I sat through twenty talks at Brighton SEO 2026. Twenty out of twenty referenced the same statistic: 65% of searches now start in AI, not in a traditional search engine. That number has not left my head since.
The question every client asks me in our first call is not “how do we rank on Google?” It is “how do we get recommended by ChatGPT?” These are different questions with different answers, and the gap between them is widening every month.
This is the framework I use in every discovery call.
Why does AI search work differently from Google?
Google crawls your website and ranks pages in near real time. Changes you make today can appear in Google results within hours.
AI search tools work differently. They pull answers from a knowledge base compiled from the web and refreshed at intervals. For most AI tools, that refresh cycle sits somewhere between three and six months. For ChatGPT, Perplexity, and the AI layer built into Google, the content that surfaces in answers was indexed weeks or months ago. Anthropic’s Claude web search documentation describes how one major AI engine combines retrieval with its base knowledge.
This creates a lag that catches most businesses off guard. If your website content was thin, unsigned, or poorly structured when the last refresh happened, you were not included. No amount of last-week optimisation will get you into an AI answer sourced from three months ago.
There is also a two-phase dynamic worth understanding. Phase one: AI gives the customer an answer and names brands. Phase two: the customer searches that brand name in Google to verify it. If you are not named in phase one, you never get to phase two. Monitoring brand search volume in Google Search Console is now one of the most important signals you can track, because a sustained rise in brand searches often means AI is recommending you. We covered this in detail in why has my website traffic dropped, which walks through the diagnostic step by step.
You may also see this framed as AEO (answer engine optimisation) or GEO (generative engine optimisation). Different tools and different marketers use different labels, but the goal is the same: being cited in AI-generated answers. Our SEO glossary has plain-English definitions if any of the terms are new.
What does it actually take to be cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Overviews?
Six things matter, in order of importance.
1. Content that signals real expertise.
AI tools weight named authors, specific examples, and demonstrated track records. An unsigned article that says “AI search is changing things for businesses” will not be cited. A signed piece from a named person, citing specific data and real outcomes, has a much better chance.
This is what Google calls E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. The concept predates AI search, but AI tools have raised the bar for what qualifies.
2. Structured headings that match how people ask questions.
AI answer engines are built to extract answers. They scan for headings that match real question patterns and pull the section that follows. H2s phrased as questions perform better, because they match the format AI tools are trained to locate and cite.
3. Strong internal linking and topic authority.
AI tools follow the same signals Google uses to understand what a site is about and which pages carry authority on a given topic. A site with tightly linked content in a specific subject area signals more topical authority than a site with lots of isolated articles.
Identify your core topic and make sure your key pages link to related content via considered internal linking. A page about AI search visibility should link to your page on answer engine optimisation, your robots.txt guidance, and your services overview.
4. Schema markup.
FAQ schema, Article schema, and Organisation schema reduce friction for AI tools trying to understand your content. They do not guarantee citation, but they remove obstacles. Google’s structured data documentation covers the full vocabulary.
For content that answers multiple specific questions, FAQ schema is worth adding. For author-attributed articles, Article schema with a named author signals credibility. For your homepage and about page, Organisation schema with your name, address, and phone number helps AI tools build a complete picture of who you are.
5. Brand mentions across the web.
AI tools do not just read your own site. They look at what the rest of the web says about you. Being mentioned in trade publications, industry roundups, podcast show notes, or news articles all contribute to the picture AI tools build of your authority.
A single well-sourced article on your domain, mentioned by three or four external sources, is worth more than ten isolated articles with no external footprint. This is a strong argument for outreach, guest content, and earned press alongside content production. Pair this with NAP consistency across directories.
6. A clean technical foundation, starting with your robots.txt.
This one surprises almost every business I speak to, and it deserves its own section.
Is your website accidentally blocking AI from reading it?
The most common technical mistake right now is sites blocking AI reading crawlers, often without realising it.
