AI search

What it means

AI search is a way of finding information in which a language model writes an answer in its own words and adds links to sources instead of listing results. It includes chat assistants with web access and AI overviews shown directly in search engine results.

The model picks, from many pages, those it considers trustworthy and clear and takes facts from them. A company whose content becomes a cited source gains visibility even when the user never clicks through, which ties in with zero-click search.

Adapting content to this kind of search is called GEO. It builds on classic SEO but puts more weight on precise definitions, clear structure, quotable sentences and expertise signals under E-E-A-T.

How it works in practice

For an accounting or advisory firm, AI search is an opportunity: people ask assistants about taxes, contributions and deadlines, and the model looks for pages that answer precisely. A glossary with clear definitions and explanations is exactly the kind of content that gets cited.

Technically, content must be available in HTML without JavaScript, AI crawlers must not be blocked in robots.txt and pages should carry structured data. An llms.txt file also helps by showing assistants where the most important content is.

Success is harder to measure than in classic SEO. Firms track brand mentions in assistants' answers, visits from AI tools in analytics and enquiries in which customers say they found the firm through an assistant.

What to watch out for

Assistants make mistakes and may quote a company inaccurately or attribute information it never published. Keeping current data on the website, with a revision date, and regularly checking what assistants say about the company is therefore important.

Content written only for algorithms, stuffed with keywords and lacking real expertise, is ignored by AI models just as by search engines. Quality, accuracy and topical authority decide, not the volume of text.