Morning All,

No customers, no business.

A battle tested law of business that hasn't changed, but the world has.

Today, the bar is much higher. Now? With AI, in theory anyone can build anything.

You have a great product? Fantastic.
Do you have distribution? If the answer is no, you’re invisible.

Your product or brand doesn’t matter until people use it.
And no one will use it unless you can reach them.

AI search recommendations are quickly becoming the most important foundation for online marketing...and that's what we're discussing today.

Goole and the future of search, Semrush and how to measure brand visibility, and 5 practical things you can do to get recommended by AI systems.

Google And The Future Of Search, Maps And AI Agents

Google like all companies who are successfully implementing AI systems, does not see AI as a side feature layered on top of its products. They see AI as the foundation for the next version of them. AI is changing the way people search, how Maps works, how ads are delivered, and even how Google builds. The number one search company in the world is rebuilding it's search business from the ground up entirely around AI. The future of search is less about hunting through links and more about getting to the best answer faster, with enough context to make that answer genuinely useful. To that end, the company is shifting toward understanding intent, reasoning through complexity, and in some cases helping us act on what we find.

The old/current search paradigm relies on users successfully translating what they want into clunky keywords that match content on a site. Nick Fox, Google's SVP of Knowledge and Information Products, recently laid out a vision of a future where search doesn't just find information but understands what you actually mean, and autonomously acts on it.

Google is blending reasoning, summarisation, and web results into a single experience, instead of forcing users into separate modes. Maps is quietly becoming one of the most practically useful AI products Google has. The feature "Ask Maps" can now handle highly specific, contextual queries like "find a family-friendly restaurant near me that's open right now and serves fish and chips". That shifts Maps from a navigation tool into a genuine decision support system for daily life. Given that most of our daily buying decisions are local, contextual and time-sensitive; my prediction is this is where we'll see the most practical consumer AI value over the next few years.

As great and powerfully useful as that sounds, what does that mean for website owners and content creators? If their favourite AI system directly gives them the answers, will people still click through to content? And if fewer people visit websites, what happens to publishers, creators, and the incentive to produce quality information? Nick Fox believes people still want to go deeper, especially when they care about a topic. His contention is that AI summaries are a great starting point to get peoples feet wet, but many users will still want deeper analysis and original reporting.

Whilst the internet as we know it is unlikely to disappear, the data doesn't support his optimism. In February 2024, Gartner predicted that traditional search engine volume would drop 25% by 2026 due to AI chatbots and virtual agents. That prediction was spot on.

• Zero-click searches, where a user gets an answer without visiting any website, increased from 56% to 69% of all queries between May 2024 and May 2025.
• Google’s AI Overviews now trigger on 48% of all tracked search queries, +58% vs last year.
• AI overviews now appear on 80 to 88% of informational queries depending on the industry.
• Organic click-through rates have crashed 61% for queries where AI Overviews appear.
• ChatGPT now has 800 million weekly active users.
• Perplexity processed 780 million queries in May 2025 alone.

AI search visibility is business critical. Got it. But what does that mean and how do you measure it? That's where Semrush comes in...

Semrush launches new framework for measuring brand visibility

Semrush defines brand visibility as “the degree to which a brand is discoverable, authoritatively represented, and commercially actionable across both human and machine-mediated discovery surfaces.” Agentic Search Optimisation (ASO) is a new discipline for measuring brand presence across AI-generated answers, traditional search, and autonomous AI agents. While 94% of brands invest heavily in traditional SEO, 62% are what Semrush calls “technically invisible” to gen AI models.

There is only an 8 to 12% overlap between the results that appear in AI-generated answers and those that rank well in traditional search. AI systems do not rank pages. They synthesise answers from training data, real-time retrieval, and internal reasoning, and the factors that determine whether a brand is included in recommendations, are not the same factors that determine whether it ranks on page one of Google.

