Yesterday I stood in front of BNI Hadlee in Bristol and made the case that the way most businesses think about getting found online is already out of date. The pitch was 10 minutes. The argument was one line.
For twenty years, success in SEO meant ranking on page one of Google. That was the scoreboard. It isn’t anymore.
The shift, in plain English
Most owners I speak to still picture Google as ten blue links. Type your query, get a list, click the top result, job done. That world is fading fast.
Open Google today and the first thing you often see is an AI summary that pulls answers from across the web before any link shows up. Open ChatGPT or Gemini and you do not see a list of links at all. You get a single answer, sometimes with a few named businesses inside it, sometimes without. Google’s own announcement of generative AI in Search made this the default direction of travel.
The question is not ‘are you on page one.’ It is ‘are you the answer the AI quotes.’
The four things we actually do
I split what we do into four jobs that all point at the same goal: getting you in front of the right people at the right moment, wherever they are looking.
- Technical SEO. Site speed, crawling, structure, schema. The plumbing that lets search engines and AI actually read your site. Boring. Foundational. Skipped at your peril.
- Content and on-page SEO. Pages written for humans first, optimised for search second. The mix that earns rankings and trust at the same time.
- Getting found in AI. ChatGPT. Gemini. Google’s AI Overviews. Perplexity. Copilot. The work of making sure that when someone asks the robot, your business is one of the answers. This is the discipline of answer engine optimisation.
- Local SEO. Google Business Profile, maps, local pages, reviews. For businesses that serve a postcode, not the planet.
Four disciplines. One scoreboard. We’ve started calling that combination Search Everywhere Optimisation, because the phrase “Search Engine Optimisation” no longer captures the full job in the AI search era.
Where Google Ads fit in
SEO is a long game. Ads are a short one. We run both for clients who need leads this month, not next quarter. A tight Google Ads account gets you in front of buyers on day one, at the moment they are searching. SEO earns you the future. Together, they cover the now and the next.
Who this matters most for
If your next customer is probably searching right now, this matters more for you than it does for the average B2B software firm. Three examples I gave the room:
- Solicitors. Family work, conveyancing, wills. High-intent searches, high-value clients.
- Chiropractors. Local, urgent, reviewed, booked online. A perfect fit for local SEO and paid.
- Bottle shops. Independent retail with a story to tell and a catchment to protect.
High street businesses with a physical presence and a customer who already wants what they sell. The customer is searching. The question is whether you show up. Make sure your Google Business Profile is doing its share of the work.
The ask
Two parts to it.
If anyone in your network is worried about what AI will mean for their business, send them my way. A short conversation is free. A clear plan is priceless.
And if you are reading this because you were in the room: thank you. The questions were sharp, the room was generous, and I left with three or four things I want to say better next time.
Want to know whether AI search will help or hurt your business? Book a 30-minute discovery call and we’ll tell you straight.
Frequently asked questions
Is SEO dead now that AI search exists?
No. The opposite. SEO is becoming broader. The work that gets you cited by ChatGPT, quoted in an AI Overview, or shown in a map pack is built on the same foundation as old-school SEO: a fast site, clean structure, useful content, real authority. The fundamentals matter more, not less. What has changed is where the answer surfaces. For the bigger picture on Google’s I/O 2026 confirmation of this shift, see our breakdown of Search Everywhere Optimisation.
What is answer engine optimisation?
Answer engine optimisation, or AEO, is the practice of making sure your business appears in the answers given by AI engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and Google’s AI Overviews. It builds on traditional SEO with a sharper focus on schema, citation-friendly structure, named-entity clarity, and content written to be quoted. Anthropic’s documentation on Claude’s web search gives a sense of how one of the major AI engines retrieves and cites sources.
Should small businesses worry about AI changing search?
If your business depends on customers finding you online, yes, but not in a panicked way. The mechanics of being found are shifting. Sites that have not been touched in years will fall further behind. Businesses that adapt now will see the gap widen in their favour. The work is not urgent in a one-week sense. It is urgent in a one-year sense.
Where do you get started?
A short conversation. We look at your site, your search visibility, and the AI engines that matter for your industry. Twenty minutes is usually enough to know what is broken, what is underused, and what the right next move is. Book a discovery call if that sounds useful.
