For years, search has followed the same well-worn path. Someone has a question. They type it into Google. They scan a list of websites and click the one that looks most helpful. That behaviour hasn’t gone away, but it’s shifting.

Millions of people now ask their questions to AI tools like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity instead. Rather than handing over a page of links, these platforms often just give you an answer.

That changes how people find businesses online.

And it changes how businesses need to approach SEO.

Here’s the good news, though: this isn’t the end of search. It’s the next chapter.

Most of what already helps your website perform well in Google also helps AI systems understand, trust and reference your content. Businesses that invest in quality content, solid technical foundations and genuine expertise stand to benefit across both traditional and AI-powered search.

Already investing in SEO Services? you’re in good shape. Now it’s about making sure that strategy is ready for both types of search.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• What AI Search actually is
• How it differs from Google Search
• How search behaviour is changing
• What this means for your marketing strategy
• How to boost your visibility across both

What is AI Search?

AI Search uses artificial intelligence to answer your question directly, rather than pointing you towards a list of websites and leaving you to it. Instead of searching for: “Best CRM for small businesses”

You might ask: “What’s the best CRM for a business with 20 employees that’s growing quickly and already uses Microsoft 365?”

Instead of ten blue links, an AI search engine digs through multiple trusted sources and pulls together a personalised answer.

Depending on the platform, it might also:

• Compare products
• Untangle complicated topics
• Recommend suppliers
• Summarise reviews
• Suggest next steps
• Answer follow-up questions without you starting a new search

It feels a lot more like a conversation than a traditional search.

Some of the biggest names in AI search right now:

• ChatGPT Search
• Google AI Overviews
• Google AI ModeMicrosoft Copilot
• Perplexity AI
• Claude

They all work a little differently. But they’re all chasing the same goal: getting you to an answer faster.

What is Google Search today?

Google is still the biggest search engine on the planet. Every single day, billions of searches happen across pretty much every topic you can imagine.

Traditional Google Search works by:

• Crawling websites
• Making sense of their content
• Ranking pages against hundreds of signals
• Serving up the results most relevant to your search

Google has quietly used AI behind the scenes for years, but the search experience itself has always been built around sending people to websites.

You search.
Google recommends pages.
You pick where to click.

That model’s still very much alive. The difference now is that Google blends traditional rankings with AI-generated answers more than ever.

A single results page might now include:

• AI Overviews
• Featured snippets
• People Also Ask
• Local Packs
• Shopping results
• Videos
• Images
• Knowledge Panels
• Organic listings

AI isn’t replacing Google Search, but it is becoming another layer of it.

Google Search is becoming more conversational

One of the biggest misconceptions floating around right now is that AI Search and Google Search are two completely separate things. They’re not.

Google itself is getting more conversational by the day. Rather than typing a handful of keywords, people are asking much more detailed questions.

A search that used to look like this: “SEO agency Hampshire”

Now looks a lot more like: “Which SEO agency has experience helping ecommerce businesses improve organic traffic?”

Or even: “Can you recommend an SEO agency that understands AI search as well as Google?”

These longer, richer searches give Google far more to work with. They also reward businesses producing genuinely useful content rather than ones just repeating a keyword over and over.

That’s exactly why modern Content Marketing and Technical SEO work so well hand in hand.

Good content answers the real question. Technical SEO helps search engines actually trust and understand it.

How people search is changing

Search behaviour has always evolved alongside the technology behind it.

Years ago, people typed single words. Then came longer phrases.
Voice assistants nudged us towards natural language. Now AI is taking that even further.

Instead of thinking in keywords, people just explain what they need.

Traditional search: “best project management software”

AI search: “I run a marketing agency with 25 employees. We need project management software that works with Slack, tracks billable time and doesn’t require lots of training. What would you recommend?”

That’s a completely different kind of search.

Packed into it:

• Context
• Business goals
• Budget considerations
• Existing software
• User intent

AI can pull all of that together at once. Which means businesses need content that answers whole questions, not just individual keywords.

AI Search vs Google Search: The biggest differences

Both help people find information, but they get there very differently.

Neither is replacing the other.

Plenty of people still turn to Google to compare options or land directly on a website. Others use AI to research a topic before deciding who to actually contact. Increasingly, people do both within the same buying journey.

For marketers, that means your online presence needs to hold up in both places.

Why this matters for businesses

If your marketing strategy only chases traditional rankings, you’re only covering half the picture.

People are discovering brands in new places. They might:

• Ask ChatGPT for supplier recommendations.
• Use Google AI Overviews to get up to speed on a topic.
• Compare products using Perplexity.
• Research services through Microsoft Copilot.
• Then head to Google to read reviews or request a quote.

Every single one of those moments shapes a buying decision. That’s why businesses need a wider view of search visibility.

It’s about making sure your business turns up wherever your customers are searching, whether that’s Google, an AI-powered experience, or whatever comes next.

How do AI search engines choose which information to use?

This is probably the question on most marketers’ minds right now.

If AI doesn’t rank webpages the way Google does, how does it decide which brands, sites, and articles get a mention?

It doesn’t go looking for one perfect page. Instead, it builds confidence by cross-checking information from multiple trusted sources.

Think of it like asking three experienced colleagues the same question. If they all say roughly the same thing, you’d trust it. If one gives a wildly different answer, you’d want more proof.

AI works in much the same way.

It’s on the lookout for signals that suggest your business is trustworthy, knowledgeable and consistently linked to a particular subject. Those signals include:

• Well-written, accurate content
• Strong website authority
• Consistent brand mentions
• Clear expertise
• Genuinely helpful resources
• Reliable technical foundations
• A solid reputation across the web

Which is exactly why SEO Services matter more than ever.

Good SEO was never just about rankings. It’s about helping search engines understand who you are, what you do, and why you deserve the recommendation.

Those same principles now help AI understand your business too.

Authority matters more than ever

Search has moved well beyond keywords.Today’s AI systems want to answer with confidence. To do that, they need confidence in the sources they’re drawing on.

Picture someone asking: “What’s the best way to improve ecommerce SEO?”

An AI platform isn’t hunting for the page that says “ecommerce SEO” the most times. It’s looking for businesses that consistently publish useful advice across topics like:

• Technical SEO
• Product pages
• Site architecture
• Internal linking
• Page speed
• User experience
• Content strategy

Line all of those up, and you get a picture of genuine expertise. This is often called topical authority, and it’s one of the best reasons to build connected content rather than scattering isolated blog posts.

Every article should reinforce another.
Every guide should answer another question.
Every service page should back up a wider topic.

That’s what makes it easy for Google and AI systems alike to understand exactly what your business is known for.

AI doesn’t replace SEO

There’s been no shortage of chatter about whether AI is going to replace SEO altogether.

We don’t think that’s the right question to ask.

A better one is: how is SEO changing because of AI?

The fundamentals haven’t moved much at all. Your website still needs to:

• Load quickly
• Be easy to crawl
• Answer search intent
• Demonstrate expertise
• Provide useful information
• Earn trust

Which, funnily enough, is exactly what good SEO has always been about.

The difference is that success is no longer measured purely by blue links on a results page. Increasingly, your content needs to be useful enough to earn a spot in an AI-generated answer too.

