Introduction
Less than the sales pitches suggest. AI search reads the same public web that Google always has, so the foundations are identical: plain answers on your website, genuine reviews, real mentions, consistent details. What changes is how the result reaches your customer: one spoken answer instead of ten links, and that shift changes what wins.
The same engine, a different front door
When someone asks ChatGPT for a recommendation, or Google puts an AI summary at the top of the page, the machinery underneath is still search. The AI runs searches, reads the results, and writes what it found in sentences. That’s why a business that’s easy to find on Google is usually the raw material for AI answers too, and why nothing about the last decade of doing the basics well is wasted. If your business already shows up, you’re starting ahead. If it doesn’t, the same repairs fix both. You can check where you stand in about two minutes with the self-test.
What stays the same
The things that made a business findable on Google are the same things an AI needs before it can recommend you: a website that says what you do and where in actual sentences, a complete Google profile with honest reviews, other real websites mentioning you, and the same name, number and suburb everywhere. None of that is old news. It’s the entry fee for both doors.
The three differences that actually matter
- One answer instead of ten links. On a results page, coming third still got you seen. An AI answer names one, two, maybe three businesses, and everyone else may as well not exist for that question. People ask us how to rank in ChatGPT, and the honest answer is that there’s no ranking to climb: there’s being the business the answer trusts enough to name, because the evidence is public and checkable.
- Your sentences get read out. Google showed a snippet and people clicked through to judge for themselves. An AI reads your pages and repeats what they say in its own words. Slogans dissolve in that process; specific, checkable claims survive it. “Quality service, competitive prices” gives an AI nothing to repeat. “We answer enquiries the same business day and you own every account we set up” is a sentence an answer can carry.
- The click may never happen. Plenty of people now get their answer without visiting a single website. That means your name, number and what makes you worth calling have to survive inside the answer itself, and the answer is assembled from your public records: your site, your profile, your reviews, what others say. If those disagree with each other, the answer hedges, or picks someone else.
Where the money should go
Here’s the practical version. You do not need a separate “AI SEO” budget, and you should be suspicious of anyone selling AI optimisation as a secret product apart from the ordinary work. The same substance feeds both: answer real questions in plain words, document real jobs, collect honest reviews, earn real mentions. You’ll also hear acronyms like AEO and GEO. They’re consultant names for the same idea: being quotable and being checkable. The full step-by-step is in how to get found on AI search, and it’s the exact work our Growth stage does for clients.
How to measure each one
Google SEO you measure the familiar way: impressions, clicks and calls. AI search is younger and blunter: run the self-test monthly and note whether you’re named, watch your analytics for visitors arriving from chatgpt.com, and watch whether Google’s AI summary for your trade mentions you. If the foundations are improving, both doors tend to open together, because they’re fed by the same building.
FAQs
Do I need to redo my SEO for AI search?
No. If your SEO was built on real answers and real evidence, AI search rewards the same work. If it was built on tricks and stuffed keywords, it was already living on borrowed time, and AI answers are simply the collector.
Is SEO dead?
No, and the people declaring it dead are usually selling the replacement. The plumbing behind AI answers is still search. What’s dying is the version of SEO that gamed rankings without substance.
Should I pay extra for AI search optimisation?
Pay for substance, whatever it’s called: pages that answer questions, documented work, reviews, mentions. If a proposal can’t explain what it changes about those, the acronym on the invoice is doing all the work.
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