Something has changed about the way people find businesses. And most business owners haven’t noticed yet.
Go to Google right now and search for something like “best plumber in Melbourne” or “how to choose a dentist near me.” Before you see a single website link, there’s a box at the top of the page. Google’s AI has already written an answer. It’s recommending specific businesses, summarising reviews, pulling information from websites, and giving the searcher exactly what they need without them clicking on anything.
That box is called an AI Overview. And it’s just the beginning.
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Siri, and a dozen other AI tools are doing the same thing. Millions of people are now asking AI for recommendations instead of scrolling through ten blue links. And the businesses that show up in those AI-generated answers are getting the attention. Everyone else is becoming invisible.
The question isn’t whether this will affect your business. It already is. The question is whether you’re going to do something about it while your competitors are still asleep.
What's actually happening and why it matters
For the last twenty years, the game was simple. Someone searches on Google. Ten results show up. You try to be one of them. The higher you rank, the more clicks you get.
That game is changing.
Google’s AI Overviews now appear on roughly 30 percent of all searches. For local service searches like “emergency electrician near me” or “best Thai restaurant in Southbank,” the AI Overview often answers the question completely. It names businesses, pulls in ratings, summarises what reviewers said, and sometimes even includes pricing or contact details. The searcher gets their answer without ever visiting a website.
Meanwhile, a growing number of people aren’t even using Google at all. Research shows that around 40 percent of younger consumers now turn to AI tools like ChatGPT and TikTok for the kind of searches they used to type into Google. They’re asking “what’s a good physio in Brunswick?” and getting a conversational recommendation rather than a list of links.
This doesn’t mean SEO is dead. Far from it. But it does mean that the old approach of just ranking on page one and waiting for clicks isn’t enough anymore. Your business needs to be the one that AI tools choose to recommend. And that requires a different kind of optimisation.
Why some businesses show up in AI answers and others don't
AI tools don’t just pick businesses at random. They pull from specific sources and look for specific signals. Understanding what those signals are is the difference between being recommended and being ignored.
Structured, clear content wins
AI tools need to understand what your business does, where you operate, who you serve, and what makes you different. If your website is vague, generic, or badly organised, the AI can't extract useful information from it. A plumber whose website clearly states "24/7 emergency plumber in Melbourne's eastern suburbs, specialising in blocked drains, hot water systems, and gas fitting" gives the AI something to work with. A plumber whose homepage says "we provide quality plumbing solutions" does not.
01
Reviews and reputation matter more than ever.
AI tools heavily weight third-party signals like Google reviews, industry directories, and mentions across the web. A business with 80 genuine Google reviews and a 4.8 star rating is far more likely to be recommended than a competitor with 12 reviews and no recent activity. The AI is trying to recommend the best option, and reviews are one of the strongest signals it uses to determine that.
02
Authority and trust signals compound.
Being mentioned on reputable websites, having consistent business information across directories, publishing genuinely useful content on your own site, and maintaining an active Google Business Profile all contribute to what AI tools interpret as authority. The more signals you send, the more likely the AI is to trust your business enough to recommend it.
03
Technical foundations still matter.
Fast load times, mobile-friendly design, proper schema markup, clean URL structures, and well-organised heading hierarchies aren't just SEO basics anymore. They're the technical signals that make it easy for AI tools to crawl, understand, and reference your content. If your website is technically messy, the AI simply can't read it properly.
04
What you can do about it right now
You don’t need to hire an AI consultant or rebuild your entire website. Most of the work involved in showing up in AI search is an extension of good SEO practice. The businesses that are already investing in proper SEO are the ones best positioned for this shift. That said, there are specific things you can do right now to improve your chances.
Audit your Google Business Profile.
This is the single most important thing for local businesses. Make sure every field is filled in accurately. Business name, address, phone number, website, hours, services, service areas, photos, and a detailed business description that naturally includes the services you offer and the areas you cover. Post updates regularly. Respond to every review. AI tools pull heavily from Google Business Profile data.
Get more genuine reviews and respond to all of them.
Not just five-star reviews. Genuine, detailed reviews from real customers that mention specific services, locations, and experiences. A review that says "Called them for a blocked drain in Kew and they were there within an hour, fixed it quickly, and charged a fair price" gives AI far more to work with than a review that says "Great service, highly recommend." Respond to every review, positive and negative. AI tools see that engagement as a trust signal.
Make your website content specific and structured.
Every service you offer should have its own dedicated page with a clear heading, a specific description of what the service involves, who it's for, where you offer it, and what the customer can expect. Generic pages that try to cover everything in one place perform badly in both traditional SEO and AI search. Think about the questions your customers actually ask and make sure your website answers them clearly.
Add FAQ content to your key pages.
AI tools love well-structured question and answer content because it maps directly to the conversational queries people ask. If someone asks ChatGPT "how much does a website cost in Melbourne?" and your website has a clearly structured FAQ that answers that exact question, you're far more likely to be referenced. Keep the questions natural and the answers genuinely useful, not keyword-stuffed.
Ensure your technical SEO is clean.
Schema markup tells search engines and AI tools exactly what your content means. LocalBusiness schema, FAQ schema, service schema, and review schema all help AI tools understand and reference your business accurately. If your website doesn't have schema markup, you're essentially making the AI guess what your content is about instead of telling it directly.
What most agencies are missing
Here’s the thing that most digital marketing agencies won’t tell you: they aren’t thinking about this yet. They’re still running the 2019 SEO playbook. Keyword research, backlinks, monthly blog posts, and a report that shows ranking improvements for keywords that may or may not generate actual revenue.
That playbook still works. But it’s incomplete.
The agencies that are genuinely ahead of this are the ones treating AI search optimisation as a built-in part of every SEO engagement, not a separate service with a separate fee. Because the truth is, good AEO and good SEO share the same foundations. Authority, structured content, technical precision, and genuine relevance to what real people are searching for.
If your current SEO provider hasn’t mentioned AI search, AI Overviews, or AEO to you yet, that tells you something about how closely they’re paying attention.
The businesses that move first will own this
AI search is following the same pattern that traditional SEO did fifteen years ago. Back then, the businesses that invested in SEO early got a head start that their competitors struggled to catch up with for years. The same dynamic is playing out now with AI search.
Right now, almost nobody in most local markets is actively optimising for AI search results. That means the barrier to entry is low. The businesses that start structuring their content, building their authority, and optimising their online presence for AI recommendations now will establish a position that becomes harder and harder for competitors to challenge as the space gets more crowded.
This isn’t about chasing a trend. AI search isn’t going away. Every major search engine, every virtual assistant, and every AI tool is moving in this direction. The question for your business isn’t whether to adapt. It’s whether you adapt now while the advantage is easy to win, or later when everyone else has caught up and the cost of competing has tripled.
Not sure where you stand?
We include AI search optimisation in every SEO engagement as standard. Not as an add-on. Not as a separate invoice. Because the work that makes you visible on Google is the same work that makes AI tools recommend you. Same foundations. Same team. Same strategy.
If you want to know where your business currently stands in AI search, whether your content is structured to be recommended, and what your competitors are doing about it, we’ll tell you.
No jargon. No pitch. Just a clear picture of where you stand and what to do next.
