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Ai Is Changing How Customers Find Businesses. Are You Still Visible?
Right now, out there on the Internet, someone is thinking about your product or service and wanting to learn more about your company. The crazy part is that they aren’t going to your website. Instead, potential customers are doing their research and having sales conversations with the help of an Ai tool.
Not that long ago, prospects followed a familiar path. They would go to a search engine, most likely Google, and do a search. They would read the links presented, review the results, and then visit one or several related websites. Once they had a shortlist, they would research and compare the companies. That information enabled them to make a choice, and they would reach out to contact the company or make the purchase on their website.
Not anymore. Now more and more prospects are going to an LLM Ai-Assisted Search. They might use Google’s Ai Overview or type their question directly into an Ai Chat (ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, etc.).
The questions customers are asking are more detailed than traditional search queries, and the answers they get back are substantially more specific to their needs. They may ask a few follow-up questions, ask about the companies, compare product features, etc., all without ever visiting a single website.
In the end, by the time they reach your website, customers are already informed and most likely ready to make a purchase. Do you trust what Ai is saying about your company, products, or services? Are you even showing up alongside your competitors?
You’re smart. You already knew this was happening. You’ve been sitting there wondering why you’re bothering to spend time and money on SEO when it feels like fewer people are using traditional search engines.
Ai does not make SEO irrelevant. AEO (AiO, GEO, AiSEO, etc.) is not replacing SEO. Any agency telling you that is just trying to use fear (especially FOMO) to get you to spend money with them.
In reality, modern SEO fundamentals and best practices are needed even more. A business that appears strong in traditional search also appears strong to Ai bots. Having a well-structured website, clear service pages, useful expert content, and local relevance are all just as important to AEO as they are to SEO, if not more so.
Ai uses various criteria to assess your website’s credibility, engagement potential and value to potential customers. Hundreds of these brand signals, like reviews, semantic relevancy and engagement metrics, all roll up together to paint a picture of the value of your brand. Because of that, good marketing agencies are making a shift. And good clients are listening; we’re no longer just focused on “what keywords do we rank for”. Instead, we’re moving to asking, “how well does the Internet understand our business?”
What do your brand signals say to Ai about your business?
Brand signals. Great, another marketing term. Even the initials are BS. Unfortunately, the term is critical to your success. Brand signals are the collection of information (all info) from across the web that helps people, search engines, and Ai systems establish who your company is, what you do and whether or not you can be trusted.
Some examples of what makes up a brand signal are:
As you can see, the list is long. But it’s not comprehensive. There could be hundreds of other data points that your company has online that are being added to the equation. No single signal determines visibility. You can’t focus on just one aspect of the brand signal. Ai is too smart and too thorough to be fooled by one factor. Instead, multiple consistent signals help paint a stronger picture of the business.
Search visibility is increasingly becoming a brand problem, not simply a keyword problem.
Traditional SEO had a heavy focus on keywords. Yes, we looked at backlinks, page authority, etc., but all of it was to predict how well we would rank for specific keywords. Why wouldn’t we, when keywords determined how you ranked in search results, and search results determined who clicked to your website.
Don’t get me wrong, keywords are still useful because they help determine language, intent, and demand. But modern search and keyword optimization have evolved to also focus on understanding all signals about your business like:
Let's take this example, imagine your website says something like,
“We Deliver Innovative Solutions Designed Around Your Needs.”
If you look at what it really says, you realize that it doesn’t actually tell you anything. Now, imagine we take away the marketing speak, and we just clearly state what you do:
“We Provide Commercial HVAC Installation and Maintenance for Industrial Facilities in Waterloo Region.”
Clear always beats clever when you are establishing your brand signals in the world of Ai.
Every company on the internet says they are the best company, with the best products, and the best service. Obviously, they can’t all be right.
This is where we need to turn things around and look at your business from the perspective of Ai. If someone asks an Ai tool about your company, your products, or your services, it needs to figure out the answers to some fairly basic questions:
That last one is particularly important. You can say whatever you want about your company on your own website because you control it. If you say you’re the leading widget manufacturer in Canada, great. But is there anything else online that supports that claim?
Do your reviews mention your widgets? Does your Google Business Profile say you manufacture them? Are you listed in relevant industry directories? Are other websites talking about your company and its widgets? Do you publish articles that show you actually know the industry? Does your LinkedIn profile tell the same story as your website? All of those signals start to add up.
If there isn’t enough information, or if the information it finds contradicts itself, credibility and confidence drop. If Ai has to choose between your company and a competitor it understands much better, which one is it more likely to talk about?
And the best part is that even if Ai search disappeared tomorrow, none of this work would be wasted. Clearer information, better reviews, stronger content, accurate listings, and visible proof of expertise also make it easier for real people to understand and trust your company.
Okay, so Ai search is becoming more important. The obvious solution must be to use Ai to create hundreds of new pages, blogs, social posts, FAQs, and articles about your company.
Please don’t.
In fact, one of the worst ways businesses can respond to the growth of Ai is by deciding the answer is simply more Ai content. Ai is incredibly good at creating average content. Give ten companies in the same industry the same prompt and, without much human input, you’ll probably get ten versions of essentially the same thing: the same ideas, the same benefits, the same phrases, and somehow the same “in today’s rapidly evolving landscape” introduction.
