How AI is changing search (and what that means for your website)

AI. GPT. LLM. Since ChatGPT first shot to prominence in 2023, our collective lexicon has expanded to include all manner of AI-centric acronyms, but with all of the buzz about the possibilities of generative AI - be they silly, scary or purely practical - far too many businesses have failed to think about its impact on another acronym, SEO.

The unstoppable rise of AI is changing search in several different ways. Naturally, of course, search engines themselves are increasingly weaving AI into the way in which they ‘crawl’ web content, but it is the way in which information is being served and the way in which web users are increasingly consuming that information that is really shaking up the marketing world’s perception of what ‘good’ looks like when it comes to search results.

People like simple solutions. That is the reason search engines became popular in the first place. It is also why the whole business of optimising for search exists too; businesses want to make sure that when people are searching for a product or service, theirs is among the selection that is served up on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

It is for this same reason that it is so important to be aware of the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and features such as AI Overview in Google Search. Simply put, for many people (even those who are AI-averse), the neat, clearly worded answers that LLMs deliver are often preferable to clicking on a few links and combing through those websites to find an answer.

This tendency to opt for the easiest path to information is also reflected in the rapid growth of ‘no-click’ or ‘zero-click’ searches. A ‘no-click’ search is one where someone searches for a term and their query is answered by the SERP without them needing to click on any particular web page. As SERPs themselves are increasingly answering search queries - with everything from AI Overviews, featured snippets, knowledge panels and ‘People Also Ask’ boxes through to the SERP snippets of the individual pages served - the number of users clicking through to pages served in the search results is dropping. In July 2024, SparkToro research found that almost 60% of Google searches were being answered without a click, and with Google AI Overviews now appearing in almost half of searches that number is likely to continue to rise.

One of the trickiest things about AI search is that, for the first time in a decade or so, we’re no longer talking primarily about Google. For one thing, Google itself is reportedly shifting its focus to how users interact with it via AI apps (rather than just the search box), while Gartner has predicted a 25% drop in traditional search engine volume by 2026.

There are three main types of AI search systems that need to be considered, each of which works in a different way - training-first, search-first and hybrid systems.

• Training-first systems, such as those on which many chatbots and machine translation services are based, generate results using only the data they were trained on, so their answers remain static until their next update. 
• Search-first systems are generally the ones people are thinking of when they talk about AI search. Described by Seer Interactive as being “like SEO on steroids, with a dash of content curation”, these systems, which include Google’s AI Overviews, rely on real-time indexing of web pages. 
• Hybrid systems are those such as ChatGPT, which answer queries based on a mixture of their training data and more updated information from the web.

By understanding, even at a basic level, how these systems work, you better arm yourself with the information you need to ensure your website is answering your target audience’s queries. If you’ve not yet dabbled in a bit of AI searching, it could be worthwhile taking a little time to plug a few search queries that your audience might use into one or two of each kind of system. Try some visual searches too. The results may surprise you.

In the world of B2B product searches - historically one of the big sources of referral traffic to VB Media customer websites - many buyers are already using AI tools to help them more quickly compare products, find new products, understand potential suppliers’ USPs and build a picture of other customers’ impressions of products or service they’re considering. Even if they’re not using AI tools, the evolution of the Google SERP often means that they’re at least considering an AI overview as part of their product research.

For years, content has been dubbed ‘king’ when it comes to building the  authority that would help your website rise up the search rankings. Now, unsurprisingly, the changes taking place in the search landscape have actually made the content you put on your website even more important.

Leaving aside the inevitable reduction in informational search queries as web users grow more and more accustomed to finding answers in AI Overviews without clicking on a single website, the rapid growth of AI-generated content means that search engines are simultaneously having to be more discerning as they prioritise what to crawl and index.  It’s no longer about matching keywords with keywords, but has become far more user-centric and focused on search intent. As a result, content that comprehensively addresses real user queries is no longer a nice-to-have, it is essential.

The developments of features such as AI Overviews in particular demonstrates the sort of impact that high quality content can have. For example, research by Growth Memo found that some 60% of URLs cited in AI Overviews are from websites ranking outside the top 20 organic search results for that query. This suggests that well-structured content that offers value by answering queries effectively with relevant information can increase your website’s chances of appearing on a SERP even without appearing in the top 10 search results

1. UNDERSTAND HOW AI SEES YOU AND YOUR PRODUCTS

For all product marketers, in order to adapt to the changes we’re seeing in the world of search, it is essential to get an understanding of how AI sees your business, your brand and, most importantly, your products. 

To do this, ask a few AI tools and search engines to describe your company. You could try questions such as “What does [My Brilliant Company] do?”, “What makes [My Brilliant Company] different from [two or three competitor brand names]?, “What do customers think about [My Brilliant Company]’s [top selling product]?” It’ll take a few tries, but you’ll begin to build a picture of how AI sees your business and what is being pulled into any relevant AI Overviews.

Once you’re armed with this information, you can assess whether that picture reflects what you want it to. If not, you have some work to do to ensure that your value proposition and differentiators are carried consistently throughout your website.

2. BUILD AUTHORITY AND ENSURE RELEVANCE

No-one should have been using them anymore anyway (as Google has been penalising them for some time), but old-fashioned keyword-stuffing strategies are really now a thing of the past. (In spite of this, many people still insist on doing this ‘because it has worked in the past’, even though it hasn’t actually worked since 2011 and violates Google’s spam policies which can lead to demotion.) Instead, you need to focus on creating high quality, authoritative content that your audience wants to read because it is relevant to the terms they are searching for.