ASO is built for a world in which an AI agent evaluates brand relevance and authority on behalf of the user, then gives a recommendation without presenting alternatives.

In a world where 64% of consumers now use AI tools to discover new products and brands, discoverability in these systems is crucial for any brand that wants to thrive in an AI economy. The question isn't whether AI search will change how they are discovered. It's whether they will be discovered at all. Not to mention AI search traffic is significantly more valuable. Traffic from AI search converts at 14.2% vs. 2.8% from traditional Google search. If your brand isn’t showing up in those answers, you’re losing out on one of the highest converting referral traffic sources yet brands have less control over whether an AI system mentions them at all.

Thankfully, little control doesn't mean no control. There are a range of things that brands can do to influence their visibility in AI search. Yes, I'm telling you there's a chance...

5 Ways to Get Your Brand Into AI Search Results

1. Pick one category and own it completely

The fastest way to confuse an AI system is to try and be all things to all men. The GEO research paper out of Princeton demonstrated that deliberate GEO (generative engine optimisation) improved source visibility by up to 40%. That optimisation starts with clarity. If you're unclear what category you own, all your other efforts might be wasted.

Pick one. Own it. You can expand later, but only after the machines know who you are.

2. Create a machine readable identity

Your first job is building the minimum footprint that tells AI crawlers “this brand exists, this is what it does, and here’s proof.” That means

• A homepage with structured, clear information about your offering.
• An about page that includes real people.
• The three or four niche directory listings that matter in your vertical/niche.
• review profiles on the platform your ICP actually trusts.

​Perplexity’s team explained in a Search Engine Journal interview that their system doesn’t retrieve whole pages. Instead it pulls the snippets from across the web it deems to be most relevant. Small, clear text blocks travel better than dense, incoherent narratives. If your brand information is scattered across inconsistent pages, the retrieval system has less usable material to grab.

3. Stack proof signals from everywhere

AI systems, are like a private members club, they want someone else to vouch for you before they let you in the club. External mentions from e.g. reviews, press, and third-party lists are the currency that AI systems value most. Brands cited within AI Overviews received 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks compared to brands that weren’t cited so this is an incredibly valuable workflow.

4. Earn ongoing external validation

AI systems definitely have a "Eddie, what have you done for me lately" mindset and they reward recency. And patterns. LLMs want to have many touch points with your brand across multiple independent contexts over time before recommending you.

• Get included in curated industry lists.
• Write guest pieces for niche publications.
• Send your product to reviewers who cover your space.
• Contribute meaningfully in communities where your ICP lives e.g. Reddit and industry forums.

5. Track your AI visibility like you track your SEO

Access to accurate data about how things are going is gold dust. More accurate data = better decisions = better outcomes. Tools like Semrush let you programmatically track how often AI systems mention your brand. Alternatively here's a low-tech way:

Open one or all AI chatbots of your choice once a month and run a fixed set of prompts. Over time, track your visibility in the responses from these prompts. Here's an example batch:

• Test “best X for Y” to see if you show up.
• Test “X vs. Y” to see if you’re considered a viable alternative.
• Test “why not X” to find out what you're missing and what's keeping you out.

When you’re missing from answers, the diagnostic question is always the same: What proof is the model not finding? Ask the AI directly. It’ll tell you. Now, you should take the answer with a grain of salt, as it's not the be all and end all. The answers may even change despite being presented with the same facts. However, it’s a very useful starting point.

Founders, coaches, consultants, and business owners across industries are slowly waking up to the same harsh truth: Distribution is the new moat. Whether you're a freelancer, small business owner, or an operator working at a corporate firm, AI search visibility is now non-negotiable. The brands that will win in AI search won't necessarily be the ones with the biggest budgets. They'll be the ones that understand what retrieval systems need to see before they're willing to put a name forward. Build methodically, earn external validation consistently, and treat AI visibility like it's fitness i.e. an ongoing lifestyle choice rather than a one-time event.
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