Search is undergoing a fundamental shift as AI moves users from keywords to conversational queries, and increasingly delivers answers directly. During a recent Campaign webinar with Greenpark Digital, Sue Jones, Diageo’s chief digital officer, described the shift as “a reset in how we think about how consumers discover our brands” – one that rewards clear positioning and strong content.
The scale of change is already clear: a recent McKinsey study found that 40% of consumers have used AI chatbots before purchase across categories like beauty and fashion. For Firdaous El Honsali, CMO of beauty shopping platform Noli, this statistic marks a sign that brands “must adapt” as decision fatigue pushes people to seek help from AI.
While the opportunity is significant, the landscape is also more unforgiving. As Sam Barker, group partner for omnichannel search and insights, at Greenpark Digital put it, AI is now “forming opinions about brands… deciding what to trust,” meaning “you don’t compete just for visibility anymore, you compete for the narrative.” That makes consistency critical, as “gaps or inconsistencies” are quickly exposed.
Brands are already seeing the impact of this. Chris Pearce, Greenpark Digital’s group managing director, pointed to a significant drop-off in referral traffic, “from 30-50% and upwards”, while a live audience poll showed growing concern, with 54% most worried about AI assistants like ChatGPT and 38% about Google’s AI Overviews.
So what can marketers do to increase their brand’s visibility inside AI-generated answers?
1. Get your search engine optimisation (SEO) right
If discovery is changing, so too is optimisation.
El Honsali was clear on the fundamentals: “SEO is the backbone… and most of us are not yet getting [it] fully right.” That starts with practical steps like “proper FAQs… responding to consumer queries and making them easy to find.”
Barker echoed this, reframing the role of brand websites: “Your website… becomes that single source of truth,” but many brands “forget all of the conversational bits that LLMs look to retrieve.”
The real value lies in understanding emerging queries, said Jones: “It’s a real window into what consumers care about… sometimes they care more about versatility… sometimes heritage.” Those insights, she said, should guide where brands focus.
2. Be consistent and intent-driven
Beyond the basics, panellists emphasised two critical shifts: intent and consistency.
“We used to optimise for keywords,” said El Honsali. “Now we need to optimise for intent.” That requires content that works across both traditional search and AI systems.
Consistency, meanwhile, is becoming a ranking factor of its own: “Consumers love consistency, but LLMs do too… you need to be very mindful about which topics you want to own.”
That means building a coherent content ecosystem, from product pages to expert-led content, research and partnerships, to reinforce credibility.
3. Prioritise authority
Underlying all of this is a more fundamental mindset shift.
“LLMs aren’t ranking in the same way Google has,” said Barker. “They’re trying to build the best possible answer… stitching signals from across the entire internet.”
That means the key question is no longer ‘How do I rank?’ but “How do I become trusted enough to feature in that answer?”
The end goal is authority, but, as Firdaous warned, that can’t be shortcutted. She pointed marketers to platforms like Wikipedia, Reddit and YouTube to customer reviews, as “reputational drivers” that feed AI trust.
4. Consider an AI audit
Understanding where to act starts with knowing how your brand is currently showing up in AI.
Pearce pointed to the emergence of AI audits and tools, including Greenpark’s own, which scores and measures your product AI readiness. The tool goes beyond surface-level analysis, offering an overall readiness score alongside deeper insights into areas like technical page readiness, AI model ranking and consumer query visibility.
Crucially, these tools can also show whether a brand is appearing in AI-generated answers, “where you rank within that answer,” and how visible you are across different models.
For Barker, the real value lies in prioritisation. Audits help marketers identify the biggest areas for opportunity – whether that’s earned media, technical performance or outdated content – and focus efforts accordingly.
5. Adapt your measurement strategy
Perhaps the biggest change comes in how success is measured.
“Stop thinking about clicks and start thinking about influence,” said Barker. “Before people ever land on your website… there’s so much decision-making happening within LLMs.”
New questions for marketers emerge: “Was I recommended? Was I described positively? Was I positioned as a credible option?”
That requires new metrics – from share of voice to sentiment – as traditional attribution models struggle to capture AI’s impact.
For El Honsali, measurement is also key to internal buy-in: “The biggest struggle… is to convince your leaders that you’re making the right choices.” The solution is to define clear KPIs for this new landscape: “This is what we used to measure, this is what we measure today… then you’ll get the buy-in.”
In a world where AI shapes the answer, the brands that win will be those trusted enough to be part of it. That means shifting from chasing clicks to building consistent, credible signals across the entire ecosystem.
To understand how your brand is showing up, and where to focus first, explore Greenpark’s AI visibility audit - OPTIQ.