Drawing on your real-world experience, demonstrate your business’ expertise by creating web content that directly answers your customers’ questions. If you’re not sure what those questions are, start with a look at your web traffic via your web analytics. By looking at your engagement numbers over a long period of time you can get a good overview of the sorts of search terms visitors to  your website are using, and you can even apply filters to determine whether traffic is coming from traditional search engines or AI search platforms such as ChatGPT and Gemini. (Although not much traffic will be from AI search yet, this may be worth monitoring if only to know what type of platforms your audience prefers.)

Instead of pumping your content full of keywords, make sure that it includes enough contextual information to help both web crawlers and AI models match it up with the right search queries. For example, instead of just listing ‘teardrop flags’ as a product, you could use VB Media to set up a custom landing page for that product category. These pages enable you to boost SEO with additional relevant content, so you could include case studies highlighting product use cases (and happy customers) and also write a blog rounding up your most popular products this year and linking mentions of ‘teardrop flags’ to this custom landing page. 

In addition, it would be advisable to find out what other terms are used to search for teardrop flags and make sure that you’ve included these alternatives in your web content (and custom landing page) and, most importantly, include high quality images that simultaneously illustrate what teardrop flags are and showcase the quality of your products.

If writing isn’t your strong suit or you don’t have time, you could bring in freelance copywriting support or even try using generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Jasper or WriteSonic to help you create meaningful content that you can tailor to sound more like you.

3. OPTIMISE FOR AI SEARCH AND AI OVERVIEWS

For the most part, optimising your web content for AI search is more about structure and clarity than it is about the substance of the content itself. So once you’ve got content that comprehensively addresses the questions your audience is searching for, there are some important structural considerations to think about.

Focus on clarity and structure

Bearing your audience in mind, keep your content concise, use descriptive headings, stick to two or three sentences in a paragraph, and consider using bulleted lists. Adopting a Q&A format can also be a great approach. And including images, descriptive graphics and even video can work well for providing additional context.

Consider as an example a custom landing page you may have set up to sell business cards. Including just a few sentences may be concise, but if they’re unclear or trying to be too clever with snappy copy they may miss the mark. Instead, you could:

• Make sure that each product sub-type has a distinct name and a simple description that differentiates it from the rest of your offering.
• When adding images, make sure that you include a relevant caption and clear, descriptive alt text.
• Consider including an FAQ section that addresses some of the questions searchers may want answered when they’re on the hunt for business cards. 
• If you’ve written a blog addressing any of these FAQs, be sure to include a link to it.
• If you have some good testimonials from happy business card customers, consider including those too.

Speak in simple terms

Remember that search queries are often phrased in a conversational tone, and become longer and even more chatty in tone when it comes to voice searches, which are growing rapidly in the UK. That type of language is what you need to respond to, so keep yours natural so that your content reads as if it were something you might say in response to a conversation with a real customer. Try reading it out loud before you post it if you need to. Does it really sound like you?

This is particularly important if you’re using generative AI to speed up your content creation, where human oversight is obviously also essential for checking quality and depth. 

Make it machine-readable

Have you got a great customer testimonial that you turned into an image to put on your landing page? Is that text anywhere else on your website? It’s important to ensure that content such as customer testimonials and case studies can be connected to the products to which they relate and/or the elements of your value proposition that they ‘prove’. If they remain hard to read - such as embedded in an image - they’re not likely to be ‘seen’ by either search engine crawlers or AI crawlers.

More on this on our blog post here: The Importance of Avoiding Text in Images

Keep your website organised

Make sure that your website is well-organised to make navigation easy for your users, but also to allow for easier accessibility by web crawlers and AI agents. From a user experience standpoint, this is largely about clarity and structure, but also navigability and how quickly visitors to your website will be able to find what they’re looking for.

When it comes to optimising for AI search, you’re engaging in a bit of future-proofing because AI crawlers haven’t yet reached even a third of Googlebot’s traffic. Nonetheless, AI crawler traffic is on the rise, so with this in mind several considerations are important:

• Make sure that your content is accessible with clean HTML and a logical content structure.
• Keep your most important content high up in the HTML and make sure that your site returns content as fast as possible. 
• Use clear meta descriptions and semantic markup such as basic SEO tags, proper heading structure and semantic elements. 
• Check the AI visibility of your content. According to this article from SearchEngineLand, as of January 2025 more than a third of AI crawler requests were resulting in 404 and other errors. 

And, of course, if all of these considerations read like another language to you, you can rest assured that if you’re using the VB Media platform to build your website, all of this has already been done for you behind the scenes.

4. DIVERSIFY YOUR CONTENT MIX

Long before conversations about AI’s impact on search, it was already a good idea to diversify the content formats you use. Blogs, for example, are great for customer engagement as well as search engines (and AI search), which is why VB Media features a built-in blog. Not only does this stand to boost engagement on your website, but it also gives you more fodder for sharing across social media, which - as we discussed in 10 marketing tactics to help you drive print buyers to your website and our Sell Print Anywhere guide - is an important part of increasing traffic to your website and driving sales.

Either way, if you weren’t already using blogs, videos, infographics, product images and other visual content on your website, now is the time to start. And remember to include descriptive alt text and clear, relevant metadata with your images to improve their visibility to search engines and AI crawlers.

It’s a lot to take in, but the good news with this latest evolution in search is that, while it is different, for the most part it still rewards good practice in web design, SEO and web content. If your website was already well designed and well structured then - subject to a bit of tweaking - it should continue to attract the right traffic provided that you maintain a strategy to regularly update it with high quality, relevant content that addresses the questions your customers and potential customers ask. And why wouldn’t you want to do that?

The images in this blog post were sourced from Unsplash.