short, direct explanations are easier to quote than long, vague paragraphs.
• A consistent brand. Your name, services and locations should match across your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and directories.
• Third-party mentions. Reviews, industry publications, podcasts and forum discussions all signal that real people trust you.
• Technical access. Pages that only load with heavy JavaScript, or that block crawlers, are harder for AI systems to read.

Five practical steps

1. Write a short FAQ on each service page that answers the questions customers actually ask.
2. Start each important page with a one or two sentence summary of what you do, for whom and where.
3. Add structured data (Organization, Service, FAQ and LocalBusiness where relevant).
4. Keep your Google Business Profile complete and active, because AI answers for local questions draw on it.
5. Earn mentions: contribute expert quotes, get listed in respected industry directories and ask happy clients for reviews.

How to measure it

AI answers change from one question to the next, so a single screenshot proves very little. Pick a fixed list of questions your buyers ask, check them regularly in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google, and track how often your business is mentioned or linked over time.

The honest part

Nobody can guarantee your business will appear in an AI answer. What you can do is give AI systems every reason to trust and understand you. The businesses that start now will be the familiar names when these tools become the default way people search.