That’s another reason Technical SEO still deserves a seat at the table in any digital marketing strategy. Without solid technical foundations, even brilliant content becomes harder for search engines and AI platforms to make sense of.

Content is becoming more valuable, not less

Some businesses worry AI means nobody’s going to visit their website again. The reality is more balanced than that.

AI happily answers simple questions on the spot. For example: “How many days are there in February?”

There’s not much reason to click through anywhere else for that one.

Buying decisions are a different story, though.

If someone’s choosing an agency, a software provider or a supplier, they still need to feel confident. They want to:

• Compare options.
• Read reviews.
• Understand pricing.
• See examples.
• Check expertise.
• Request proposals.

AI might help someone shortlist their options, but it rarely replaces the whole research process.

That’s why detailed, trustworthy content still earns its keep. Businesses producing genuinely useful resources are far more likely to get recommended than those relying on thin, keyword-stuffed pages.

What does good AI-friendly content look like?

There’s no secret sauce here. In most cases, the best content for AI is simply the best content for people, full stop.

Ask yourself: does this genuinely answer the reader’s question? If yes, you’re already heading in the right direction.

Strong content tends to include:

Clear headings

AI systems break content into sections, so simple, specific headings make it obvious what each part covers.

Instead of: “Things you should know”

Try: “How AI search chooses trusted websites”

That tells readers, and search engines, exactly what they’re about to get.

Plain English

Complicated language doesn’t make you sound more credible. Usually the opposite.

Marketing managers are busy. Business owners are busy. They want answers, not jargon for jargon’s sake.

Explain the technical stuff simply. If you do need a specialist term, define it naturally and move on.

Original insights

Anyone can repeat what’s already out there. Original experience is much harder to fake.

Share what’s actually happened in your client campaigns. Talk about what you’ve learned. Flag the common mistakes. Give practical advice.

That’s what separates your content from the dozens of similar articles already sitting on page one.

Comprehensive coverage

A good article shouldn’t send readers straight off to find another one.

If someone searches: “How does AI Search work?”

They’ll probably also want to know:

• How it’s different from Google
• Whether SEO still matters
• What they should change
• Whether rankings are disappearing
• How AI chooses its sources

Answer the related questions naturally, and you end up with much richer content, and stronger topical authority to go with it.

Technical SEO still matters

Some people assume AI only cares about the words on the page. It doesn’t.

Search engines still need to:

• Crawl your website
• Understand your content
• Follow internal links
• Access important pages
• Read structured information
• Understand page hierarchy

Skip any of that, and you’re making life harder for every search platform out there.

That’s why technical improvements often pay off well beyond traditional rankings. A technically sound website is simply easier to understand, full stop.

Not sure where your site stands? A Technical SEO Audit can flag opportunities to improve crawling, indexing and overall site health.

Why internal linking matters even more

One of the simplest wins available to most businesses is tightening up internal linking.

Every important topic should connect naturally to related pages.

Reading this article? You might also want to check out:

• SEO Services 
• Technical SEO 
• Content Marketing
• Digital PR
• AI Marketing 

Those links keep readers exploring. They also help search engines join the dots between the different topics across your site.

Think of internal links as signposts. One signpost points you to one place. A whole network of them helps you understand an entire town.

Your website should work exactly the same way.

Search is becoming less about keywords and more about understanding

For years, SEO was all about matching keywords. Today’s search engines are far better at understanding meaning.

These searches, for example, all share the same intent:

• Best SEO agency
• SEO company near me
• Who can improve my website rankings?
• Which agency offers SEO services?

Different words. Slightly different phrasing. Same goal underneath it all.

That’s why modern SEO focuses on topics rather than individual phrases. When your website shows expertise across a whole subject, it tends to perform well across a much wider range of related searches too.

The same logic applies to AI search. Rather than hunting for exact wording, AI looks for businesses that consistently show knowledge, authority and trust across a topic.

The businesses that will benefit most

The businesses set to do well over the next few years won’t be the ones chasing every shiny new trend. They’ll be the ones investing in quality. That means:

• Publishing genuinely useful content.
• Building strong technical foundations.
• Creating connected topic clusters.
• Demonstrating real expertise.
• Earning trust over time.
• Making it easy for people and search technology alike to understand what they do.

Those principles have always sat at the heart of good SEO. AI hasn’t changed that. It’s just raised the stakes.

What should businesses do now?

It’s easy to look at AI Search and feel like the ground’s shifted overnight. But it hasn’t, not really.

You don’t need to throw your SEO strategy out and start again. You need to build on it.

The organisations that do well over the next few years will be the ones that make their expertise easy to understand, for people and search technology alike.

Not sure where to start? Focus on these priorities.

Continue investing in high-quality SEO

SEO isn’t going anywhere. It’s simply getting broader.

Your website still needs to:

• Be technically sound
• Answer customer questions
• Demonstrate expertise
• Earn links and mentions
• Provide a great user experience

These are the foundations that support visibility in both Google Search and AI Search.

If it’s been a while since you reviewed your SEO strategy, now’s a good time to check it still stacks up. Our SEO Services help businesses build visibility across traditional search and emerging AI search experiences alike.

Build topic clusters instead of isolated pages

One great article is helpful. Ten connected articles are far more powerful.

If your business offers SEO services, for example, your site might cover:

• Technical SEO
• Local SEO
• Ecommerce SEO
• Website migrations
• Core Web Vitals
• Entity SEO
• AI Search
• SEO audits
• Internal linking

Each article backs up the others. Together, they build a picture of expertise across the whole subject, exactly the kind of structure Google and AI platforms understand best.

Publish content that answers real questions

Think about the conversations your sales team has every single week. What do prospective customers actually ask? What concerns come up? What misconceptions keep cropping up?

Those conversations are often your richest source of content ideas.

Rather than building articles around individual keywords, answer whole questions instead. Things like:

• How long does SEO take?
• Is SEO worth the investment?
• What’s included in an SEO audit?
• Can AI replace SEO?
• How do AI search engines work?

These are exactly the kinds of questions people are already putting to AI tools. Give them useful, balanced answers, and you’ve got a much better shot at being referenced.

Keep your content up to date

AI systems place real weight on accuracy. That means revisiting your older content regularly.

Update:

• Statistics
• Screenshots
• Product information
• Examples
• Internal links
• Service pages

A well-maintained website sends a clear signal that your information’s still worth trusting.

Strengthen your brand

AI doesn’t only learn from your website. It learns from the wider web too, including:

• Industry publications
• News articles
• Reviews
• Business directories
• Podcasts
• Social media
• Expert interviews

The more consistently your brand shows up in trusted places, the easier it becomes for AI systems to connect your business with specific topics. That’s exactly why SEO, Digital PR, content marketing and brand building need to work together.

Common myths about AI Search

New technology always brings its fair share of myths. Let’s clear a few up.

Myth 1: SEO is dead

This headline shows up every few years, without fail.

It wasn’t true when voice search arrived. It wasn’t true when mobile took over. It isn’t true now. SEO is changing because search is changing. Businesses still need their websites to be easy to find, understand and trust. That’s what SEO’s always been for.

