If we rank on Google, do we still need to think about AI search?
Yes, but this is not your cue to bin your SEO strategy. If your website ranks well on Google and brings in useful enquiries, that’s good work doing its job. Keep it going. AI search is worth a look because it adds something your ranking report can’t tell you: what happens when people ask for help choosing a business, rather than just a list of websites.
You’ve probably done something similar yourself when choosing a supplier. You start with a search, realise you’re not entirely sure what you need, then ask a more specific question. “Who does this?” becomes “Who would be good at this for a business like ours?” That second question is where things get interesting.
Your customers don’t always search like a ranking report
Say you sell stock management software. You’re doing nicely on Google for your company name and some of your main services. Meanwhile, a potential customer is asking an AI tool, “Which stock management system would suit a UK manufacturer with several sites?”
That’s not a tidy little keyword. It’s a real business problem, with context attached. Your software could be a great fit, but the ranking report sitting in your inbox won’t tell you whether you’re in that conversation—or whether the answer understands what makes you relevant.
And this isn’t a simple case of Google on one side and ChatGPT on the other. Google has AI-powered search features too, including those summaries above the familiar website links. Someone can start comparing their options before they’ve opened a single company homepage.
You don’t need to predict every question a customer might ask. But if you only look at the searches you already track, you could be missing a useful part of how they’re making their decision.
Does the SEO work we’ve done still count?
Absolutely. SEO, or search engine optimisation, is the work that helps people find your website through search engines. Google says those same basics remain relevant to AI Overviews and AI Mode, its AI-powered search features. There are no extra technical requirements for those features. [1] That’s worth remembering before anyone convinces you that everything you’ve done needs replacing.
There is a practical detail worth knowing. For a page to be considered as a supporting link in those AI results, Google needs to have indexed it—found and stored it for search—and be able to show it with a snippet, the short description beneath a search link. [1] Making your website accessible, useful and clear hasn’t gone out of fashion.
Being eligible isn’t the same as getting a guaranteed place, though. Google can draw on related searches and different sources when putting an AI answer together, and AI Overviews don’t appear for every question. [1] A strong position for one search doesn’t automatically carry over into every related answer.
One more thing to keep straight: this is Google explaining Google. It’s useful guidance, but it doesn’t tell us exactly how ChatGPT, Claude or another AI service will describe your business. They’re different tools, not interchangeable versions of the same results page.
What else deserves a place in the conversation?
Keep asking “Where do we rank?” Just give it some company. Think about the decisions your customers are actually trying to make, and ask:
- If someone describes their problem without knowing your name, can they still discover you?
- When they do find you, is it clear why you’d be a good fit—not just what you sell?
- Are they meeting the business you are today, or the version you were three years ago?
You might spot an opportunity you hadn’t considered. You might also find that your existing marketing is doing more than you thought. Both are useful discoveries, especially before you give another project your time and budget.
And don’t let one missing mention ruin your morning. AI answers can vary with the question, the tool and the information available. Look for patterns across relevant questions before deciding there’s a problem; one response is a very small sample to build a marketing plan around.
You don’t need another project without a good reason
Most business owners aren’t sitting around wishing they had more marketing tasks. If your website performs well on Google, the sensible move is to protect that work while getting a better view of what else customers encounter. Not drop everything because a new tool has arrived.
If an important service is missing from the picture, or your strongest experience isn’t coming through, that gives you something specific to consider. It’s a much better reason to act than “everyone’s talking about AI”. You don’t need a separate plan for every platform; you need to know which work is worth doing for your business.
That’s how we approach it at Black Swan Agency. We bring research, marketing experience and creative thinking together to help you make those calls. We’re interested in finding the opportunity that makes sense for you, not making your to-do list look more impressive.
Fancy getting a better feel for where you stand? Our free Marketing Visibility Check is a starting point based on your answers, not a live website audit. If you’d rather get comfortable with the subject first, our Business Owner’s Guide to AI Search explains it without expecting you to become the office AI expert.
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Explore The Business Owner’s Guide to AI Search