AI agents and their impact on search
AI agents are emerging alongside traditional search engines as the starting point of discovery. The way they perceive and present your brand shapes customer perception, trust and buying decisions. Do you know what ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or Gemini are say about your brand?
AI large language models don’t know your brand the way people do. They learn from web content, based on structured data, citations, reviews, and the context you’ve built across digital touchpoints.
AI isn’t just reflecting your brand; it’s actively influencing how your audience perceives and interacts with you!
Some history and context
Think back to the days in 2014-2018 when you may have cared about your Klout score. Klout, a now defunct website that used social media analytics to rate users influence was primarily limited to social media, applying little context to outside sources like blog posts, earned print and broadcast media and publicity and book publishing. Later versions gave a nod to influences outside social, but Klout was an earlier uses of automation and data collecting to measure perception and influence.
AI picks up where Klout left off, but with a lot more data capabilities, and infinitely more clout itself! AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini, used for search and discovery are disrupting search and the way brands are built and perceived. It’s kind of a big deal.
Gartner research estimates that by 2028 organic search traffic will decrease by 50% or more as consumers embrace generative AI-powered search.
How AI interprets your brand
AI doesn’t just read your brand; it interprets it. Instead of scanning isolated keywords, AI systems build a contextual map of who you are, what you offer, and how the world perceives you. This understanding comes from a combination of techniques like knowledge graphs, entity linking, relationship mapping, sentiment analysis and content alignment.
The contextual map
Knowledge graphs track brands, products or people and the relationships between them. Entity linking captures context between these relationships. Relationship mapping helps uncover patterns. Sentiment analysis looks at tone across content in reviews, forums, social platforms and media. Content alignment is a check in on the contents alignment with a brand’s tone and values. The more consistent, the clearer the identity becomes in AI systems.
A travel industry example: Carnival Cruise Lines
Knowledge graphs: Linking Carnival to cruising, but also identifying competitors in the cruising category such as Celebrity, Royal Caribbean or Disney.
Entity linking: Ensuring the brand Carnival being discussed in various articles is only gathering content about cruising, and not related to a public celebration or circus.
Relationship mapping: Discovering what features of Carnival Cruises resonate with a certain customer group.
Sentiment analysis: Interpreting Carnival’s reputation and credibility over time through positive, neutral and negative content analyzed in context.
Content alignment: Checking the tone and values reflected on a website page or a social media post with a news article about the company.
Taken together, this means that AI data models don’t just see website content, SEO keywords, reach or social media activity, they gather a complex picture.
Your brand story was never yours alone. Customers, communities, and competitors have always shaped it. What’s changing is that AI amplifies those influences in real time.
How search and perception is changing
In a pre-AI era, search meant competing for SEO keywords and page one visibility. Now discovery is expanding beyond links, to AI generated results. You’ve no doubt noticed this even in Google, how the AI summary dominates top results, often negating the need to link to source content. (Although anecdotally, I can tell you that my posts which rank well for traditional keyword SEO have seen an increase in traffic, often driven by links from AI source content. The key seems to be to be perceived by AI as a credible and comprehensive source of information)
It’s a paradox for brands. You need content sourced from across the internet to show up in AI search, but you also risk losing viewers who don’t chose to link to your source content if it does show up in AI.
Perhaps the bigger risk is not just competing for attention, it’s competing for interpretation.
10 Tips to help AI effectively position your brand
What can you do to help AI interpret your brand correctly? Here are some tips:
1. Structure online content within your control (website, social media home pages, contributed articles) to state clearly who you are, what you offer, and why it matters.
2. Bulk up on trust anchors that validate your brand – publications, industry associations listings and mentions, credible researchers that reference your brand.
3. Be consistent with your brand message across all social media platforms.
4. Depth and authority of content matter more than sheer volume of content. Expertise and authority now matter more than keyword density, although I would still consider keywords important.
5. Reputation signals like reviews, press coverage, discussion forum mentions all matter more than ever now.
6. Keep anchor content fresh. The about section, product or service offering overviews are disproportionately influential. Make sure these sections reflect your current positioning.
7. Work on visibility across multiple touchpoints – think industry publication citations, podcast guest appearances, media interviews, or participation in online discussions.
8. Publish regular blog posts, keep content current, and mix in videos, FAQs or interviews in your content to increase likelihood that your content is represented in different context or queries.
9. Think about user intent and context. What problem is your audience trying to solve? Structure content around that rather than keyword stuffing.
10. Infuse your unique brand voice and tone into copy. Generic descriptions fade in summaries, but unique, memorable language has a better chance of surviving AI compression, and carrying your brand identity with it.
Do an AI audit
Curious to see what AI says about you? Don’t assume your website is the only source AI is pulling from. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini to describe your brand. Then track how descriptions change over time, perhaps each quarter. See if what shows up is accurate. See what might be missing. And check if old content is tainting your current positioning.
As always, you’re offering very clear and helpful information, Mary. If you ever do a live presentation of this somewhere, please let me know where I can sign up! 🙂