You know your marketing. But does AI know you?

If a potential customer asked, “Why should we work with you?”, you probably wouldn’t be short of an answer. You’d talk about the problems you solve, the experience in your team and the things that keep clients coming back. You might even have a story about the time you pulled off something a customer thought was impossible.

Now imagine they ask ChatGPT about your business before you get that conversation. Or they read an AI-generated summary on Google while sizing up their options. Would they get the version you’d be proud to introduce, or a description so vague it could belong to half your competitors?

That’s where AI search gets interesting. It’s not just about whether your name appears. It’s about whether the answer gives someone a reason to think, “They sound like the people we need.”

Your first impression might happen without you

You don’t need to be an enthusiastic ChatGPT user to have met AI search. If you’ve ever read one of the summaries above Google’s usual website links, you’ve already seen it doing its thing: bringing information together so you can get an answer without opening every page yourself.

Ofcom’s Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes Report 2026 found that 75% of UK online adults said they read AI-generated search summaries at least sometimes. The same research found that 42% of UK online adults read them “often” or “always”. [1]

That research was carried out in autumn 2025, and there’s an important distinction here: reading an answer isn’t the same as trusting it or buying something because of it. But those figures do give us a good reason to look beyond the website homepage when thinking about first impressions.

What’s with all the acronyms?

Just when you’d got comfortable with SEO, along come GEO and AEO. The names make this sound more mysterious than it needs to be, so here’s the plain-English version:

• SEO means search engine optimisation: helping people find your website through search engines such as Google.
• GEO means generative engine optimisation: looking at how your business and its information appear in AI-generated answers.
• AEO means answer engine optimisation: helping information appear as a direct answer to someone’s question.

There’s overlap, and not everyone uses these labels in quite the same way. You won’t need to pass an acronym test before making a sensible marketing decision. The useful question underneath it all is whether people can find your business, understand it and see why it might be right for them.

Would you choose your business from that description?

Picture an accountancy firm that clients turn to for much more than the annual accounts. It helps owners work through big decisions, plan for growth and make sense of the numbers when things get complicated. Then an AI answer introduces it as “a local bookkeeping service”.

Not entirely wrong, but hardly the introduction the team had in mind. It leaves out the very thing that makes clients value them. An old service description or an almost-invisible specialist skill can have the same effect: your name is there, but the best reason to choose you isn’t.

Before you rush off to rewrite everything, remember that one answer isn’t a verdict. Responses can change with the question, the tool and the information available. A disappointing description is something to investigate, not a sign that years of good marketing have gone out of the window.

You’ve probably got more to build on than you think

Clear service descriptions, useful answers to customer questions and evidence of your experience were good marketing before AI search arrived. They still are. If you’ve put time into those things, this is a reason to build on the work, not start again with an empty page and a bigger budget.

Google says the SEO basics still apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode, its AI-powered search features. There are no extra technical requirements or special optimisation needed for those features. [2] That’s Google’s guidance, not a rule for every AI tool, but it’s worth remembering when someone offers you a secret shortcut.

Nobody can honestly guarantee an AI recommendation. What you can do is get a better understanding of how your business is described and what’s being missed. That’s a much more useful starting point than filling your website with AI-flavoured content and hoping for the best.

What would you want a customer to know?

Think about the conversation you’d want to have before someone decided whether to call you. Perhaps you’d explain who you’re particularly good at helping, a challenge your team knows inside out or the experience that makes you a reassuring choice. Is that coming through when people discover you online?

At Black Swan Agency, that’s the kind of question we like getting into. Research and technology help us see the picture; marketing experience and creative thinking help us work out what to do about it. Because a mention is nice, but helping someone understand why you’re worth talking to is far more useful.

Let’s see how your business is coming across.

Sources

[1] Ofcom: Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes Report 2026 (published 2 April 2026).

Section: “AI in search is becoming embedded in everyday information-seeking”. The overall tracker surveyed 7,533 UK adults aged 16+ between 29 September and 28 November 2025; the cited percentages relate to online adults. Respondents were shown an example AI search summary. These findings measure self-reported reading frequency, not clicks, purchases or trust.

[2] Google Search Central: AI features and your website.

Official guidance on AI Overviews, AI Mode, eligibility and SEO foundations.