Last updated: November 2026
Estimated reading time: 12 minutes
You want to get found in AI search. Totally understandable. Don’t get me wrong, though, your buyers are still finding you using good ol’ Google, too. The idea that traditional search is dead and everyone and their dog is using AI instead isn’t quite true.
Search as we know it is still alive and well, and many of your buyers do still start their research journeys there. But plenty of them are prompting AI tools and skimming AI Overviews before deciding to click through. 50% of consumers are using AI-powered search. I’ve written before about how AI is changing search intent if you want a bit more background about that. This, however, is the practical how-to guide.
A little warning before we get into the interesting stuff. There’s no quick and easy shortcut to getting found in AI search. Loopholes are closing almost as quickly as they appear. Getting found in AI search requires a clear content strategy, a big time commitment (because content that moves the needle takes time and expertise) and a bit of a wait before you see results. Enough disclaimers from me – let’s get into it!
Key takeaways
AI tools choose who to cite based on crawlability, structure, credibility, corroboration and freshness. Adding data points and authoritative quotes can boost your AI visibility by up to 40%.
Google rewards helpful, people-first content that aligns with E-E-A-T principles. Google thinks using AI in the process is fine, but churning out thin, unoriginal content to game rankings won’t work.
To show up in AI search, answer your buyers’ questions quickly, be original and make sure AI tools can read your content.
Build trust beyond your own website with reviews, digital PR and mentions on reputable websites, and keep your brand details consistent.
Publish content regularly and update older content to make sure it’s as helpful as possible.
Track your AI search visibility in Google Search Console and Google Analytics, but be mindful of ‘dark traffic’ which hides some AI traffic.
But first, here’s a handy AI search glossary
First things first, let’s break down what I mean by “AI search”, because it’s made up of a few different things:
AI search
A catch all term for finding information using AI tools, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews.
AI Overviews
AI Overviews are the AI-written summaries at the top of Google’s search results. They answer questions on the spot using information from Google search results, and pages are cited within the AI Overview box so users can click through to the original source if they want to.
Generative AI tools and large language models (LLMs)
Popular LLMs include ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. People tend to type prompts in full sentences and get a written output back, often with links to sources at the bottom or embedded in the documents created.
Generative engine optimisation (GEO)
GEO is how you organise your website and write your content so AI tools and search engines can cite it and recommend your brand. Conversion rates from GEO tend to be higher than traditional keyword searches because the users find the content when they’re further along in their buyer journey.
Answer engine optimisation (AEO)
AEO makes your content easier for AI to find, understand and include in its outputs. AI agents use the most relevant parts of your content in their responses in an effort to answer the searchers’ query, instead of presenting a page of blue links for them to choose from.
Zero-click search
This is when a searcher gets their answer without clicking through to a website. A growing number of searches end this way. A June 2026 study found that 68.01% of Google searches now end without a click.
How do AI search tools choose who to cite?
The exact mechanics vary by LLM (and we won’t get into the really technical stuff here), but tools generally choose who to cite by assessing the following:
Crawlability (whether a tool can actually access your page at all)
Structure (whether your content is laid out clearly for it to easily lift the answer to the searchers’ query)
Credibility (whether the source appears trustworthy and possesses topical authority)
Corroboration (whether other reputable sources back up your claims)
Freshness (whether the content is current)
Researchers at Princeton found that adding data points (statistics, percentages, etc.) to your content increases AI visibility by as much as 40%, while adding quotes by authoritative sources resulted in a 28% AI visibility improvement.
Google wants helpful, reliable content that’s created for people
Google’s documentation has been hammering home this point for a while. Here are the passages that all content marketers need to internalise before they type another word:
“Google's automated ranking systems are designed to prioritize helpful, reliable information that's created to benefit people, and not content that's created to manipulate search engine rankings.”
“Google's automated systems are designed to use many different factors to rank great content. After identifying relevant content, our systems aim to prioritize those that seem most helpful. To do this, they identify a mix of factors that can help determine which content demonstrates aspects of experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, or what we call E-E-A-T (expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness).
“Of these aspects, trust is most important. The others contribute to trust, but content doesn't necessarily have to demonstrate all of them. For example, some content might be helpful based on the experience it demonstrates, while other content might be helpful because of the expertise it shares.”
If you haven’t already, I really recommend reading the entire guide. It’s a must-read for anyone wondering how to increase the ROI of their content marketing efforts.
How Google views AI-generated content
Google isn’t actively punishing users who publish AI-generated content. Here’s what they said on the matter:
“Our focus on the quality of content, rather than how content is produced, is a useful guide that has helped us deliver reliable, high quality results to users for years.
