AI chatbots trigger a new race for brand visibility in search results

Brands rush to optimise for AI chatbots as SEO evolves.

The rise of AI-powered chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google's Overviews feature is fundamentally reshaping how users find information online. In response, advertising groups and tech start-ups are racing to help brands boost their visibility in AI-generated search results, marking a new era of search engine optimisation (SEO), the Financial Times reported.

Brandtech and Profound have created software that tracks and forecasts how often brands are talked about by AI models. Brands such as fintech company Ramp, job search website Indeed, and Chivas Brothers from Pernod Ricard have already begun using these tools to preserve their presence in an ever-changing search landscape.

"This is about acknowledging large language models as the ultimate influencer," added Jack Smyth of Brandtech.

The new AI search optimisation software inputs thousands of prompts into chatbots, measuring how the models react and establishing brand rankings. The insights enable agencies to recommend companies on how to improve web content and images for AI visibility.

Brandtech's "Share of Model" product provides brands with detailed insights on performance across AI services and suggests ways to tweak digital assets for best exposure. Deep, supported by Khosla Ventures, has a data analytics platform monitoring industry-specific queries and brand performance on AI searches.

"Traditional search has been one of the largest monopolies in the history of the internet," declared James Cadwallader, co-founder of Profound. "And for the first time, the castle walls seem to be cracking. It's a CDs to streaming moment."

Bain & Company research points to the changing landscape: 80% of consumers are now using AI-authored results for at least 40% of their searches, reducing organic web traffic by as much as 25%. In addition, roughly 60% of searches are now ending without a user clicking through to a website.

Despite these trends, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, posted a 10% increase in its core search and ad revenue to $50.7 billion in the first quarter. The solid showing comforted investors worried about competition from AI chatbots such as Elon Musk's Grok and internal threats from Google's Gemini chatbot siphoning off ad clicks.

However, agencies are driving hard to enable brands to adapt to the new world in which showing up in AI-created responses is ever more important.

Experts point out that optimising for AI search is much more sophisticated than for traditional SEO. AI models such as ChatGPT don't just index keywords; they judge content credibility, authority, and relevance in a much more subtle manner.

Adam Fry, Search lead at ChatGPT, said that it is seeing users pose more sophisticated queries like, "Can you get a nice restaurant with low noise levels where a family of five can eat in New York?"—mirroring the shift away from low-level keyword-based searches towards high-contextual queries.

Perplexity, which is an AI-powered search engine, is piloting sponsored "questions" as a new variant of AI-native advertising, potentially giving brands an additional avenue towards visibility.

"LLMs are more familiar with more content and can be more subtle. They can identify contradictions or disinformation," Perplexity co-founder Denis Yarats said. "It is much more difficult to be an SEO target because the only real strategy is to be as relevant as one can and offer good content."

As generative AI improves, those brands that do not evolve may lose relevance and visibility in the next era of online search.