The question everyone is asking
If people get their answers from an AI instead of a list of blue links, what happens to my website?
It’s a fair question and it’s being answered badly nearly everywhere, usually by someone with an AI search product to sell. So here is the short version, and then the reasoning underneath it.
AI search is fuelled by SEO. The things that get you cited by an AI are, to a large extent, the same things that got you ranked in the first place.
Why that’s true
An AI answering a question about plumbers in Whitstable isn’t forming an opinion. It’s assembling a consensus from what it can find, and then citing the sources that consensus rests on.
So what makes it pick you? Roughly the same signals that made Google pick you. Whether other places on the internet mention you and link to you. Whether your reviews exist and are visible. Whether your own site says clearly what you do and where you do it, in words a machine can read without guessing. Whether the details agree with each other everywhere they appear.
That’s not a new discipline with a new name. That’s the boring, established work of being consistently and verifiably present, which is what SEO has always actually been underneath the jargon.
The businesses that were easy to find are mostly the businesses that get cited. The ones that were invisible are still invisible, just in a new interface.
What genuinely does change
I’m not going to tell you nothing changes, because that isn’t true either.
For questions with a factual answer, fewer people will click through, because they got what they needed in the answer itself. If your traffic depends on explaining what a combi boiler is, that traffic is more exposed than it was.
But local service intent doesn’t end at an answer. Somebody with water coming through a ceiling isn’t looking to be informed, they’re looking to hand the problem to a person. The journey still ends with a phone call, a name and a price, and that means it still ends on a website or a map listing.
So the risk isn’t spread evenly. Informational content is more exposed. Someone-come-and-fix-this is much less so, and that’s most of what a trade actually sells.
Where social fits
For most small businesses social media is a corroborating signal rather than a home.
Nobody is going to Instagram to find an emergency electrician. But a business with a presence that matches its website, its map listing and its reviews looks more like a real business to both a person and a machine, because the story agrees with itself in several places.
There are businesses where social is genuinely the main channel, and if you’re one of them you already know. For the rest, having a presence is worth it. Living on it is not.
What I’d actually do about it
Nothing exotic, which is either reassuring or disappointing depending on what you were hoping for.
Make sure your own site states plainly what you do and the areas you cover, on pages a machine can read without inference. Get your Google Business Profile complete and accurate. Keep your name, address and phone number identical everywhere they appear. Ask for reviews and let them be visible. Be mentioned in the places a real local business gets mentioned.
That list would have been sound advice five years ago and it’ll be sound advice in five more. That’s rather the point. When the interface changes, the underlying question doesn’t, and the underlying question is whether the internet can corroborate that you exist and are any good.
The honest part
Nobody knows exactly where this settles, including me.
The interfaces are changing quickly, the way citations get chosen is not published, and anyone offering you certainty about AI search rankings is guessing with more confidence than the evidence supports. I’d treat “AI search optimisation” as a product name rather than a discipline for now.
What I’m reasonably sure of is the direction. Systems that answer questions need sources to answer from, and they’ll keep favouring the businesses that are easiest to verify. Being that business is the same work it has always been, and it doesn’t expire when the interface changes again.
Common questions
Yes, and more or less the same SEO. The signals an AI leans on to decide who to cite are largely the signals that decide who ranks, so the work overlaps almost entirely.
Some businesses will lose some. Informational searches are the exposed ones. If somebody wants a job doing at their house, they still need a name, a price and a phone number, and that journey ends on a website or a map listing.
Not as a separate discipline worth buying yet. Nobody publishes how citations get chosen, so anyone selling certainty is guessing. The measurable work is the same work as before.
For most trades it’s corroboration rather than a channel. A presence that matches your site, your map listing and your reviews helps. Living on it is not necessary.
If you’d rather see it than read about it
I’ll build you a homepage design for your business, free, and send it over within 48 hours. No card details, no meeting, and no obligation at the end of it. If you like it, sites are £79 a month with nothing to pay upfront. If you don’t, you’ve lost nothing but the two minutes it takes to tell me what you do.