Myth 2: AI will replace websites

People still need websites. They visit them to:

• Buy products
• Request quotes
• Compare suppliers
• Read reviews
• Check pricing
• Contact businesses

AI might help people get there faster, but websites are still where the decision actually gets made.

Myth 3: Keywords no longer matter

Keywords still matter. They tell search engines what your content is actually about.

The difference is that exact keyword repetition matters far less than it used to. Context is doing most of the heavy lifting now.

Write naturally. Answer the question. Cover the related topics. Focus on helping the reader, not chasing keyword density.

Myth 4: AI only recommends big brands

Large brands often get a head start because they’re mentioned more often online. That doesn’t shut smaller businesses out of the running.

Plenty of AI-generated answers feature specialist agencies, local businesses and niche experts, because they’ve proven genuine expertise in a specific area. Quality still wins.

The future of search

Nobody can say for certain what search will look like in five years’ time. What we do know is that it’ll keep getting more conversational. People won’t think in terms of search engines at all. They’ll just ask their question wherever’s most convenient. Sometimes that’s Google. Sometimes it’s ChatGPT. Sometimes it’s a platform that hasn’t even launched yet. That’s exactly why businesses should stop fixating on ranking in one place and start thinking about being visible wherever their customers actually search.

Your customers don’t all search the same way anymore, so your marketing strategy shouldn’t assume they do. Combine strong SEO, useful content, technical excellence and a trusted brand, and you give your business the best possible shot at being found across every search experience out there.

AI Search and Google Search work better together than apart. It’s tempting to picture AI Search and Google Search as rivals. They’re not.

They’re becoming part of the same customer journey. Someone might:

• Discover a topic using ChatGPT.
• Compare options in Perplexity.
• Read reviews in Google.
• Visit your website.
• Download a guide.
• Speak to your sales team.

That’s one buying journey, not five separate ones. Businesses that get this will be miles ahead of those still fixated on rankings alone.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is AI Search replacing Google?

No.

Google’s still the world’s most popular search engine. AI Search just gives people another route to information, especially when they want a detailed answer or help researching a topic. Plenty of people now use both.

Should I change my SEO strategy because of AI?

Build on your existing strategy rather than tearing it up. Keep focusing on technical SEO, high-quality content and user experience, while also creating content that answers whole questions and shows real expertise.

Does AI Search use websites?

Yes.

AI systems rely on information published across the web, including websites, news articles, documentation and other trusted sources. Without quality websites, AI would have a lot less to learn from.

Can AI improve SEO?

AI can speed up research, content planning and data analysis. But it still relies on human expertise, original insight and editorial review. The best results tend to come from pairing AI tools with experienced marketers.

How can I improve my visibility in AI Search?

Focus on creating genuinely useful content, keeping your website technically strong, building brand authority, and publishing content that shows real expertise across your specialist subjects. These are the same foundations that drive long-term SEO success.

Final thoughts

Search isn’t disappearing. It’s getting smarter. Google still plays a central role in how people find businesses, while AI-powered search gives people a faster, more conversational way to research. Rather than picking one over the other, businesses should prepare for both.

That means creating helpful content, building trust, improving technical performance, and demonstrating expertise across every corner of your website.

Get this right, and you won’t just perform better in Google. You’ll be better placed wherever your customers choose to search next.

Ready to improve your visibility across Google and AI Search?

Whether you’re refreshing your SEO strategy, shoring up your technical foundations, or getting your website ready for the future of search, we’re here to help.

Our team brings together technical expertise, content strategy and years of search experience to help businesses be found everywhere.

Take a look at our SEO Services or find out how our AI Marketing Services can help your business stay visible as search keeps changing.

Or if you’d rather just talk it through, get in touch. We’d love to hear about your business and chat about how we can help you connect with more customers online.

The post AI Search vs Google Search: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Koozai.com

What is Google Universal Cart?

We’ve all done it.
You find something you like, add it to your basket, then get distracted. Before you know it, you’ve got trainers sitting on one website, a coffee machine on another and a birthday present somewhere you can’t quite remember. Universal Cart aims to tidy all of that up.
Google says shoppers will be able to save products they discover across its platforms into one place. That includes Search, Gemini, YouTube and Gmail. From there, they’ll be able to review everything together before checking out.

Google also says Universal Cart will:
• Track price changes
• Notify shoppers about deals
• Monitor stock availability
• Alert people when products come back into stock

It’s all designed to make shopping feel easier and remove some of the little frustrations we’ve all become strangely accepting of.

Why should ecommerce businesses care?

Universal Cart isn’t just another shopping feature. It’s another sign that Google wants to play a bigger role throughout the buying process.
Years ago, Google helped people find products. Today, it helps people compare them. Tomorrow, it may well help people decide when to buy them too.
That’s why product data matters more than ever.

If Google’s going to recommend your products, track their prices and show them to shoppers at the right moment, it needs confidence that the information you’re providing is accurate.

My advice? Start with your product feed

If I could only recommend one thing, it would be this.
Open your Google Merchant Center account and give your product feed some attention.
Plenty of businesses still think of Merchant Center as something you set up once and leave alone.
Personally, I think that’s becoming one of the biggest missed opportunities in ecommerce.
Your product feed is one of the main ways Google understands what you sell.
If your titles are vague, your descriptions are thin or your stock levels aren’t accurate, Google has less confidence in recommending your products.
That’s not just important for Universal Cart.
It’s important for Shopping campaigns, Performance Max and every other shopping experience Google is building.

Five things I’d be looking at today

The good news is that none of these are revolutionary. They’re all things ecommerce businesses should already be doing. Universal Cart simply gives them another reason to move up the priority list.

1. Review your product titles and descriptions

Could someone understand exactly what you’re selling from the title alone?
Are your descriptions genuinely useful?
Or are they full of manufacturer copy that’s been sitting there since 2022?
Good product information helps customers.
It also helps Google understand your products.

2. Keep prices and stock up to date

Google has confirmed Universal Cart will monitor prices and availability.
That’s great for shoppers.
It’s less great if your Merchant Center feed says one thing and your website says another.
Accurate data builds trust.
It also reduces the chances of disappointed customers arriving on your site expecting a deal that disappeared yesterday.

3. Check your structured data

Structured data helps Google understand important information about your products, including pricing, reviews and availability.
Many websites already have it in place.
It’s worth checking it’s accurate and still working as expected.
These are the sorts of jobs that rarely get anyone excited, but they often make a noticeable difference.

4. Invest in better product imagery

Customers make decisions quickly.
Clear, high-quality product images make that decision easier.
If your photography hasn’t been updated for years, now might be the time.
Nobody ever thought, “That tiny blurry image has really convinced me.”

5. Make buying easy

Universal Cart might help people arrive on your website.
Your checkout still has to do the hard work.
Test your buying experience on mobile.
Look at your delivery messaging.
Check how many steps customers need to complete a purchase.
Removing small frustrations often has a bigger impact than adding shiny new features.

Does this mean SEO becomes less important?

Not at all. People will still search. They’ll still compare products. They’ll still read reviews, buying guides and FAQs before spending their money.
Helpful content continues to matter because customers still need answers before making a decision.
Universal Cart changes part of the buying experience. It doesn’t replace it.

