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Not sure if your website's working for you? Let's talk it through - coffee locally or a call, no time limit.
A client rang me a while back, genuinely annoyed. They were sitting at number one for their main search term. They'd checked. And the enquiries had gone quiet anyway.
Nothing was broken. Their ranking was real. The problem was that fewer people were ever getting far enough down the page to see it.
This is the shift that's actually happening in search right now, and it doesn't get explained very well because everyone's too busy inventing acronyms for it.
If you built a site with AI and wondered why nothing happens, this is the next piece of the puzzle.
The old model was simple. Someone had a question, they typed it into Google, they got ten blue links, and if you were near the top you got the click.
That's still happening. It's just not the only thing happening.
Someone with a plumbing problem might ask ChatGPT. Someone looking for a builder might search Instagram or TikTok, or ask in a local Facebook group. Someone comparing accountants might still start on Google, but the answer they read is the AI summary at the top of the page, not the websites underneath it.
For a lot of these, nobody clicks anything. They get their answer, they form an opinion about who to call, and the "search result" you worked so hard for never gets looked at.
So the question worth asking has changed. It used to be "do we rank?" Now it's "are we turning up where our customers are actually asking?"
That's a broader job than SEO used to be. Same principles, wider net.
Here's the distinction that matters.
Ranking means your page is in a list of results, and someone has to choose you off that list.
Being cited means an AI tool has read your page, decided it's a credible answer, and used it to respond to someone's question, usually with your business named in it.
The second one is far more valuable, because the recommendation isn't coming from you. Nobody is comparing you against nine other links. They asked a question and your business came back as part of the answer.
And it's not the same thing as ranking. I've seen sites that rank well and never get quoted, and smaller sites that get quoted constantly because their pages are clearer and easier to pull a straight answer out of.
This is the bit most business owners don't know about yet.
In June 2026, Google quietly added a new report to Search Console covering Generative AI performance. It's free, and it's probably already sitting in your account.
What it shows you: how many times links to your site appeared inside AI Overviews and AI Mode, broken down by page, country, device and date. In plain terms, which of your pages Google's AI is actually using.
What it doesn't show you, and this is worth knowing before you get excited: no queries, no clicks, no click-through rate, no position. It's impressions only. According to Google's own documentation, not every site has access to it yet, and you need enough traffic in those features to show up at all.
So it's a diagnostic, not a scoreboard. But it's the first time you've been able to see which of your pages AI systems find useful, which is a genuinely useful thing to know before you spend money rewriting the wrong ones.
If you've never looked, log into Search Console and check. It takes two minutes.
If you want a page to be pulled into an AI answer, it has to be easy to lift a clear answer out of. That's most of it. Here's what actually helps:
Look at that list again and you'll notice something. Almost none of it is technical trickery. It's writing clearly, answering the question, and proving you know what you're talking about. Which is the same advice as it was five years ago, how you write it just matters more now.
I'll be straight with you, because there's a lot of rubbish flying around on this topic.
You'll see posts claiming SEO is dead. You'll see "a client fired their whole SEO team and replaced them with AI" stories that read suspiciously like they were written to go viral. You'll see people selling a secret trick to get your business named by ChatGPT.
Most of that is guesswork dressed up as certainty. Nobody outside these companies knows exactly how their systems pick sources, and the ones claiming they do are usually selling something.
What we can say honestly: the places people search have multiplied, being quoted matters more than being listed, and there's now real data in Search Console instead of speculation. Everything past that is an educated guess, and anyone telling you otherwise is guessing too, just more confidently.
The good news is that the practical answer hasn't changed much. Be genuinely useful. Be clear. Be specific. Keep your site working. That worked before all this, and it works now.
Not sure whether any of this is happening for your business? A website audit will tell you where you actually stand, including whether your pages are structured in a way AI tools can use. Or just get in touch and I'll take a look at your Search Console with you and tell you what I see. No obligation either way.
