When someone uses AI to research a business like yours, what are they being told?

People are increasingly using AI to answer questions that once might have started with a conventional search.

Which product should I buy? What should I consider before choosing a provider? What are the best options for my circumstances? How do these businesses compare?

When somebody asks those questions about your category, what does the AI know about you?

But there's another question that should come first.

Do your customers actually use AI this way?

AI is another discovery behaviour, not a reason to panic

Different customers adopt technology at different speeds.

For some businesses, AI-assisted research may already be an important part of how potential customers investigate their options.

For others, conventional search, social media, marketplaces, review sites or recommendations may remain considerably more important.

So the objective shouldn't be to “optimise for AI” simply because AI is growing.

It should be to understand whether AI is becoming a meaningful part of your customers' discovery journey.

Being known isn't the same as being represented properly

An AI system may know your business exists but still represent it incompletely.

It might misunderstand what you offer. It might omit something commercially important. It might struggle to distinguish you from competitors. Or it might not consider your business particularly relevant to the question being asked.

That makes AI discovery about more than simply appearing.

The quality and consistency of the information available about the business matters too.

Start with your customers, not the technology

Before deciding what needs to change, we think businesses should understand how their customers are discovering and researching the category, whether AI is materially involved, how the business appears when it is, whether it is represented accurately, what appears to influence which businesses are surfaced or discussed, and whether the issue is commercially important enough to warrant doing something about.

Only then should the conversation turn to technology or optimisation.