When is Universal Cart coming to the UK?

Google hasn’t announced a UK launch date. There have been muttering about late 2026 but nothing more concrete.
Right now, the feature is rolling out in the United States before expanding more widely.
Personally, I wouldn’t spend much time worrying about exactly when it’ll arrive.
I’d spend that time making sure my ecommerce setup is ready whenever it does.

My final thoughts

Every year Google announces new features. Some make headlines for a few weeks before quietly fading away. Others genuinely change how people shop online.
Universal Cart feels like one of the more interesting developments because it builds on something Google has been working towards for years, making shopping easier and reducing the steps between discovering a product and buying it.

For UK retailers, the takeaway is refreshingly simple.
You don’t need to redesign your website overnight.
You don’t need to rip up your marketing strategy.
You just need to make sure Google has accurate, trustworthy information about your products and that customers have a smooth experience once they reach your site.
Those things have always mattered.
Universal Cart simply gives you another reason to make them a priority.

If you’re not sure whether your Google Merchant Center account, product feed or Shopping campaigns are working as hard as they could be, we’d be happy to take a look. Sometimes a fresh pair of eyes is all it takes to spot opportunities that have been hiding in plain sight. Drop us a line.

The post Google Universal Cart: What UK Ecommerce Brands Need To Do Before It Arrives appeared first on Koozai.com

Let’s imagine this for a second. Someone puts a URL into PageSpeed Insights, sees a mobile performance score of 43, takes a screenshot of the large orange circle and declares that the website is slow, rankings are going to collapse and everything needs to be fixed immediately. Suddenly, images are being removed, plugins are being installed and developers are being asked to “make the score green”, usually without anyone checking what the actual problem is or whether real users are experiencing it.

Core Web Vitals are important and website performance should absolutely be taken seriously. If you think about it, nobody wants to use a website that takes more than a few seconds to load, ignores them when they click something or moves the button just as they are trying to press it. However, Core Web Vitals are not the only part of technical SEO and a perfect score does not guarantee perfect rankings or deserve to become the business’s biggest priority.

So, let’s dive into what Core Web Vitals are, what each measurement actually means, why the different testing tools appear to never agree with each other and most importantly, when website performance should be treated as a genuine SEO and commercial priority.

What are Core Web Vitals?

Core Web Vitals are measurements created by Google to assess important parts of the experience users have when visiting a webpage. Rather than trying to judge whether a website looks nice or whether someone likes the colour of the buttons, they focus on areas that can be measured more consistently, including how quickly the main content appears, how responsive the page is and whether the layout remains stable while someone is using it.

When you open PageSpeed Insights, which is the free tool you can use by Google, you will normally see five prominent performance metrics. These are split into three Core Web Vitals that determine whether the page passes its Core Web Vitals assessment and two other notable metrics that provide additional information about the loading process.

The three Core Web Vitals are:

• Largest Contentful Paint, usually shortened to LCP
• Interaction to Next Paint, usually shortened to INP
• Cumulative Layout Shift, usually shortened to CLS

LCP measures loading performance by looking at when the largest visible piece of content appears.

INP measures responsiveness by looking at how quickly the page visually reacts when someone interacts with it.

CLS measures visual stability by identifying content that unexpectedly moves around while the page is being used.

There you have it, all the information you need, there’s no need for any more reading right? Right?

Well, unfortunately for you, we’re not done just yet because PageSpeed Insights also displays two supporting measurements under “Other notable metrics”:

• First Contentful Paint, usually shortened to FCP
• Time to First Byte, usually shortened to TTFB

FCP measures when the first visible piece of content appears, while TTFB measures how long it takes for the browser to begin receiving a response from the website. These are not part of the Core Web Vitals assessment itself, but they provide useful context when investigating why a page is slow to begin loading or why its main content takes too long to appear.

This means a page can pass its Core Web Vitals assessment even when FCP or TTFB is marked as needing improvement. LCP, INP and CLS determine whether the assessment passes, while FCP and TTFB help you understand what may be happening around them. Because apparently three acronyms were not enough, PageSpeed Insights gives us another two to think about as well.

Core Web Vitals are normally assessed using real-user data collected over a rolling 28-day period. Google also looks at what the majority of users are experiencing, which means that at least 75% of measured visits need to meet the recommended threshold for a metric to be considered good.

That last point is important because Core Web Vitals are not based on one person loading a page once. Real users visit websites using different phones, laptops, browsers, internet connections and locations. Someone visiting on a new phone while connected to fast Wi-Fi may have a completely different experience from someone using an older device on a weak mobile connection, even though they are visiting exactly the same page.

Largest Contentful Paint

Largest Contentful Paint measures how long it takes for the largest visible piece of content within the user’s screen to appear. In many cases, this will be a large hero image, a banner, a product image, a heading or a prominent block of introductory text.

A simple way to think about LCP is that it measures how long the user has to wait before the page looks like it has properly arrived. The website may technically have started loading, the header may be visible and a small icon might have appeared, but if the main product image or page heading is still missing, the user is probably not going to feel as though the page is ready.

Imagine walking into a restaurant, being shown to your table and then waiting several minutes for the menu. You are technically inside the restaurant, the lights are on and somebody has acknowledged that you exist, but you still cannot do the thing you came there to do. A poor LCP creates a similar experience. The page has started loading, but the main content the user wants is taking too long to appear.

Google considers an LCP of 2.5 seconds or less to be good. Between 2.5 and four seconds is classed as needing improvement, while anything above four seconds is considered poor. Poor LCP can be caused by several things, including slow server responses, large images, important resources being discovered too late, render-blocking stylesheets or JavaScript, and content that has to wait for scripts to run before it can be shown. This is where it is important not to jump to conclusions. PageSpeed Insights may tell you that an image is the LCP element, but that does not automatically mean the image is the only problem. The browser may have discovered it late, given something else priority or finished downloading it before another resource allowed it to appear.

In other words, compressing the hero image may help, but it is not a legally binding requirement that every LCP issue must be solved by repeatedly compressing the same image until it looks like it was taken on a phone from 2007.

Interaction to Next Paint

Interaction to Next Paint measures how responsive a page is when a user interacts with it. This includes actions such as clicking a button, opening a menu, selecting an option, expanding an accordion or interacting with a form. The possibilities are endless!

The measurement actually looks at how long it takes from the user beginning the interaction to the browser displaying a visual response. Google considers an INP of 200 milliseconds or less to be good, between 200 and 500 milliseconds to need improvement and anything above 500 milliseconds to be poor.

You will probably have experienced poor responsiveness without knowing its official name. You click a button and nothing appears to happen, so you click it again. The page then catches up, opens two things at once or submits the form twice, leaving you unsure whether the first click worked or whether you have just ordered two sofas That is an INP problem from the user’s perspective. They are not sitting there wondering whether the browser’s main thread is being blocked by a long-running JavaScript task. They simply know that they clicked something and the website ignored them.

INP is particularly important on interactive websites. Ecommerce sites, quote journeys, booking systems, filters, calculators and online applications all depend on users being able to select options and receive a response quickly. A blog article that is mainly read from top to bottom may have fewer complex interactions, but a product page where the size selector, image gallery and add-to-basket button are slow to respond can create a much more obvious commercial problem.

