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What changes, and what does not
AI-generated summaries and conversational search give people new ways to come across a brand. The foundations are still familiar: accessible pages, descriptive titles, clear entities, original information, a good user experience and credible citations. No vendor can guarantee a place inside an AI-generated answer, and anyone promising one is guessing.
Build pages that deserve to be cited
Answer a defined question clearly near the top of the page. Explain terms, show your method, add dates where they matter and keep claims separate from evidence. Publish original data when you can, along with how it was collected.
Clear headings, useful tables and well-labelled diagrams help readers find their way around a resource, whether they arrive from a classic results page or an AI interface.
Technical priorities
- Let important pages be crawled and indexed, and return stable status codes
- Use canonical URLs consistently across internal links, sitemaps and tags
- Expose navigation as real HTML links
- Keep critical content available without heavy scripts
- Submit accurate XML sitemaps and check coverage in Search Console
- Make structured data match what visitors can see, with no invented credentials, ratings or awards
Entity consistency
Use one professional name, a stable biography, an accurate company affiliation and verified links to author, publisher and social profiles. Keep a well-sourced press directory. A coherent identity reduces ambiguity, but it cannot force a search engine or AI system to repeat a claim.
How to measure AI search performance
Track referral traffic where attribution exists, brand search trends, observed citations, assisted conversions and organic performance. Log manual checks with the date, query, location and interface used. AI answers vary between sessions, so a single screenshot is not a reliable benchmark.
Frequently asked questions
Is AI SEO a separate ranking algorithm?
There is no single AI SEO algorithm. Different search and answer products retrieve, summarise and cite information in different ways.
Does schema guarantee AI citations?
No. Valid structured data helps describe content, but it cannot guarantee that a page is selected or shown.
What should be fixed first?
Resolve crawl and indexing problems, improve pages that already serve demand and publish original information that answers questions nobody else covers well.
Can anyone guarantee my business will show up in ChatGPT answers?
No. AI assistants retrieve, summarise and cite sources in different ways, and their answers change between sessions. You can improve the odds with crawlable pages, clear facts, original information and consistent identity details, but no one can promise a placement.
What is the difference between SEO and AI SEO?
SEO aims to rank pages in classic search results. AI SEO aims to make the same pages easy for AI summaries and assistants to find, understand and cite. The foundations overlap heavily: crawlable pages, clear answers, original information and credible sources.
About the authorZack Mozes founded the digital marketing agency Newdeez in 2009 and has written eight books, including The Godfather of AI Marketing. Read his biography.