It’s the take heard round the marketing world: search isn’t what it used to be. The rise of AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode is reshaping how people find answers and engage with content online.
So how should marketers use AI-powered search to make sure their brands are set up to win in this new era?
What was once a relatively straightforward process based primarily around optimizing keywords and building authority has become an intent-led experience that spans platforms and formats. User expectations and behavior are changing quickly, and seizing these early-day opportunities to rule AI search results will be crucial to win in the new search paradigm.
To break down what this shift means for marketers, Wpromote’s Head of SEO Serena Peterson and VP of Strategic Innovation Christine Schrader sat down to talk through how AI is changing search—and the keys to keeping your brand visible in an evolving landscape.
The bottom line? Brands that prioritize helpful, structured content and meet users where discovery is really happening today (not where it used to happen back in the good old days when Google was a wall of blue links) will come out on top.
Google AI Mode is changing the search game
Google dropped a bombshell at its I/O 2025 conference: Google AI Mode, a full-fledged, AI-native search experience designed to compete with AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity. While Google is still rolling out features and improvements for AI Mode, it’s expected that all users will eventually have access to (at least) the following:
- Gemini 2.5: An advanced Google large language model (LLM) that incorporates multimodal reasoning capabilities to draw conclusions from a variety of sources, including image and video uploads
- Deep Search: Issues dozens or hundreds of queries at once, allowing Google to sample and synthesize a wider variety of sources more quickly
- Live Lens: Point your phone’s camera while in AI Mode, and you’ll have instant access to information, suggestions, and links about whatever the camera sees, from products to places
- Project Mariner: An “agentic” AI model that, once trained, can complete tasks like booking flights and scheduling meetings on its own
- AI Shopping Assistant: A groundbreaking AI shopping companion that helps shoppers find deals, try on clothes virtually, and track prices (among other functions)
- Personal Context: For users who opt in, AI Mode can pull data from Gmail and other sources to provide highly tailored recommendations
It’s still far too early to say what the impact of Google AI Mode will be, but Google’s goal is clear: an AI-native search platform that’s multimodal, integrated, and transactional. Ultimately, that likely means more time spent getting answers through the platform directly, and less time spent on SERPs and clicking links.
At first blush, that might sound like a marketer’s worst nightmare, but it doesn’t have to be. It does, however, mean that a strategic and tactical shift has arrived for virtually every kind of marketing.
Core components of effective AI search marketing
When consumers turn to AI tools, they’re not casually browsing—they’re looking for direct, useful answers to their questions. That means that to appear in front of your audience, you need to make the kind of content AI likes to use in its answers.
That requires a major change in strategy for most marketers. AI doesn’t pull from rankings. Instead, it looks for content that’s well-structured and easy to cite. If your content isn’t built with that in mind, you won’t be surfaced or selected, no matter how authoritative your brand is. That means brands need to focus on clarity and structure, not just keywords.
According to Christine, “This is about understanding how people actually behave. Users are looking for validation, inspiration, and utility across multiple platforms—not just Google. Each of those touchpoints deserves a real strategy.”
Create structured, high-utility content
“We can’t fall back into the old trap of creating content just for algorithms,” Christine added. “It has to be genuinely helpful for people—because that’s what AI is being trained to value.”
Auditing your existing content for clarity and structure is a great place to start, especially on pages that answer informational queries. Some key suggestions that we frequently recommend as part of our content marketing services include:
- Structure the content so it flows logically
- Answer user questions directly
- Break up long paragraphs
- Use charts and bulleted lists where they make sense
- Provide plenty of links to authoritative sources
- Get to the point and avoid “fluffy” content
Strengthen off-site signals
LLMs aren’t just pulling from your website—they’re learning from how your brand appears across the web. Reddit, in particular, is a major training ground. Both OpenAI and Google have data partnerships with Reddit, which means those conversations are actively shaping how AI understands your brand.
“Reddit isn’t just where conversations happen—it’s where AI learns,” Christine said. “And if your brand isn’t part of those conversations, you’re handing that narrative to someone else.”
That might sound scary, but this isn’t a middle-school cafeteria situation. You can take steps to influence what people are saying about your brand.
Make sure your team is employing social listening tools to track customer conversations across social media platforms, so you’re never caught unaware by a nasty rumor or dissatisfied customers. You can then participate in relevant discussions or address outdated sentiments to help control how your brand is interpreted in these spaces.