This is why the importance of a Core Web Vitals issue depends partly on the page and what users are expected to do there. A slow response on a decorative accordion containing extra information is not necessarily as serious as a slow response on the button that generates a quote or completes a purchase.

Cumulative Layout Shift

Cumulative Layout Shift measures how much visible content unexpectedly moves while the page is being used. Unlike LCP and INP, it is not measured in seconds. Instead, Google calculates a score based on how much content moved and how much of the screen was affected.

A CLS score of 0.1 or less is considered good, between 0.1 and 0.25 needs improvement and anything above 0.25 is poor.

This is usually the easiest Core Web Vital to explain because almost everyone has experienced it. You may have been reading an article when an advert loads and pushes the paragraph down the page or you go to click a product, but a banner appears above it and you accidentally select something else. It is frustrating because the page is changing after the user has already started interacting with it.

Common causes include images without defined dimensions, adverts or embeds that do not have space reserved for them, banners being inserted after the page has loaded, font changes and content being added above what the user is already viewing. The underlying issue is normally that the browser did not know how much space an element would need, so it had to rearrange the page once that element appeared.

Some movement is expected and perfectly reasonable like if a user clicks an accordion and the content below moves down, they caused and expected that change. CLS focuses on unexpected movement, which is why a page can contain interactive elements without automatically being considered unstable.

First Contentful Paint

First Contentful Paint measures how long it takes for the first visible piece of content to appear on the screen. This might be some text, a logo, an image, an icon or another visible page element.

The main difference between FCP and LCP is that FCP looks at when anything first becomes visible, whereas LCP measures when the largest and usually most important piece of visible content appears.

Imagine opening a restaurant menu online. FCP is the moment the restaurant logo or first heading appears, reassuring you that the page is loading. LCP is the moment the actual menu, main image or important information you came to see becomes visible.

A page can therefore have a reasonable FCP but a poor LCP. Something may appear quickly, but the main content could still take several more seconds to arrive. Equally, a slow FCP usually means the user is left looking at an empty or incomplete screen for too long, which can make the website feel unresponsive before they have even had the chance to use it.

Google considers an FCP of 1.8 seconds or less to be good. Between 1.8 and three seconds needs improvement, while anything above three seconds is considered poor.

Poor FCP can be caused by slow server responses, redirects, render-blocking stylesheets, JavaScript, web fonts or important resources taking too long to download. It is particularly useful when investigating LCP because it helps establish whether the whole page is slow to begin displaying content or whether the delay mainly affects the largest element.

If FCP and LCP are both poor, the problem may begin early in the loading process. If FCP is healthy but LCP is poor, the page may start appearing quickly while the main image, heading or content block is delayed.

Time to First Byte

Time to First Byte measures how long it takes between requesting the page and the browser beginning to receive the first byte of the response.

In simple terms, it measures how quickly the website starts answering. Imagine ordering something at a restaurant. TTFB is not how long it takes for the full meal to arrive. It is how long it takes before the waiter acknowledges the order and the kitchen starts responding. If nothing happens for several minutes, everything that follows will naturally be delayed.

TTFB includes more than the time spent by the server processing the request. It can also be affected by redirects, DNS lookups, establishing the connection, network latency and security negotiation. This means a slow TTFB does not always point towards one simple server problem, although hosting, caching and backend performance are common areas to investigate.

A TTFB of 0.8 seconds or less is generally considered good. Between 0.8 and 1.8 seconds needs improvement, while anything above 1.8 seconds is considered poor.

TTFB is an important diagnostic measurement because it happens before FCP and LCP. If the browser waits a long time before receiving anything from the website, the page is already starting the loading process at a disadvantage.

This does not mean that every slightly slow TTFB requires an expensive hosting migration or emergency server rebuild. A TTFB of one second may be marked as needing improvement, but if the page still loads its main content quickly, passes its Core Web Vitals assessment and provides a good experience, it may not be the most urgent issue facing the website.

How the five measurements work together

Although PageSpeed Insights displays five prominent field measurements, only three form the Core Web Vitals assessment:

• LCP measures when the main content appears
• INP measures how quickly the page responds to interactions
• CLS measures whether the layout moves unexpectedly

The two other notable metrics provide additional context:

• FCP measures when the first visible content appears
• TTFB measures when the website begins responding

Looking at them together gives you a clearer picture of the loading experience. TTFB can help identify whether delays begin before the page starts arriving, FCP shows when the user first sees something and LCP shows when the main content becomes visible. INP then tells you how quickly the page responds once the user begins interacting with it, while CLS shows whether the layout remains stable throughout the experience.

This is why the individual measurements are normally more useful than simply saying that a page is slow. They help you understand where the delay or frustration occurs and what kind of problem needs to be investigated.

Why do Core Web Vitals matter?

Core Web Vitals matter because they represent problems that affect how people actually use a website. It is easy to discuss them entirely as an SEO topic because they appear in Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights, but their value goes much further than whether Google gives a page a small ranking advantage.

If the main content takes too long to load, users may decide the page is broken or leave before seeing it. If buttons do not respond, they may struggle to complete an enquiry or purchase. If content moves unexpectedly, they may click the wrong thing or lose their place. None of those experiences are good for the user and, unsurprisingly, they are not particularly useful for the business either.

This is where performance work should be connected to the purpose of the page. On a lead-generation website, the biggest concern may be whether a slow form is stopping users from making an enquiry. On an ecommerce site, it may be whether product images, filters and basket functions work properly. For a publisher, it may be whether adverts and embedded content are constantly shifting the article while someone is trying to read it.

A Core Web Vitals report becomes much more useful when it helps answer a commercial question. “Our mobile product pages have poor INP because the size selector is slow to respond” gives the business something meaningful to investigate. “The website scored 48” gives everyone a number to worry about without telling them what is wrong.

Do Core Web Vitals affect rankings?

Kind of like all of SEO, Core Web Vitals are used by Google’s ranking systems but it’s not the one and only signal that it uses for Ranking. So even though you may be passing them, it doesn’t mean Google will send a page to position one or that failing them will automatically remove it from search results.

Good Core Web Vitals are recommended as part of providing a strong overall page experience, but there is no single page-experience score that determines rankings. Achieving good scores in Search Console or third-party tools does not guarantee top rankings and pursuing a perfect score purely for SEO may not be the best use of time.

Relevance is still extremely important, if one page provides a brilliant, detailed and highly relevant answer to a search while another loads slightly faster but barely answers the question, Google is not expected to ignore the useful result purely because its LCP is a little slower.

Core Web Vitals are therefore best viewed as one part of the wider picture. When several pages provide similarly relevant, useful and trustworthy information, the page offering a better overall experience may have an advantage. However, improving a performance score will not rescue a page that targets the wrong search intent, contains poor content, is not indexed, has no useful internal links or does not properly explain the product or service.

Why PageSpeed Insights causes unnecessary panic

PageSpeed Insights is a useful tool, but it is also responsible for a lot of confusion because it shows several different measurements on the same screen and presents one of them as a large coloured score. Naturally, everyone looks at the large coloured score.

