For many years, businesses have competed for visibility in Google’s search results. The formula was straightforward: optimise your website, rank for relevant keywords and drive visitors to your website. That model is now evolving.
With the introduction of Google’s AI-powered search experience, how we discover information is changing. Users can ask detailed questions, upload images, documents and videos and receive fast answers generated by AI.
So, what does this mean for businesses? To succeed, they need to be more than a visually appealing website. As search expands beyond traditional Google rankings to AI-powered engines like Google AI, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, businesses need to be machine-readable and positioned as trusted sources that AI systems can showcase in search results.
The dawn of the Agentic Web
The emergence of the Agentic Web signals a shift toward an interconnected landscape where autonomous AI systems interface directly with backend databases, websites, and other intelligent agents.
Within this ecosystem, AI assistants such as Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT are evolving from research tools into active participants capable of executing complex workflows. This transformation allows a user’s AI agent to independently source suppliers, evaluate pricing structures, schedule services, and finalise purchase decisions by communicating with a retailer’s technical infrastructure.
To be clear, these changes go far beyond Google. AI assistants like Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT are increasingly capable of researching products, comparing services, and helping users make decisions.
With Google’s brand-new Intelligent Search Box, the search bar has reached new heights, expanding into a multimodal interface powered by next-generation Gemini models. Now users can ask complex conversational questions and access interactive applications instantly, reducing click-through traffic for surface-level information.
At the same time, new technologies are emerging to create an interconnected ecosystem of autonomous AI systems that can communicate with websites, databases and other AI agents. In other terms, this means a customer’s AI agent can find suppliers, compare pricing, book services and make purchase decisions through a retail website’s backend.
To keep up with the changing times, businesses need to be structured in a way that both people and AI systems can easily understand.
Phase 1: Make your website easy for AI to understand
When an AI engine evaluates your website, it doesn’t experience it or browse the same way a human visitor does.
Where a human may focus on colours, imagery and visual design, an AI system relies on your website’s structure shifting through HTML code to understand what your business offers. If key information is difficult to access, buried in complex page layouts or reliant on scripts to load, AI tools may struggle to interpret your content and may not recommend it to users.
For this reason, website structure is crucial. Clear navigation, logical page hierarchy, fast-loading pages, and well-organised landing pages all make it easier for customers and AI systems to find and understand your information.
Academic research has highlighted the growing importance of website accessibility and structure. In an A11y-CUA study on the accessibility gap in computer use agents, Claude Sonnet 4.5 achieved a 78% task success rate under default conditions. However, when restricted to keyboard-only navigation, the experience of users relying on assistive technology, success rates dropped to just 42%.
This shows that the same website structure and accessibility features that help people navigate your website also help AI systems understand it. With AI assistants becoming more influential in how customers find businesses online, accessible, well-structured, machine-readable websites are more likely to appear in AI-generated answers and recommendations.
How we help
Through the use of technical SEO audits, website optimisation, landing page development, and user experience improvements, we help businesses build websites that are easy for customers and AI systems to navigate and understand, helping brands gain a competitive advantage.
Phase 2: Give AI content worth recommending
Making your website machine-readable is only the first step. To have your brand, content, products, or services featured in AI-generated answers and recommendations, your content needs to be relevant, helpful, and aligned with how people search.
AI search engines prefer content that demonstrates experience, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). Author credibility, brand reputation, reviews, Google Business Profile signals and structured entity data all help AI systems decide whether your content is worth recommending. While AI can assist with content creation, recent updates show that Google rewards original, people-first content and reinforces the importance of creating valuable resources for users.
Search tools like Google’s Intelligent Search Box have made search more conversational, allowing users to search using images, video, documents and detailed prompts rather than relying solely on traditional keyword searches.
From June 10 2026, Google automatically linked Google Ads accounts to YouTube channels it identified as having a high-confidence ownership match. This unlocks organic video view metrics inside Google Ads and audience segments built from channel interactions (views, subscriptions, engagement). This update means brands should be considering how channels such as YouTube support their broader content strategy and online visibility.
Brands should also look to prompt research that uncovers the questions, phrases, and problems customers are asking throughout their buyer journey, using that information to create content, images, and video assets that match real search intent. This should include creating clear, structured answers to common questions customers have (like FAQs); this makes it easier for AI systems to find and surface your content.
Of equal importance is understanding your audience. Demographic data can tell you who your customers are, but psychographic segmentation reveals why they buy. Understanding customer motivations, pain points and concerns allows brands to create content that speaks directly to users’ needs and is more likely to be seen as valuable by AI.
How we help
Using prompt research and audience analysis, we help brands create people-first content strategies that align with evolving search behaviour. Research shows that the majority of AI citations originate from informational search intent.
For this reason, Red Herring Digital focuses on creating high-quality, relevant informational content, images and video to ensure your digital assets are structured in a way that can be easily understood and trusted by Google AI.
As video content becomes more influential across search, AI discovery and advertising platforms, we’re also helping our clients invest in YouTube strategies as part of their broader digital marketing efforts.
Phase 3: Create experiences that AI rewards
Once a potential customer visits your website, the experience needs to meet their expectations and make it easy for them to take action. This is especially important for Google Ads campaigns. Strong headlines, relevant content and hot offers help attract clicks, but Google’s AI considers what happens after.
As Google’s advertising systems become automated, success will depend less on manually adjusting campaign settings and more on the quality of the inputs that feed those systems.
Google Ads results depend on a highly optimised landing page layout. If customers are directed to a landing page that is slow, poorly structured, or confusing, it can lead to higher bounce rates, which are noted by Google’s ad algorithm and can drop your quality score.
For optimal ad performance, a landing page with a clear user journey, intuitive navigation, and a structure designed to convert can create the positive signals Google’s AI looks for.
Meta Ads work differently. Here, creative execution is the driving force of a successful campaign. This means high-quality imagery, engaging video content, and creative that grabs attention. Together, they provide Meta’s algorithm with the signals to reach the optimal audiences.
Whether customers discover your business through AI search, Google Ads or social media, the goal is the same: create a seamless journey from discovery to conversion.
How we help
We help brands build conversion-focused experiences that turn their visibility into results. We analyse your website, optimise landing pages and user experience before designing a campaign strategy and ad creative that performs.
Where your brand fits into the future of AI search
The way customers search for and discover brands online is changing. As Google AI, AI assistants and autonomous agents become increasingly involved in search and purchasing decisions, businesses will need to ensure they are visible across AI-powered discovery platforms.
While terms like Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) are becoming more common, they are extensions of strong SEO fundamentals rather than replacements. Brands that adapt early, improving technical SEO, website optimisation, user experience and content strategy will be in a better position to be discovered, understood and trustworthy for people and AI engines.
Want to see how AI-ready your business is? Get in touch with us and see how machine-readable your website is.
