Let’s say you run a business, whether it’s in food service or financial services. When people search for your company or stumble across it, you don’t want the branding to look bad, right?
Ideally, you want your brand to be associated with a wide range of positive adjectives, depending on the business and the industry: Active. Creative. Fresh. Professional. Trustworthy.
As a result, when people search for the business, it passes the sniff test. There are no red flags. The second step for searchers can be to dive deeper, visiting the website, checking out the social media profiles, listening to the CEO’s recent podcast interview and so on. But brands can’t look ahead to the second step without nailing the first one, and that means getting everything in order for search, search and more search. Just remember: Search today is different from search yesterday.
Why? Artificial intelligence.
How Artificial Intelligence Has Changed Search
As McKinsey describes it, AI is the “new front door to the internet.” Google Search still matters, but it’s not the only important variable in 2026. Large language models (LLMs) have revolutionized the search process, with Gemini either supplementing traditional Google or users bypassing Google altogether to try out ChatGPT, Grok and other LLMs.
Traditional search and AI search are somewhat similar, but also very different. This is how I would differentiate them:
- Traditional search: “Here are the webpages where you might find the answer.”
- AI search: “Here is the answer, based on the sources that I’ve read through.”
On the AI front, the quality of the answer depends on the underlying sources, whether it’s a Wikipedia page or a news story or a company website. AI is asking, no, begging for sources to consume.
How Your Company Can Befriend AI Search
Let’s go back to your company. In order to formulate the best possible answer, an LLM like Gemini wants anything and everything available online to be updated and interesting. The LLMs are asking for a dynamic website, not a stale one, with an emphasis on a blog that is regularly freshened up. They also want to access any and all earned media, such as op-ed columns, news stories and interviews, to get a better sense of the media coverage associated with the brand. Linking recent media hits to the website (with proper attribution) helps AI connect the dots.
Whatever high-quality content you can create online, AI wants it all. So why aren’t more brands listening?
Tending to your so-called owned media materials, such as a website, is like tending a garden. It needs to be checked daily, weeding out the details that are no longer relevant while adding the new information that makes the brand attractive and informative to the target audience that matters. Something like a media page with hyperlinks gives the brand added legitimacy, with news outlets bestowing their third-party credibility on the business by association.
Allowing your garden to wither away is a true crime in the age of AI, with LLMs serving as platforms for the best brands to promote thought leadership and subject matter expertise.
It’s important to think beneath the surface. For many brands, a barebones website or a single social media platform isn’t enough when LLM users want to dig deeper and deeper. When people consult Gemini or ChatGPT for more information, they will ask a follow-up question and then another, so AI wants more and more content to use for providing detailed responses to specific questions. If there are only one or two pieces of content to consult, you are leaving a lot of branding on the table.
Quality Content, Quality Results
Think about the different ways that you want to reach customers or clients. Maybe it’s the website. Maybe it’s a feature story. Maybe it’s a podcast appearance on a YouTube business show. Or perhaps it is all of the above. Just know that all of it—if it’s online—will end up in the hands of AI.
If AI is a toaster that spits out the answer, you want to feed it the right slices of bread. The bread, or that is, the sourcing, will determine the end branding.
If you want to ace the AI game, listen to what AI actually wants or you won’t like the answer.
This article originally appeared on the Forbes Agency Council CommunityVoice in March 2026.