That performance score is generated through a Lighthouse lab test and assesses a wider range of performance measurements. It is useful for diagnosing opportunities and comparing changes under controlled conditions, but it is not the same thing as the Core Web Vitals assessment and it is not a direct Google ranking score.

A page can receive a disappointing Lighthouse performance score while still passing its Core Web Vitals assessment using real-user data. The reverse can also happen, with a lab test looking healthy while real users are experiencing problems. Neither result should be immediately ignored, but they are measuring performance in different ways. Lets explore why you get different results and why the data is different.

Lab data and field data: what is the difference?

Lab data is collected by testing a page in a controlled environment using predefined device and network settings. It is designed to create a repeatable test that helps identify technical problems, which makes it useful when debugging a page, comparing versions or checking whether a development change improved something.

Field data is collected from real users visiting the website. It reflects a much wider mix of devices, connection speeds, locations and behaviours, which means it is generally more representative of what the site’s actual audience is experiencing. Google’s field data is commonly taken from the Chrome User Experience Report, usually referred to as CrUX.

A straightforward way to think about it is that lab data is a controlled test drive, while field data is the information collected from thousands of real journeys.

During the test drive, the same car may be driven on the same route, in similar conditions and at roughly the same time. In the real world, people drive through traffic, bad weather, roadworks and questionable decisions at roundabouts. The controlled test is useful because it helps identify specific problems, but it cannot perfectly reproduce every real journey.

This is why PageSpeed Insights can appear to contradict itself. The field data at the top may say the page passes Core Web Vitals, while the Lighthouse test underneath identifies performance problems. The field data is telling you what users have generally experienced over time, while the lab test is showing what happened during that particular controlled test. Where both are available, field data should normally guide prioritisation because it represents real users, while lab data can help diagnose the cause and test possible improvements.

Why does the performance score keep changing?

Another common source of panic or confusion is running the same PageSpeed Insights test several times and receiving different results. The page might score 74, then 62, then 81, which can make the whole process feel like a slot machine operated by somebody who enjoys watching marketing teams suffer.

Small changes between tests are normal. Network conditions, server response times, third-party scripts, adverts and the resources being loaded can all affect the result. A lab test creates controlled conditions, but it cannot remove every variable involved in requesting and rendering a live website.

This is why decisions should not be based on the most alarming result from a collection of tests. Run several tests, look for consistent patterns and pay attention to which metric or resource is repeatedly causing the problem. If one test briefly reports a poor result but the others are broadly healthy, that may not represent the normal experience. If every test identifies the same large image, delayed request or long JavaScript task, you have a much stronger lead.

The goal is not to keep refreshing until you receive the score you wanted either. That is not performance optimisation. That is negotiating with the tool.

Why does PageSpeed Insights say there is not enough data?

Field data depends on there being enough eligible real-user visits for Google to report the information. Smaller websites and lower-traffic pages may not have enough data available at an individual URL level, which is why PageSpeed Insights sometimes says it cannot discover what real users are experiencing.

Where information is unavailable, PageSpeed Insights may show data for the wider origin, meaning the website as a whole. This can still provide useful context, but it may not accurately represent the exact page being tested. A simple article, an image-heavy homepage and an interactive checkout can all behave differently even though they sit on the same website.

How to use the Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console

The Core Web Vitals report in Google Search Console is usually a good place to begin because it uses real-user data and separates mobile and desktop performance. It shows pages as Good, Need improvement or Poor and identifies whether the problem relates to LCP, INP or CLS. The report groups together URLs that Google believes provide a similar experience, often because they share the same template or underlying structure. A product page shown as an example may therefore represent a larger group of product pages rather than being the only URL affected.

This grouping is useful because Core Web Vitals problems are often template based. If hundreds of product pages use the same image gallery, scripts and layout, they may all be affected by the same underlying issue. Fixing the shared template could improve a large section of the site, which is normally far more valuable than making a tiny improvement to one isolated page.

It also means you should not look at one example URL and assume it tells the entire story. Review other URLs within the group, test representative pages and check whether the issue is consistent. One product may contain an unusually large image, one article may have an embedded video and one location page may include a map that behaves differently from the rest.

When should Core Web Vitals be a priority?

Core Web Vitals should become a clear priority when the problem is severe, affects important pages and creates an obvious barrier for users. If key landing pages take several seconds to display their main content, menus regularly fail to respond, product options are difficult to select or the checkout layout moves while users are entering details, the business has a genuine problem rather than an imperfect score.

Performance work should also be prioritised when one technical issue affects a large template or section of the website. A single change to the product-page template, navigation or shared JavaScript can potentially improve hundreds or thousands of URLs so always keep that in mind. In these situations, the scale of the opportunity can justify development time even when the performance problem is not catastrophic on every individual page.

Important commercial journeys should receive particular attention. That may include:

• Main product and category pages
• Core service pages
• Quote and booking journeys
• Enquiry forms
• High-traffic organic landing pages
• Pages supporting major campaigns or product launches

It is also worth investigating when performance has suddenly deteriorated after a redesign, migration, plugin update or new third-party tool has been introduced. If pages previously passed and a large section of the website is now reporting poor LCP or INP, that change may have created a clear starting point for the investigation. The important thing is to connect the technical issue with the people and pages it affects. “CLS is poor across 4,000 product pages because a promotional banner is moving the add-to-basket section” provides a much stronger business case than “our score is orange”.

Common Core Web Vitals mistakes

Core Web Vitals mistakes often happen because the measurements are treated as a scorecard rather than a diagnostic tool. People naturally want to make red numbers green, but improving website performance requires slightly more thought than repeatedly pressing “analyse” and hoping the internet becomes faster.

Chasing a score of 100

A perfect Lighthouse score can be satisfying, but it is not a requirement for good rankings, a successful website or a strong user experience. Some websites contain useful functionality, tracking tools, videos, product imagery and third-party services that naturally affect performance.

That does not mean everything should be accepted without question, but it does mean changes should be judged by their impact. Spending several days of development time moving a score from 96 to 100 may produce far less value than fixing a broken form, improving an important landing page or creating content around a commercially valuable topic.

Only testing the homepage

The homepage is not the whole website. It may use a completely different layout from product, category, service and article templates, and it may not even be the main organic landing page for most users. A homepage could perform brilliantly while thousands of product pages have the same slow image gallery. Equally, an image-heavy homepage may perform poorly while the service pages generating most leads are perfectly healthy.

Test the templates and journeys that matter, not just the URL everybody knows.

Treating every recommendation as equally important

PageSpeed Insights may recommend reducing unused JavaScript, serving images in a different format, improving caching, changing font behaviour and removing resources that block rendering. That does not mean every recommendation will have the same effect or that completing all of them is necessary.

Focus on the metric that is failing and the resources directly contributing to it. If CLS is the problem, spending the entire development budget compressing images may not solve it. If INP is poor because a third-party script blocks interactions, adjusting the dimensions of a banner will not suddenly make the page responsive.

Removing useful features without considering the user

Performance should improve the user experience, not become an excuse to remove everything users find useful. A video, calculator, product gallery or live-chat tool may affect performance, but it may also help customers make a decision or contact the business.