“For example, about 10 years ago, there were understandable concerns about a rise in mass-produced yet human-generated content. No one would have thought it reasonable for us to declare a ban on all human-generated content in response. Instead, it made more sense to improve our systems to reward quality content, as we did.”
Google doesn’t mind AI being involved in the content production process, but it’s not happy with you churning out content en masse to try and climb the rankings. If there’s one thing you should take away from this, it’s that you need to follow E-E-A-T principles. Regardless of how you produce the content, if it’s thin and unoriginal, you’re not going to get the rankings you’re hoping for.
How to show up in AI search results
Here’s what I’d focus on if I wanted to show up in AI tools’ outputs and AI Overviews:
Actually answer buyer questions
People use AI tools to get answers to burning questions, so they generally favour content that answers questions quickly and simply. Lead with the answer, and then explain why. This is why it’s sooo important to find out exactly what questions your buyers are asking. “Our solutions empower businesses to optimise performance” isn’t answering anyone’s question.
Say something original
A lot of brands fall down here. If you’re publishing generic content that doesn’t argue anything, but just rehashes what someone else has said, why would a buyer take the next step? Why would they book a demo with you when you can’t even communicate what makes you different from every other brand in your industry?
In terms of how this affects AI search, AI tools and Google’s AI Overviews won’t put your content in front of searchers if it doesn’t answer their question or offer anything new. It’s a lose-lose situation, really.
Make sure AI tools can read your content
Beyond creating content that’s unique and valuable, you need to do a few things to make sure AI tools can read your content:
Make sure you’re offering visitors a good page experience. Pages should load quickly, look good on all devices and not be overcrowded with information.
Check that Googlebot isn’t blocked and the content is indexable.
Structured data should match the visible content. You can read more about this here.
Keep your most important content as text. AI tools might struggle to read anything that’s buried in an image or video that doesn’t load properly. AI crawlers generally favour text because it is faster to scan and significantly less energy-intensive.
Show your expertise
As I’ve already pointed out, your content needs to E-E-A-T. These principles mattered for SEO, and they still matter for AI search. AI tools are working out whether they can trust your content enough to recommend it to users. Content that shows experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust does just that.
Reference your sources (and make sure they’re authoritative – the internet is full of made up ‘facts’ now thanks to LLMs) and check every point you make for accuracy (especially if you’re using AI to produce it, hallucination is still a HUGE problem). AI will confidently give you the wrong information and then say “you’re absolutely right!” when you point out its mistakes.
Write case studies, long-form bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) articles that explore what you offer and the benefits of your products/services and social media posts that show you know what you’re doing.
Get mentioned elsewhere
AI tools don’t just look at your own website. They take other mentions into account, because a brand that gets mentioned in various reputable places is deemed more trustworthy. There are a few ways to build these mentions:
Encourage customers and clients to leave reviews on Google, Trustpilot, G2, etc.
Invest in digital PR to earn coverage on industry blogs, podcasts and local news websites.
Feature on your partners/suppliers websites.
Build your social media presence so users talk about you more online.
Be consistent about who you are and what you do
AI tools gather information about your business from what they find online. If who you are, what you do and the claims you make all line up, AI tools will find it easier to cite you.
With this in mind, I recommend you check the following:
Your business name is spelled and formatted the same way everywhere.
What you do is described accurately.
Your location and contact details.
Key facts, like when you were founded, the size of your team and the sectors you work in.
Author names and bios if you publish content under multiple authors (I recommend doing this, as long as the authors are real people).
Make sure your website, LinkedIn page, Google Business Profile and any other review sites/industry directories you’re listed on are always up to date. Otherwise AI tools might get the wrong idea and give users incorrect information or not recommend you at all because you don’t give off the right trust signals.
Publish regularly and update older content
AI tools tend to favour sources that are fresh. A blog/insights page that’s updated regularly will always do better than one that sits dormant for long periods of time. Publishing often shows these tools your website is active. Plus, the more you cover a subject, the more you’re treated as an authority on it. That’s really motivating in itself!
Here’s what I recommend:
Publish consistently, but don’t be tempted to publish a lot of mediocre content. Quality over quantity always. I cover this in my article on how often to publish blog posts, if you’re interested.
Answer the questions your buyers are asking. Keyword research tools are definitely helpful here, but I think it’s more important to chat with your sales team to get an idea of what people are asking and their objections and build your content around that.
Update older content to make sure it’s as helpful as it possibly can be.
The goal should be to cover all of your content pillars fully. One very broad article on your content pillar isn’t going to cut it, I’m afraid.
There’s no point in publishing for the sake of it or automating content production with AI entirely. It’s not going to be your best work, and you may end up deleting it down the line anyway because it doesn’t bring in any leads. Plus, people really don’t like content that’s clearly AI-generated, but that’s a conversation for another time.
