Search is changing. Google still dominates but ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews are now answering millions of queries directly. The good news: the fundamentals that make you rank also make you get cited. Good SEO is good GEO.
AI search is a fundamentally different way of answering questions online. Understanding what it is and how it works is the first step to knowing how to be visible in it.
Traditional search engines like Google work by ranking. When you type a query, Google crawls billions of web pages, evaluates thousands of signals and returns a ranked list of links it believes are most relevant. You click a result, visit a website and find your answer there. Google is fundamentally a directory that points you to other places.
AI search works by answering. When you ask an AI tool a question, a large language model (LLM) reads and understands your query, draws on what it has been trained on and in many cases retrieves live web content, then generates a direct answer in its own words. You get the answer immediately, without necessarily clicking through to any website at all.
The implications for businesses are significant. In traditional search, appearing at position 1 means you get clicked. In AI search, appearing in the answer means you get cited as a source, mentioned by name, or recommended directly within the generated response. There is no ranking ladder. You are either part of the answer or you are not.
This does not mean traditional SEO is obsolete. Google still handles the vast majority of searches and AI tools themselves rely heavily on the web's existing authority signals to decide which sources to cite. But businesses that only optimise for Google are leaving an increasingly significant channel unaddressed.
AI search is not one tool. It is a growing ecosystem of platforms, each with different audiences, use cases and ways of retrieving and presenting information. Your business needs to be visible across all of them.
The most widely used AI tool in the world with over 200 million weekly active users. ChatGPT answers questions, provides recommendations and increasingly searches the live web when given access to its browsing tool. For most businesses, ChatGPT is the highest-priority AI search target.
Perplexity is a dedicated AI search engine designed specifically to replace traditional web search. It retrieves live web sources and presents answers with inline citations, making it one of the most SEO-adjacent AI platforms. Users see exactly which sources were used, making citation especially visible and valuable.
Anthropic's Claude is widely regarded as one of the most capable AI assistants for research, analysis and nuanced questions. With a rapidly growing user base and deep integration into business workflows, Claude increasingly influences brand perception and recommendation for professional and B2B audiences.
Google AI Overviews appear at the very top of search results for a significant and growing proportion of queries. They pull content from indexed web pages and display a synthesised answer above all organic results. Being cited in an AI Overview can generate visibility even for queries where you do not hold a top organic ranking.
Google's standalone AI assistant with deep integration into Google Workspace, Android and Google Search. Gemini draws on Google's search index and live web data, making traditional SEO signals particularly relevant for Gemini citation. As Google's own AI product, it is one of the most strategically important platforms for businesses already investing in SEO.
xAI's Grok is integrated into X (formerly Twitter) and has access to real-time posts and conversations on the platform. Its unique strength is real-time social content, making it particularly relevant for brand monitoring, trending topics and businesses with an active X presence. Its user base is growing, particularly among tech and business audiences.
The AI search landscape is evolving quickly. New platforms are emerging and existing ones are expanding their capabilities. The best strategy is to build the underlying quality signals that serve all of them: strong content, clear entity signals, schema markup and domain authority. Our AI Search Optimisation service covers all of these platforms.
Understanding how each channel works makes it clear why the same fundamentals serve both. The mechanics are different but the underlying quality signals overlap significantly.
When someone searches on Google, a crawler-based algorithm evaluates thousands of signals across your site and the web to decide which pages are most relevant and authoritative for that query. You earn a position in a ranked list of results.
When someone asks an AI tool a question, a large language model synthesises an answer from content it has been trained on and from live web sources it retrieves. There is no ranked list. Instead, your content is either cited as a source or it is not.
Technical accessibility, content clarity, structured data, E-E-A-T signals and brand authority matter in both channels. A site built to rank well in organic search is already well-positioned to be cited by AI tools. Good SEO is good GEO. The additional work required to optimise specifically for AI citation is significant but it builds on the same foundations, not a separate strategy from scratch.