None of that gives a customer a reason to choose you. Generic Ai content can make your company sound exactly like everyone else. It can miss important details, get things wrong, lack firsthand expertise, and overlook the things that actually make your business different.
That doesn’t mean businesses shouldn’t use Ai. We use it a lot. At REM, we’ve adopted a Real Humans, Ai-Enhanced approach, and that distinction matters. Ai is incredibly useful for research, brainstorming, organizing information, analyzing data, finding topics, summarizing large amounts of information, and helping turn a blank page into a strong starting point.
But the human still needs to bring the strategy, experience, expertise, opinions, examples, fact-checking, and judgment that make the final result worth reading. Think of Ai as a tool that makes your experts better and more efficient, not a cheap replacement for having experts in the first place.
I know this is a lot. The good news is that you don’t need to completely rethink your marketing strategy tomorrow morning. Here are five practical things you can start doing right now.
Go to your own website and pretend you know absolutely nothing about your company. Within a few seconds, can you tell exactly what the company does? Who it does it for? Where it operates? What products or services it offers?
Don’t assume people know what you mean. And definitely don’t assume Ai does. Look at your service pages, about page, contact page, home page, and location information. Take out some of the marketing speak and make sure there are clear statements that actually describe your business.
Remember: clear beats clever.
Your company telling everyone that you’re fantastic isn’t nearly as convincing as other people saying it. Reviews, testimonials, case studies, certifications, industry associations, awards, and real customer experiences all help provide evidence that you actually do what you say you do.
If your review strategy consists of hoping someone eventually leaves you one, it might be time to make that a more deliberate part of your marketing. And don’t just chase a star rating. Good reviews often describe the service provided, the problem that was solved, the location, the people involved, and the customer’s experience.
That’s incredibly useful information for both prospects and Ai.
This one sounds boring. It is boring. Do it anyway.
Your business name, address, phone number, website, service descriptions, locations, hours, and other basic information should be accurate and consistent everywhere your company appears.
Start with your own website and Google Business Profile, then look at LinkedIn, social media accounts, important industry directories, and other major listings. If you moved six years ago and there are still websites showing the old address, clean them up. If one profile says you serve Waterloo Region and another says you serve all of Canada, figure out which one is right.
Every inconsistency introduces uncertainty into the picture of your business.
Stop thinking of content as something you need to create because someone told you Google likes blogs.
Create content because your customers have questions and you know the answers. What do customers ask before buying? What mistakes do you see people making? What does something cost? What should someone compare before choosing a supplier? Why is one option better in one situation and worse in another? Those are useful topics.
Your salespeople, customer service staff, technicians, owners, and other experts probably answer great questions every single day. Those conversations are often far more valuable than a keyword list generated by a piece of software.
Turn your actual expertise into content.
This one doesn’t cost anything and can be a little frightening.
Go ask.
Try ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, or whichever Ai platform you prefer and ask questions about your own business.
Ask:
Don’t obsess over a single answer. Ai results will change based on the tool, the wording of the question, the information available, and plenty of other factors. Instead, look for patterns.
Is the information accurate? Is anything important missing? Are your competitors being mentioned and you aren’t? Does Ai understand your key services? Does it understand where you operate? Does the description actually sound like your company? You may be surprised by what it knows.
You may be even more surprised by what it doesn’t.
With all of this talk about Ai, it is easy to think you need to throw out the old digital marketing playbook and start over. You don’t.
You still need a good website. You still need SEO, useful content, good reviews, strong branding, local visibility, advertising, analytics, and, most importantly, a great product or service. If anything, AI makes those fundamentals more important, not less, because Ai needs good information to work with.
If your website is terrible, your reviews are poor, your business information is inconsistent, and nobody is talking about your company, there isn’t a magical piece of Ai optimization that’s going to fix all of that. That’s also why I’d be very cautious of anyone selling a magic “GEO package” that supposedly replaces your SEO and the rest of your existing marketing.
The terminology may be changing, and the technology certainly is. But the fundamentals of building a company that people can find, understand, and trust haven’t changed nearly as much.
You don’t need to become an expert in Ai. You don’t need to understand how every LLM works, spend your evenings reading research papers, or immediately move your entire marketing budget into the latest Ai strategy. But you do need to recognize that the way your prospects find and research companies is changing.
Your job is to make sure your online presence clearly and accurately reflects who you are, what you do, why you’re different, and why someone should trust you. Make your company easy to understand. Give people, search engines, and Ai systems enough consistent information to verify what you say. Demonstrate your expertise instead of simply claiming it. And make sure that when your customers start asking questions about the problems you solve, your company has a chance to be part of the conversation.
Showing up at the top of Google still matters. But today, visibility is about a lot more than a blue link and a number one ranking.
Ai may change how people search, but trust is still what helps them choose.
If you want to build that trust, REM can help with a stronger website, better search visibility, and smarter advertising built for both traditional and AI-powered search.
Please contact Ross Bauer for more information about the Strategic Partners.
(519) 240-1290
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