How to measure AI search visibility
Measuring AI visibility is a tricky one. To get you started, let’s focus on Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
Google Search Console (GSC)
Appearances in Google’s AI features (including AI Overviews and AI Mode), now feed into your GSC performance reports. The reports contain information on impressions (how often your website URLs appeared), pages, countries, devices and dates (to monitor performance over time).
I recommend keeping a close eye on the Queries and Pages tabs to monitor how they change over time. A page or query climbing means you’re gaining visibility on a topic, and it’s probably worth doubling down on it.
Google Analytics (GA4)
Open Google Analytics and go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition. Make sure to change Session primary channel group to Session source/medium. Look for AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot.
Important disclaimer here: Measuring AI search visibility is hard because of what we call “dark traffic”, website visits where GA4 can’t track its source, meaning they’re mislabelled as Direct/None traffic. Take GA4’s numbers with a pinch of salt. The real amount of AI traffic you’re getting is higher than it appears, so treat it more as a rough guide.
What’s more useful, I think, is seeing what those visitors are doing:
Which AI tool is sending most of them your way?
Which pages do they land on?
How long are they hanging around?
Are they visiting other pages during the same session?
Are they new, or have they visited your website before?
Are they more or less engaged than visitors that find your website through other channels?
Which pages and topics are getting the most attention?
Check for yourself
Put yourself in your buyer’s shoes for a sec. Type the questions your buyers are asking into various AI tools and see whether your content pops up, and what the tools say about it when it does.
It’s not a reliable method in the sense that the answers aren’t fixed. Ask the same question twice and you’ll probably get different results. But it still gives you some idea whether these tools know you exist, and whether they’re getting the facts right.
Time to wrap it up
If there’s one thing to take away from this, it’s that showing up in AI search isn’t going to happen with tricks or loopholes. Those get closed and you’re back at square one. You need to invest in useful content that answers the questions your buyers are actually asking, written by someone who knows what they’re talking about and can back points up with data. Not very exciting is it? But it works.
Need some help with B2B content strategy and writing?
My job is to get my clients seen online, on Google and in AI tools. I’m Lucy, a freelance B2B content writer and strategist. I’ve been doing this for seven years, and I’ve seen things change a LOT. But what hasn’t changed is the need for content that’s helpful, accurate and trustworthy.
If you’d like some help producing content that gets cited by AI tools and shows up in AI Overviews, let’s find some time to have a chat. Fill in my quick discovery questionnaire and I’ll get back to you ASAP!
Frequently asked questions about appearing in AI search
How do I appear in AI searches?
Answer the questions your buyers are asking clearly and early, be original, make sure AI tools can read your pages, show real expertise and back it up with sources/data, get mentioned by reputable sites, keep your brand information up-to-date and publish high-quality content regularly.
Is AI search really replacing traditional search?
No, and I’d be a bit wary of anyone that tells you it is. Traditional search is still where many buyers start, but AI tools are changing how people find answers. One isn’t definitively replacing the other – you need to make sure you’re showing up in both.
Is AI search optimisation different from SEO?
Not as much as people would make out, in my opinion. It’s the same foundations: clear, well-structured and expert content with original viewpoints and information from a source users can trust. What’s changed is that you’re aiming to get cited, not just rank on Google. If your SEO is already up to scratch, you’re already part of the way there.
How do I get mentioned by ChatGPT?
Write useful and original content that actually answers your buyers questions, back it up with reliable data and get mentioned on trusted sites. ChatGPT cites content it marks as trustworthy, so the more credible your content is, the better.
How do I show up in Google’s AI Overviews?
Make sure Google can read your content and index your pages and create clear, helpful content that answers the questions buyers are asking quickly. AI Overviews tend to pull a lot of information from pages that already rank well on Google, so a solid SEO strategy is absolutely vital!
How do I get cited by Claude?
Claude, like ChatGPT and other AI tools, cites content that’s clear, original and answers the users’ query. Answer the question early, back it up with expertise and data and offer a viewpoint. There’s no Claude-specific trick you can try – just publish helpful content readers and AI tools can trust.
Why isn’t my website showing up in AI search results?
Common culprits include AI tools not being able to read your pages (e.g., your robots.txt file blocking crawlers), content that’s too generic and doesn’t align with E-E-A-T principles and a lack of mentions on other reputable sites.
Can’t I just use AI to write content that shows up in AI tools?
I wouldn’t recommend it. AI tools want original, accurate, expert content backed up by data and authoritative sources. AI is great for churning out the exact opposite. If you’re going to use AI in the process, keep it minimal and factcheck absolutely everything.