Most of what makes a site rank in Google also makes it more likely to be cited by AI tools. The additional steps required to optimise specifically for AI search build on the same foundations, not an entirely separate strategy.
These signals drive both organic rankings and AI citation. Investing in them serves your visibility across every search channel simultaneously.
If your SEO foundations are solid, optimising for AI search is an extension of that work rather than a restart. But there are specific things that matter for AI tools that traditional SEO does not emphasise.
Schema is more important for AI citation than for traditional SEO. It allows AI models to understand your entities, relationships and content types without having to infer them from unstructured text. Organisation, Person, Service, FAQ and Product schema are all directly useful.
AI tools are optimised to retrieve direct answers to questions. Content structured around specific questions with clear, concise answers is significantly more likely to be cited than long-form prose that buries the answer in paragraphs of context.
AI tools draw on how widely your brand or business is referenced across the web. Building entity recognition means ensuring your brand name, location, expertise area and key people appear consistently across multiple authoritative sources, not just your own site.
AI tools heavily weight content that demonstrates real first-hand experience and expertise. Author bios, credentials, case studies and specific expert insights are more likely to be cited than generic informational content that could have been written by anyone.
AI tools that retrieve live web content favour recently updated, accurate pages over stale content. Keeping key pages updated with current information, statistics and dates signals to both Google and AI tools that your content is a reliable current source.
Many AI tools draw on content from Wikipedia, major publications, industry directories and widely linked authoritative sources. Being present in these ecosystems, through earned media, industry citations and high-quality backlinks, increases the likelihood of appearing in AI-generated answers.
A growing share of buying decisions, service recommendations and brand discoveries now happen inside AI tools before a single Google search is run. Businesses that only optimise for Google are invisible in a channel their competitors are increasingly appearing in.
As of 2024, ChatGPT has over 200 million weekly active users globally, a figure that continues to grow rapidly month on month.
Younger buyers are increasingly bypassing Google entirely for discovery and recommendation queries, going directly to AI tools instead.
A quarter of all Google searches now display an AI-generated answer above the organic results, shifting visibility away from traditional blue links.
Usage of AI search tools is growing at roughly three times the rate of traditional search, and the gap is widening as more platforms launch and mature.
Many buyers now use AI tools to shortlist options, compare providers and get recommendations before they run a Google search at all. If you are not in the AI answer, you are not on the shortlist before the search even begins.
Every major technology platform is racing to integrate AI search. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Meta and Amazon are all building AI into their search and discovery surfaces. This is not a trend that will reverse. The businesses that build AI visibility now will have a compounding advantage over those that wait.
AI search optimisation is still early. Most businesses are not doing it. The cost of being well cited in AI tools is significantly lower now than it will be in two years when every competitor is actively optimising for the same platforms. The window to build a first-mover advantage is open but it will not stay open.
A business ranked at position 1 in Google for its most important keyword may still be completely absent from every AI-generated answer on that topic. Conversely, a business that appears prominently in ChatGPT and Perplexity recommendations but has weak organic rankings is missing the majority of search traffic. Visibility in 2025 and beyond means being present in both channels, and the foundations that serve one serve the other.
We help businesses rank in organic search and get cited in AI-generated answers. Here are the services most relevant to what you have just read.
Get your business appearing in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. We build the entity signals, structured data and content strategy that drive AI citations.
Learn moreThe single most impactful technical change you can make for AI search visibility. We implement structured data that makes your content clearly parseable by both Google and AI tools.
Learn moreFull-service SEO covering technical foundations, keyword strategy, content and link building. The strongest foundation for visibility across both traditional and AI search channels.
Learn moreTechnical accessibility, page speed and correct indexing are shared signals for both Google rankings and AI citation. Getting the foundations right serves both channels simultaneously.
Learn moreFind out where your site stands across both organic search and AI search signals, with a prioritised plan covering the technical, on-page and entity improvements that matter most.
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