For twenty years, being found online meant ranking on Google. That is still true, but it is no longer the whole picture. A growing share of searches now end with an answer written by an AI, and those answers are built from a different set of signals. AI search optimisation is the work of making sure your brand is in that answer.
What has actually changed
Three things happened at once. Google started putting AI Overviews above the traditional results for many queries. Tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude became a normal way for people to research and shortlist. And all of them started citing sources in their answers, which means there is now a competition to be cited, not just to rank.
The practical effect: someone researching "best digital marketing agency in Melbourne" might never see a list of ten blue links. They get a paragraph naming three or four agencies, with citations. If you are not in that paragraph, you were not considered.
How AI answers pick sources
Nobody outside these companies has the full recipe, but the patterns are consistent enough to act on:
- Entity clarity. The model needs to understand what your brand is, what it does, and where it operates, as a distinct thing. Vague, everything-to-everyone positioning is hard to represent.
- Structured data. Schema markup that spells out your organisation, services, location, reviews and FAQs gives machines an unambiguous version of your site.
- Consensus across sources. If several independent sites describe your brand the same way, that description becomes the model's version of the truth. One page on your own site is not enough.
- Being cited elsewhere. Mentions in directories, roundups, press, and reputable industry sites carry weight, because the model treats them as third-party confirmation.
- Clear, factual, well-structured content. Content that answers a specific question directly, with headings and lists, is easier to lift into an answer than a meandering essay.
- Freshness. For anything that changes, recent content beats old content.
What is the same as SEO, and what is different
Most of the foundation is shared. A fast, crawlable, well-structured site with good content and real authority helps you in both classic search and AI answers. If your SEO is weak, your AI search visibility will be weak too.
The differences are in emphasis:
- Classic SEO optimises a page to rank for a keyword. AI search optimises an entity to be understood and trusted across the whole web.
- Classic SEO cares about your position in a list. AI search cares about whether you are mentioned at all in a generated answer.
- Classic SEO rewards volume of content. AI search rewards clarity and consistency of how your brand is described.
- Off-site signals matter more. You cannot control an AI answer by editing your own site alone.
You will see this work called GEO (generative engine optimisation) or AEO (answer engine optimisation). The labels do not matter much. The work is real.
What you can actually do
- Fix your entity. A clear, consistent description of your brand on your site, your Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, and anywhere else you appear. Same name, same category, same location, same core claims.
- Add and maintain schema. Organization, service, local business, review and FAQ markup, kept accurate.
- Write answer-shaped content. Pages and articles that answer one clear question, with the answer near the top, headings that match how people ask, and lists where lists make sense.
- Earn third-party mentions. Get listed in the directories and roundups your category uses, and described consistently in each.
- Publish an llms.txt file. A simple file that tells AI crawlers what your site is and what matters on it. Cheap to do, increasingly expected.
- Keep it current. Update your cornerstone pages when facts change.
How to tell if it is working
The measurement is less tidy than a rank tracker. Useful signals: ask the main AI tools the questions your customers would ask and see whether you appear, and how you are described. Watch your analytics for referral traffic from AI tools, which is small but growing. And keep an eye on brand search volume, since people often see you in an AI answer and then search for you directly.
Why now
Most businesses have not started. That is the opportunity. The brands that get their entity clean and their content answer-shaped now will be the ones the models have learned by the time this is the default way people search. Our SEO and AI search work covers both sides: the technical and local SEO that still decides Google, and the entity and content work that gets you cited in AI answers.