Cloudflare’s AI Fight Mode, increasingly switched on by default for new accounts, blocks a wide range of AI crawlers including ClaudeBot (Anthropic’s crawler), GPTBot (OpenAI’s crawler), Googlebot-AI (Google’s AI Overview crawler), and PerplexityBot. If you use Cloudflare and have not checked this setting, there is a real chance AI tools cannot read your content at all. We wrote the full 30-minute audit in is your robots.txt blocking ChatGPT, ClaudeBot, and Google AI? Start there if any of this is unfamiliar.
The same problem appears in robots.txt. A file that disallows all automated user agents, or that targets specific AI bot user agents, prevents those tools from indexing your content. Google Search Central explains the user-agent controls you can set.
The key distinction is this: blocking AI training crawlers (bots that scrape your content to train future AI models) is legitimate and often desirable. Blocking AI reading crawlers (bots that access your content in real time to answer a live query) removes you from AI search results entirely. These are two different categories of bot, and they need different treatment.
The setup we now recommend to every client:
- Allow AI reading bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Googlebot-AI) in robots.txt
- Optionally restrict AI training bots separately if protecting content matters to you
- Add an llms.txt file to your domain root so AI tools understand your site structure, your key pages, and what you do
If you are not sure which crawlers are currently blocked, your server logs will tell you. If you do not have access to those, a short audit will find it. This is part of the wider discipline of technical SEO.
How long does it take to appear in AI search?
The honest answer is three to six months, often longer.
AI knowledge bases are not updated in real time. After you publish content, it needs to be crawled and indexed by Google first, then picked up in the next AI knowledge base refresh. That refresh varies by tool.
Google AI Overviews have a tighter relationship with Google’s own index, so well-structured content that Google indexes quickly can appear in AI Overviews within a few weeks. For ChatGPT and Perplexity, plan for a longer runway.
This is why the work starts before you notice a problem. Businesses that come to me after a significant traffic drop are already six months behind. Those that build AI visibility into their content strategy now will be in a much stronger position by late 2026. The principle applies regardless of sector, although regulated industries like legal services and financial services have additional E-E-A-T weight to navigate.
How do you maintain AI visibility over time?
Getting into AI search results is not a one-time task. It requires ongoing maintenance, for the same reason that AI knowledge bases refresh periodically. Content that was accurate and authoritative eighteen months ago may be outdated at the next refresh cycle. Content freshness matters as a signal in its own right.
The businesses doing this well treat AI visibility the way they used to treat link building: as a sustained programme of work, not a one-off fix.
In practical terms that means:
- Reviewing and updating your most important pages at least twice a year
- Publishing new content at a regular cadence, even if volume is modest
- Monitoring brand search volume in Google Search Console as a proxy for AI recommendation activity
- Tracking direct traffic from AI tools that carry referral headers as a visibility signal
- Building external mentions through outreach, press, and community presence
The metrics we now lead every client report with are: tracked conversions via Google Tag Manager (phone clicks, form fills, email clicks), brand search trend, AI referral signals, and visibility in the Google results page. Together, these give a complete picture of “is this working?” that keyword rankings alone cannot provide. AI search is built into every SEO package as standard, and the SEO strategy service sets the direction for the year ahead.
Where to start
Start with the technical check.
Look at your robots.txt and confirm AI reading bots are not blocked. Check your Cloudflare settings if you use it. Both are quick to fix and can unlock AI visibility without any content work.
Then audit your most important pages for E-E-A-T signals: named author, specific data points, external citations to authoritative sources. If the answers are no, those pages are the priority.
Rephrase generic section headings as questions. It is a simple change that makes content significantly more extractable by AI tools.
If you want a second pair of eyes on this before you start making changes, book a discovery call. We will look at your current AI visibility, your robots.txt setup, and your content structure, and give you a prioritised list of exactly where to start.
By Chris McDowell, founder of BrisTechTonic. We help UK businesses get found by real customers, including the growing number who now start their search in AI tools. See the SEO packages or book a discovery call.
