Imagine you need a new protein bar. You could Google “best protein bars UK,” open five tabs and compare a few options yourself. Or you could ask an AI assistant: “What’s a good high-protein snack in the UK, under 200 calories, that tastes great and costs less than £2?”
That second behaviour is becoming mainstream. Instead of choosing which search result to click, consumers are asking AI to do some of the investigating for them, which means AI brand visibility is fast becoming as important as traditional search rankings.
Kantar reports that around a quarter of AI users already use an AI shopping assistant, and three-quarters of AI users regularly seek AI-driven recommendations.
This doesn’t mean Google is dying. It means a new discovery layer has entered the mix, and brands that ignore it risk becoming invisible within it.
Search isn’t disappearing. It’s fragmenting.
Google still matters enormously. So do TikTok, Instagram, retailer search and earned media. AI is simply joining that ecosystem.
The modern discovery journey increasingly looks like: TikTok, Google, ChatGPT, review, retailer, purchase. Or sometimes: ChatGPT, recommended brands, validation elsewhere, purchase.
The real contest isn’t AI search versus Google. It’s being discoverable and credible wherever people go looking for reassurance, inspiration or recommendations.
From ranking to recommendation
Traditional SEO asks: does our website appear when someone searches for X? AI asks something slightly different: when someone requests a recommendation, does the model mention us at all?
That distinction matters because conversational search can collapse a huge field of options into a handful of suggestions. Meanwhile there’s a huge increase in consumers asking tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude and Gemini to recommend and compare products before they ever visit a retailer.
If a consumer were to ask, “What are the best alcohol-free drinks for a dinner party?” A brand could have gorgeous social content, a huge following and great distribution, but the question that increasingly decides whether it gets mentioned is: what information exists online that gives an AI system a reason to include it? That question is really about AI brand visibility, and it’s one PR is well placed to answer.
PR as an AI visibility strategy
A brand’s own website can say its product is brilliant. But AI systems draw on a much wider footprint including editorial coverage, expert recommendations, retailer listings, consumer reviews, awards, comparison articles, creator content, forums and FAQs.
There’s no single “AI ranking formula” since different models retrieve and generate information differently. But the strategic principle holds that brands need a clear, credible, consistent footprint beyond the channels they directly control.
That’s always been PR’s job, and AI search simply adds a new audience for it.
Reputation can matter before someone’s heard of you
Historically, people discovered a brand, then researched it, then encountered its reputation. AI can reorder that sequence: it researches the reputation first, then decides whether to recommend the brand at all.
Early research points in this direction. A survey by Envision Horizons found that 50.9% of responders said they’d abandoned a purchase after AI surfaced concerns.
The strategic question is whether your wider footprint consistently communicates what you make, who it’s for, why you’re different and what experts and customers say about you.
Building AI brand visibility: five things to get right
This is where generative engine optimisation (GEO) enters the conversation. It’s the practice of structuring digital content so that artificial intelligence search and answer engines can easily read, summarise and cite it.
For a PR lens, the goal is broader than technical optimisation: it’s a coherent digital reputation, built across five areas:
- Authority: Are credible third parties talking about you?
- Consistency: Does your website match what retailers and press say?
- Specificity: Vague positioning like “premium snacks” gives AI little to work with. “High-protein vegan snacks available in UK supermarkets” gives it much more.
- Reputation: What do reviews, journalists and communities repeatedly associate with your brand?
- Useful expertise: Guides, FAQs, comparisons: content that helps people and machines alike.
A new lens for measuring PR
PR reporting has long asked how much coverage a campaign generated and whether it moved reach or search volume. A new question is emerging alongside those: is the brand present in AI-led discovery for the categories that matter to it? Which prompts surface it, which sources inform those answers, and which competitors keep appearing instead?
More audiences, one reputation
Brands have always had to earn attention from people. Now they need to earn it from the systems standing between people and their decisions too.
The brands that show up well in AI search won’t necessarily be the ones with the cleverest optimisation tactics. They’ll be the ones with a reputation strong and consistent enough that the AI has plenty of good material to work with.
Want to read more about social trends? Read our take on Why Community Led Marketing is the Future of Brand Engagement.
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Sources
https://www.kantar.com/north-america/company-news/kantars-2026-marketing-trends
https://www.kantar.com/Campaigns/Marketing-Trends/-/media/13DB2226AE034B24A1191DFA0588C748.ashx
https://www.emarketer.com/content/ai-quietly-deciding-which-products-consumers-never-see