Prioritize technical SEO for AI-centric platforms
While human-friendly content is central to winning at AI search, you don’t want to ignore the robots, either. Internal linking, transcripts, and optimized metadata all help LLMs quickly understand the purpose and value of a page. In other words, these tactics help the bots help you!
One of the most important steps we take as part of our search engine optimization services is to make sure our clients’ content is crawlable by Bing, Perplexity, and other LLM-focused bots. That means removing any blocks in the site’s robots.txt and enabling IndexNow where possible. It’s important to keep an eye on page speed as well; bots may not fully index sites that take too long to load.
You might be thinking, wait a second: we’re optimizing for Bing? Really? As it turns out, Bing plays a bigger role today than many marketers realize. Semrush found that nearly 70% of ChatGPT’s live results come from Bing’s index, meaning strong visibility there can have a direct impact on how your brand shows up in ChatGPT.
Remember, too, that LLM crawlers generally can’t execute client-side rendering through JavaScript. Your most important information should all arrive on the initial request, in semantically structured HTML with clear and descriptive headings. Placing key information that users want higher on the page is also helpful for signaling useful content.
Align with user intent and search journeys
People aren’t just changing how they search; they’re changing where they search. “We’re seeing people just as likely to start a discovery journey on Reddit, TikTok, or ChatGPT as they are on Google,” said Serena. “That fragmentation changes everything about how brands need to show up.”
Mapping content to different queries and stages in the user journey can be a critical tactic for winning at AI-centric SEO. For a first step, take a look at the built-in analytics packages available through platforms like TikTok and Reddit. Look for which types of queries tend to start on which platforms, and think about how you can optimize brand presence by creating platform-specific content that answers these questions directly.
Optimize for inclusion, not just ranking
The SERP itself has adapted to the AI revolution. Having your content in the top 10 results, while still desirable, isn’t what it used to be. With AI-powered results, “it’s not just about ranking anymore, it’s about being selected,” Serena said.
Google’s AI Overviews now appear in nearly half of all searches, according to Botify and DemandSphere. These results, powered by Gemini and the Knowledge Graph, dominate screen space and often reduce the need for users to click through to websites by summarizing answers within the results page. However, AI overviews provide links and citations to their sources—meaning your content could be linked in AI results even if it’s well outside the top 10 rankings.
Video is also playing a growing role in training AI. Tools like ChatGPT were trained using content from platforms like YouTube, and they continue to use that data to deliver natural, conversational results. Meanwhile, a SEMRush study found that Google’s AI overviews are increasingly incorporating results from YouTube, which is no surprise, since Google owns the platform.
Video content is a great asset for your brand to be discovered and included in AI overviews. But remember that if your video doesn’t include a transcript or structured metadata, it’s effectively invisible to these bots. “There’s so much natural language in video,” Serena said. “It’s a goldmine for AI training, but only if bots can actually access and understand it.”
Prepare for visual and shopping-led discovery
Your brand’s products are likely already being crawled by AI-native shopping platforms like Google AI Mode and ChatGPT. So it’s important to make sure you’re giving these AI assistants everything they need to confidently surface your product to consumers.
These recommendations will help you get started in preparing your products for the brave new world of AI-native ecommerce:
- Schema: Using schema markup on your pages helps AI crawlers understand the type of page and how it’s relevant—whether it’s a product, review, offer, etc. Schema.org offers free guidelines for getting started, as well as validation tools.
- High-Quality Images: Make sure you have multiple high-resolution images of your products, preferably from different angles and in different colors and configurations (if available). Add alt text that gives a clear description.
- User-Generated Content: Encourage your customers to leave detailed reviews if possible, preferably including photos or videos of the product. LLMs often pull from this data when creating product recommendations.
- Rich Data: The more data fields you fill in for each product, the more accurately the LLM will be able to match it to user queries. If a consumer might want to know about it, fill it in: size, compatibility, materials, or anything else.
AI search marketing is a challenge and an opportunity
The brands succeeding in AI-powered search today aren’t chasing trends. They’re building a strong foundation and making strategic updates that reflect how discovery works today.
“The seeds you plant today are the trees that grow tomorrow,” Serena said. “Catching up later puts your brand at a disadvantage—it’s what you do now that determines whether AI will prioritize your content later.”
As generative AI keeps rewriting how people discover and trust brands, marketers have a significant opportunity to out-optimize their competition—but if you wait too long to act, it might pass you by. This is your moment to invest in the content that will keep your brand relevant as AI-powered search continues to evolve in the future.