I think some businesses are about to spend a lot of money solving the wrong AI problem

I’ve noticed something happening in the marketing world over the past year or so. There are suddenly an awful lot of AI optimisation experts.

Many of them come from the SEO world. That’s perfectly understandable because AI is changing the way people search for information, and businesses that have spent years investing in Google rankings are understandably asking what they need to do next.

SEO agencies are responding to that demand. And before anybody thinks this is an attack on SEO, it isn’t. I work with SEO specialists. Some of them are brilliant at what they do. I still don’t understand half of what they do, but I’ve seen the results and I absolutely understand why businesses invest in it.

I also suspect that good SEO specialists will have an important role to play in the world of AI search.

But I’m uncomfortable with the assumption that the answer to AI search is simply a new form of optimisation. Because I’m not convinced we’re dealing with the same problem.

For the past 20-odd years, the big search question for businesses has largely been: How do we get found?

Google presents us with a list of places to look, and businesses have therefore invested heavily in getting themselves towards the top of that list.

AI introduces a subtly different question: Who should I choose?

Ask an AI platform to recommend three employment lawyers for a particular problem and you’re no longer simply asking it to find employment lawyers. You’re asking it to make a judgement about which ones are worthy of consideration.

And that’s where I think things get interesting, because being found isn’t the same as being believed.

Imagine I run a specialist consultancy. My website says I’m one of the country’s leading experts in my field. It says I’m trusted, innovative, experienced and probably customer-focused too. I’ve optimised the pages beautifully.

But what happens when you look beyond my website? Perhaps there’s very little media coverage. Nobody particularly authoritative references my expertise. There aren’t many substantive case studies. My senior people rarely contribute to industry discussions. There’s little original thought leadership. Few credible third parties seem to associate us with the expertise we claim.

What exactly are we optimising?

We can make it easier for a machine to discover my claim. We haven’t necessarily given it any more reason to believe it. And I think that distinction is going to become more and more important.

You can’t optimise your way to a reputation you haven’t earned

This is where I think PR people need to become much more involved in the AI search conversation. Not because PR has suddenly become a branch of artificial intelligence. It hasn’t, and I’m certainly not about to start calling myself an AI expert.

But PR has spent decades dealing with something that is becoming increasingly important in an AI-assisted buying journey: independent evidence of reputation and authority.

A business can say its managing director is an industry expert. It’s rather more compelling when respected journalists regularly ask that managing director for an opinion.

A consultancy can say it delivers exceptional results. Strong, detailed customer case studies provide evidence.

A professional services firm can claim specialist expertise. Original research, useful thought leadership, conference appearances, media commentary, awards, customer testimony and recognition by credible third parties all help substantiate it.

That’s the difference between claiming authority and demonstrating authority. And no amount of technical optimisation can manufacture that from nothing.

This doesn’t mean SEO doesn’t matter Quite the opposite. There is clearly a technical dimension to AI visibility. Information needs to be accessible. Machines need to be able to understand what a business does. Websites need to work properly. Content needs structure. Search behaviour still matters enormously.

Good SEO specialists understand those things far better than I do. But I think we need to stop treating visibility and authority as though they’re the same thing. They’re not.

SEO can help make evidence discoverable. It cannot substitute for the evidence.

That’s why I think the smartest SEO agencies will increasingly work alongside PR and communications specialists rather than trying to absorb the whole AI recommendation problem into SEO.

There is plenty for both disciplines to do.

Why should AI recommend us?

Before spending money on AI optimisation, I’d ask a more fundamental question: Why should AI recommend us in the first place?

Are we clear about what we want to be known for? Does the wider evidence support that position? Do customers and credible third parties reinforce it? And how does that reputation compare with the businesses we’re competing against?

If the answers aren’t particularly convincing, I wouldn’t start with optimisation. I’d start by building the evidence.

This whole question has fascinated me enough that we’ve spent the past few months at Briscoe PR developing a structured way of assessing it.

We’ve called it the Briscoe Recommendation Index.

It looks at whether a business is visible, whether AI understands what it does, whether there is sufficient evidence of authority and trust, and ultimately whether it is being recommended when relevant buying questions are asked.

We also compare those findings with competitors.

The most interesting part isn’t really the score. It’s the diagnosis behind it. Because two businesses can have exactly the same problem on the surface – they’re not being recommended – for completely different reasons.

One may have an underlying visibility problem. Another may be perfectly visible but poorly positioned. Another may have a very clear proposition but nowhere near enough independent evidence of its expertise. Those require different solutions.

And that’s why I’m wary of starting with the solution before we’ve properly diagnosed the problem.

AI is changing search, and there will undoubtedly be new technical disciplines and tools that help businesses respond.

But when somebody asks AI who they should trust, consider or choose, we’re no longer talking only about whether a business can be found.

We’re talking about reputation. And you can’t optimise your way to a reputation you haven’t earned.