The correct question is not always, “Can we remove this?” It may be, “Can we load this more efficiently, delay it until needed or replace it with a lighter option?”

A perfectly fast website that no longer helps anybody is not the victory it might appear to be on the spreadsheet.

Installing another performance plugin

Performance plugins can be useful, particularly on platforms such as WordPress, but installing several of them without understanding what each one does can create new problems. Multiple tools may attempt to cache, defer, minify or combine the same resources, resulting in broken layouts, missing functionality and a website that performs brilliantly right up until somebody tries to use it.

Plugins should support a clear performance strategy rather than replace one. Understand the issue, choose an appropriate tool, test the change and make sure the website still works afterwards. Revolutionary stuff, we know.

Sending developers a score with no context

Developers need useful information. A PageSpeed Insights score does not explain which pages matter, which metric is failing, whether the problem affects real users or what level of improvement the business expects.

A better request might explain that mobile product pages are failing LCP, the main product image is consistently being identified as the largest element, the issue affects the full product template and those pages account for a significant proportion of organic revenue.

That gives the team a defined problem to investigate. “Please make this 100” gives them a reason to mute the conversation.

So, what is the key takeaway?

Core Web Vitals are useful because they turn parts of the user experience into measurements that can be monitored, investigated and improved. LCP helps us understand how quickly the main content appears, INP shows how responsive the page is when someone interacts with it and CLS highlights whether the layout moves around unexpectedly.

FCP and TTFB provide additional context by showing when the first visible content appears and how quickly the website begins responding. They are not part of the Core Web Vitals assessment, but they can help identify where loading delays begin and why LCP may be struggling.

Core Web Vitals matter for SEO because Google’s ranking systems use them as part of evaluating page experience, but they are not a shortcut to higher rankings and they should definitely not be viewed in isolation. Relevance, content quality, search intent, indexation, internal linking and the overall usefulness of the page all feed into Google’s decision process. A green report does not guarantee visibility, just as an orange report does not automatically mean the website is doomed.

Improve performance where it makes a meaningful difference, keep the wider SEO picture in mind and, above all, do not panic.

The post SEO Unpacked: What are Core Web Vitals? appeared first on Koozai.com

For our second interview, we spoke with Sean Barber, SEO Manager at Macmillan Cancer Support and Host of Search with Sean, about the attention being given to AI search, the tools helping him understand performance and why SEO professionals could have a more important role than ever.

Sean also shares what he’s been watching lately and where he believes digital marketing could be heading over the next 12 months.

The Interview

For each Koozai Couch, we ask the same five questions to get a quick but useful snapshot of what people across digital marketing are seeing, using and rethinking.

Here’s what Sean had to say.

1. What’s one thing the industry is getting completely wrong right now?

I think many are getting too distracted by AI in search. Although it should not be ignored, I feel people may be forgetting the fundamentals, mainly learning from customers, understanding their needs and offering the best product or service possible.

From there, it is about getting the basics right, such as indexability, crawl budget, reducing website friction points and improving overall technical performance.

 2. What tool or resource has genuinely changed how you work lately?

Lately, I have really enjoyed using the Ahrefs MCP connector within ChatGPT.

We have also been using Profound, which is giving us some really interesting insights into our AI search performance.

Finally, Botify has been fascinating to use, especially being able to understand how different bots are crawling and interacting with our site.

3. What’s a take you’ve changed your mind on in the last 12 months?

This is something I talk about quite often on the channel, but when all the AI search changes started happening and traffic began to decline, I questioned the future of those working in SEO. However, as things have developed, I now believe we have a more important role than ever before.

Our role will be to guide businesses through this new AI search landscape, help shape strategies and educate other teams across organisations about the part they play in improving visibility, trust and overall digital performance.

4. What are you reading, watching or listening to that others in digital should know about?

First off, I would recommend checking out InsideAI, Majestic’s SEO in 2026 series and Vanessa Wingårdh.

Then, as I spend most of my time editing, I am going to make a shameless plug for my own channel.

Some recent videos worth checking out include an e-commerce panel show we hosted, a Real Talk With Sean episode featuring the likes of Mordy Oberstein and Dawn Anderson, plus recent interviews with Louisa Frahm, Gianluca Fiorelli, Myriam Jessier, Dixon Jones and Rejoice Ojiaku.

5. Where do you think digital marketing is heading in the next 12 months?

I am hoping the industry starts to get things in order and helps clean up some of the mess across the internet, where content being created genuinely adds value and everything indexed is high quality. The opportunity to manipulate results needs to continue to reduce.

It is clear that brands now need to step up their reputation management, and channels such as SEO, paid, social, UX and communications will need to become much more aligned throughout the entire customer journey.

I can see Google continuing to integrate more AI elements, potentially including more agentic experiences such as completing actions like signing up for events. I think OpenAI may face challenges as they continue trying to find a sustainable and profitable business model.

Reporting and attribution will remain difficult, and teams will need to focus on a combination of directional metrics mapped against bottom-line business outcomes to understand overall performance.

Thank you, Sean!

A huge thank you to Sean for joining us on the Koozai Couch.

His answers are a useful reminder that, while AI is changing how people search, successful digital marketing still starts with understanding customers, getting the fundamentals right and bringing teams together around meaningful business outcomes.

Enjoyed this interview? Catch up on our first Koozai Couch interview with Erin Simmons, where Erin discusses trust, community and why doing less can sometimes support growth.

Would you like to feature on the Koozai Couch? Get in touch and tell us what your answers would be. We’d love to hear from you.

The post Koozai Couch: Interview with Sean Barber appeared first on Koozai.com

Fast forward to today, and the picture looks rather different.

Yes, AI Overviews are changing how people search. Users are increasingly getting answers directly within Google’s search results, often without clicking through to a website. Alongside this, Google’s AI Mode is making search more conversational, allowing users to ask follow-up questions and explore topics in greater depth.

But while the way people search is changing, the principles behind good SEO haven’t.

Businesses that invest in helpful, trustworthy content are still earning visibility. The difference is that generic content, written simply to rank for keywords, is becoming much easier to ignore.

Rather than asking whether SEO is dead, the better question is this: How should your SEO strategy adapt?

AI Overviews are changing search, not replacing it

AI Overviews are Google’s AI-generated summaries that appear above traditional search results for selected queries. They’re designed to give users a quick answer while highlighting websites that provide further information.

Google has made it clear that its AI-powered search features are intended to help users discover high-quality content, not replace it.

Google still needs authoritative sources to generate AI Overviews. If anything, businesses that consistently publish accurate, well-researched content have more opportunities to build visibility across different search experiences.

The challenge isn’t whether your content can rank. It’s whether your content deserves to be referenced.

Rankings no longer tell the whole story

One of the biggest concerns surrounding AI Overviews is the impact on organic traffic. The latest research suggests those concerns are valid. Research from Ahrefs estimates that AI Overviews can reduce click-through rates to the top organic result by around 58%.

At first glance, that figure sounds worrying, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.

SEO has never been about generating traffic for the sake of it. It’s about attracting the right visitors.

