Is your website ready for AI search?

For years, businesses have worked on their websites with one main goal in mind: rank higher in Google. That still matters.

But the way people search is changing. Customers are now asking much more detailed questions through Google's AI features, ChatGPT and other AI assistants, and they increasingly expect a direct recommendation or answer rather than a page full of blue links.

That creates a new challenge. It's no longer enough for your website to simply exist, look professional and contain the right keywords. Search systems need to be able to understand your business, trust the information they find about it, and recognise when you're relevant to the question being asked.

The short version

AI search doesn't mean throwing away everything we know about SEO. It means making your website easier for both people and machines to understand: clear services, clear expertise, accurate business information, useful original content, strong evidence and a technically accessible website.

Traditional search usually worked something like this: person searches, Google shows results, person visits websites, person compares options.

AI-led search can shorten that journey. Someone might instead ask “Who is the best independent BMW specialist near Brighton for a modified M car?” or “Which digital agency in Sussex has experience building websites for automotive businesses?”

The search system can now try to interpret the whole request, gather information from multiple sources and present a useful answer or shortlist. That means businesses have to think beyond simply appearing for one keyword.

Google itself describes its generative search features as being built on the same underlying Search ranking and quality systems used by conventional search. Its AI features can retrieve relevant pages from the Search index and use multiple related searches to build a response.

So the important distinction is this: SEO hasn't disappeared. The search experience around it has changed.

Then and now

The question is no longer simply “Can Google find this page?” It's increasingly “Can a search system understand why this business deserves to be recommended?”

Yes. And this is one of the areas where there's already quite a lot of nonsense being written.

You'll see claims that SEO is dead, that keywords no longer matter, or that businesses now need an entirely different kind of website for AI. That's not really what the major search platforms themselves are saying.

Google's current guidance is particularly clear: its established SEO best practices remain relevant to generative AI search, because AI Overviews and AI Mode use Google's core Search systems to retrieve relevant web pages.

There isn't a magic switch marked “optimise for AI.” You still need:

AI search builds on those foundations rather than replacing them.

If you want a business to be considered for relevant searches, the website needs to answer some surprisingly basic questions.

01 — Who are you?

What is the actual business name? Who runs it? Who works there? Is there evidence that real people exist behind the website?

02 — What do you do?

Not vague phrases such as “providing innovative solutions for our clients.” Actual services — for example, website design for independent garages, automotive businesses and performance parts companies. That's much easier for both a customer and a search system to understand.

03 — Where do you operate?

Are you local, nationwide, ecommerce only, serving specific areas, or operating from several branches? Location information should be consistent and unambiguous.

For local businesses in particular, Google says complete and accurate Business Profile information helps it understand relevance, while local ranking is primarily influenced by relevance, distance and prominence.

04 — What are you good at?

This is where many business websites become weak. They claim to do everything. An agency might list websites, SEO, social, PPC, branding, photography, video, hosting, email, strategy and consultancy, but say very little about where it has real experience.

A clearer website might explain: we specialise in websites, search and digital marketing for automotive businesses, alongside established businesses requiring measurable lead generation. Specific expertise gives search systems, and customers, much more to go on.

Anybody can write “we are one of the leading agencies in the UK.” That statement has almost no value by itself. Instead, show evidence: named case studies, real clients, photographs, project examples, reviews, accreditations, specialist knowledge, authors with identifiable experience, original research, and detailed explanations based on real work.

This is becoming particularly important as the internet fills up with inexpensive AI-generated content. Google's current AI-search guidance specifically recommends creating unique, expert-led, non-commodity content rather than simply producing variations of information that already exists elsewhere.

AI has made generic content cheap

It has never been easier to create “10 Tips for a Better Website” or “5 Reasons Your Business Needs SEO.” An AI system can produce that in seconds. So why would another AI system particularly value your version?

The opportunity is to publish things it cannot easily manufacture from general knowledge: what you found, what happened, what you changed, what worked, what failed, what customers asked, and what your experience has taught you. That's where genuine businesses have an advantage.

This is also why business blogging needs to change. Historically, a lot of SEO content was created because somebody found a keyword in a tool. The result was often “What is X?”, “5 benefits of X”, “10 reasons to use X”.

Those articles could rank because they answered a search query adequately. But AI can already answer many of those basic informational questions without requiring somebody to visit a website. What becomes more valuable is the information behind the generic answer.

Instead of “5 Benefits of Improving Website Conversion”, write “Why We Removed Half the Enquiry Form and Increased the Number of Useful Leads.” Instead of “What Makes a Good Garage Website?”, write “What Customers Look for Before Trusting an Independent Garage Online.” That shift is good for users as well as search engines.

One could have been written by anybody. The other comes from doing the work.

Good content is no use if search systems cannot reliably access it. The technical fundamentals still matter.

Google says pages need to be indexed and eligible to appear in Search to be considered for its generative AI features. It also recommends maintaining crawlability, a clear technical structure, good page experience and conventional SEO practices.

For most business websites, that means checking things such as:

None of that is exciting. But it is still important.

The principle is similar, although different platforms have different crawling systems. OpenAI states that public websites can appear in ChatGPT search, and recommends allowing its OAI-SearchBot crawler if publishers want their content to be discoverable, cited and linked from ChatGPT search responses.

That gives us another simple audit item: are you accidentally blocking the systems you want to find your content?

Usually, no. There are already plenty of people selling supposedly essential AI schema, special AI content formatting, llms.txt, AI-only landing pages and “GEO hacks”. Some of this may have applications with particular platforms, but businesses shouldn't assume any of it is a shortcut to visibility.

Google explicitly says there is no special structured data required for its generative AI search, that llms.txt does not improve Google visibility, and that websites do not need to rewrite their content into tiny “AI-friendly” chunks.

Structured data can still be useful. But it should accurately describe what's on the page, not be treated as a magic AI ranking button.

Don't build a website for a robot

The best approach is surprisingly straightforward: make the website exceptionally clear and useful for the customer, then make sure machines can reach and understand that information.

For a local business, the website isn't the only source of information an AI or search engine can encounter. Google says its business information can be compiled from the official website, Business Profile information, publicly available web content, third-party licensed data, user contributions, and reviews and photographs.

That means inconsistencies matter. If your website says 8:00–17:00 but Google says 8:30–17:30, and an old directory says you've moved premises, you've created unnecessary uncertainty. This is why maintaining accurate information across the wider web remains important.

Before spending money on more traffic, check whether your website can answer these.

The businesses most likely to benefit from AI search won't necessarily be the ones publishing the most content. They'll be the ones providing the clearest and most useful evidence of who they are and what they know.

Probably not completely. And neither is anybody else's.

Search is changing quickly, and no agency can honestly promise exactly how every AI platform will select its answers six months from now. What we can do is improve the fundamentals that consistently make a business easier to discover and understand: clear information, real expertise, useful content, credible evidence and strong technical foundations.

Those things made websites better before AI search. They matter even more now.

Google Search Central — Optimising your website for generative AI features on Google Search. Google's current guidance covering AI Overviews, AI Mode, content quality, technical SEO and common AEO/GEO misconceptions.

OpenAI — Publishers and Developers, ChatGPT Search. Guidance on allowing OAI-SearchBot to discover website content for ChatGPT search.

Google Business Profile — Tips to improve your local ranking on Google. Official guidance covering relevance, distance, prominence and accurate business information.