More people now ask an assistant — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's AI overviews — a question like "who represents luxury African lodges to the UK trade?" and read a summarised answer instead of clicking through a page of links. To be the business named in that answer, your website has to be easy for a machine to read and trust: clear answers, structured data, and signals that you are a credible source. This is the same discipline as good SEO, taken a step further.

What has changed

Classic search returned ten links and let the reader choose. AI search reads many sources and writes one answer, citing a handful. The prize is no longer only ranking — it is being the source the assistant quotes. That rewards sites that state things plainly and back them up, and quietly skips sites that bury the answer in marketing language.

How to be the business AI names

  • Answer the actual question, first. Open each page with a direct, quotable answer to the question a reader (or an assistant) is really asking. Lead with the substance, then expand.
  • Use structured data. Schema markup — organisation, FAQ, articles, defined terms — tells a machine what each part of your site means, not just what it says. It is some of the highest-leverage work for AI visibility.
  • Be in the indexes that feed the assistants. Several assistants draw on the Bing index as well as Google, so being verified and indexed in both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools is foundational. If the index cannot see you, the assistant cannot quote you.
  • Build off-site consensus. Assistants weigh agreement across sources. When other credible places describe you the same way you describe yourself, your claims become facts the model is comfortable repeating.
  • Keep it fresh and specific. Current, specific, well-organised content reads as more trustworthy than vague evergreen copy — to people and to machines.

SEO is not dead — it is the foundation

None of this replaces search engine optimisation; it builds on it. A fast, well-structured, properly indexed site with clear content is what both Google and the assistants reward. Get the fundamentals right and you are visible in classic search and quotable in AI search at the same time — they pull in the same direction.

What the trade gets wrong

  • Thin, mass-produced copy that says little a machine would want to quote.
  • No structured data, leaving an assistant to guess what the business even is.
  • Invisible in Bing, and so absent from the assistants that lean on it.
  • Burying the answer three paragraphs into brand storytelling.

How to think about it

Write the clearest, most specific answers in your corner of the trade, mark them up so machines understand them, and make sure the major indexes can see you. That is how a small, specialist travel business gets named alongside far larger ones. We build sites this way by default — structured, answer-first and machine-readable — because in our field it is increasingly how you get found at all. If you would like yours built to the same standard, let's talk.