If someone finds a quick definition through an AI Overview, they probably weren’t your ideal customer anyway. The people who do click through are often looking for more detailed information, comparisons or expert advice before making a decision.

That means marketers should start looking beyond sessions and rankings alone.

Generic content is becoming less valuable

AI has made producing content quicker than ever.

Unfortunately, it’s also made average content easier to spot.

Many websites now publish articles that cover exactly the same points, using almost identical wording. They’re technically accurate but offer very little original insight.

Google has little reason to prioritise content that simply repeats information already available elsewhere.

Instead, ask yourself:

• Does this genuinely answer the user’s question?
• Are we adding something our competitors haven’t?
• Does this reflect our own experience?
• Would someone trust this enough to make a business decision?

If the answer is no, it’s probably worth revisiting before publishing.

Publishing fewer, better articles is likely to deliver stronger long-term results than producing large volumes of content that adds little value.

Experience is becoming your biggest competitive advantage

One thing AI still can’t replicate is experience. It can summarise Google’s documentation.

It can explain what technical SEO is. What it can’t do is describe how your team managed a complex website migration, increased organic leads through content optimisation or overcame a challenging indexing issue for a client. Those experiences are unique. They’re also exactly the kind of insight that builds trust with readers.

Businesses should look for opportunities to include:

• Original research and surveys.
• Client case studies.
• Expert commentary.
• Lessons learned from campaigns.
• Practical frameworks developed through experience.

These insights don’t just help readers. They also make your content much harder to replicate.

Technical SEO still matters

With so much discussion focused on AI-generated content, it’s easy to overlook the technical foundations of SEO.

Search engines still need to crawl, understand and index your website. That’s why technical SEO remains just as important as ever.

A strong technical foundation includes:

• Fast-loading pages.
• Excellent Core Web Vitals.
• Logical site architecture.
• Clear internal linking.
• Mobile-friendly experiences.
• Structured data where appropriate.

These aren’t new recommendations, but they’re still essential for helping search engines understand your content and present it in the right search experiences.

Brand authority matters more than ever

One of the biggest shifts we’re seeing isn’t just in search behaviour. It’s in how businesses build trust.

Google’s AI systems draw information from sources they consider reliable and authoritative.

That means SEO can no longer operate in isolation.

PR, content marketing, social media, expert commentary and brand awareness all contribute towards how your business is perceived online.

The stronger your reputation becomes, the stronger your chances of appearing across Google’s AI-powered search experiences. In other words, building your brand isn’t separate from SEO. It’s becoming an increasingly important part of it.

Five practical steps to strengthen your SEO strategy

If you’re reviewing your SEO strategy, here are five areas worth focusing on.

1.  Audit your existing content

Review your website for pages that no longer provide value. Update outdated content, consolidate similar pages and remove anything that’s no longer relevant.

2. Prioritise quality over quantity

Instead of publishing more content, focus on creating articles that answer your audience’s questions in depth. Original insights, practical examples and expert commentary are far more valuable than generic advice.

3. Demonstrate your expertise

AI can summarise information, but it can’t replicate your experience. Share lessons from client work, industry observations and real-world examples to help your content stand out.

4. Keep your technical SEO in good shape

A fast, well-structured website remains the foundation of strong organic performance. Regular technical audits can help identify issues before they affect visibility.

5. Measure what matters

Rankings and traffic are useful indicators, but they don’t tell the whole story. Track enquiries, conversions, revenue and brand visibility to understand the real impact of your SEO strategy.

The bottom line

AI Overviews aren’t the end of SEO.

They’re changing how users discover information, but they’re also rewarding businesses that demonstrate genuine expertise and create content people actually find useful.

The days of publishing generic articles simply to target keywords are fading.

Instead, businesses that combine technical excellence with original thinking, practical advice and a strong brand presence are far more likely to earn visibility, whether that’s through AI Overviews, AI Mode or traditional organic search.

At Koozai, we see AI as an opportunity to improve how we work, not replace the expertise that sits behind great SEO. Technology can help speed up research and content creation, but experience, strategic thinking and understanding what your audience needs are still what make the difference.

SEO is changing. The businesses that continue putting people first will be the ones best placed to succeed.

The post How AI Overviews Are Changing SEO appeared first on Koozai.com

Google says 53% of mobile visits are likely to be abandoned when a page takes longer than three seconds to load. Yet when demand is high enough, people will stay in online queues for hours.

The latest example came from the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition at the British Museum, where visitors were warned that waits could reach nine hours.

That’s 32,400 seconds, or 10,800 times longer than Google’s three-second benchmark.

So, why will people abandon one digital experience almost immediately, but remain in another for most of the day?

The longest waits in our analysis

We reviewed reported waiting times linked to 25 high-demand ticket releases across music, sport, history, theatre and popular culture.

The Bayeux Tapestry had the third-longest reported wait among the events we analysed.

Its reported wait exceeded those linked to Taylor Swift, BTS, Adele, Beyoncé and the FIFA World Cup.

Not bad for an object created almost 1,000 years ago.

These aren’t necessarily the longest online queues ever recorded. They’re the longest reported waits among the 25 releases included in our analysis.

Why do people stay?

People haven’t suddenly become more patient. High-demand releases create a strong mix of value, urgency and scarcity.

The opportunity feels rare

People are more willing to wait when they believe they may not get another chance.

That applies to reunion tours, major finals and limited exhibitions. By the time tickets go on sale, many customers have already decided that missing out matters more than the inconvenience of waiting.

The value is clear

Fans already know why they want to see a particular artist. Supporters understand why a major sporting event matters. Visitors recognise the importance of an exhibition such as the Bayeux Tapestry.

The clearer the value, the more motivated people are to complete the booking.

The scarcity is genuine

Limited tickets and fixed dates give people a clear reason to remain in the queue.

Scarcity works best when it’s real and clearly explained. Vague “selling fast” messages may create pressure, but they can also damage trust.

The queue explains what’s happening

A slow webpage may leave users wondering whether the site is broken.

A well-designed queue tells people that their place is being held, how long they may need to wait and what happens next.

When delays can’t be avoided, clear communication can make the experience feel more reliable.

What can marketers learn?

The lesson isn’t to make people wait.

Most brands can’t expect customers to tolerate hours of inconvenience. Instead, high-demand launches show how much a strong proposition can change someone’s tolerance for friction.

Marketers should focus on three things:

• Build demand before asking people to convert
• Prepare websites for peak campaign traffic
• Communicate clearly when delays happen

A sell-out doesn’t automatically mean the customer experience was good. Strong demand can hide abandoned visits, failed payments and frustrated customers.

The best launches combine a compelling offer with a digital experience that makes it easy for people to act.

Methodology

Koozai reviewed reported waiting times linked to 25 high-demand ticket releases.

Events were ranked using the longest waits found in media coverage, organiser information or documented customer accounts.

The findings aren’t an exhaustive ranking of every online ticket queue. Google’s three-second figure relates to mobile page-loading behaviour and is used as an illustrative comparison.

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Indexation sits between your website existing and your website being eligible to appear in search. It is one of those areas where SEOs can quickly fall into technical rabbit holes, but at its core, it is fairly simple: Google needs to find your page, understand it, store it, and then decide whether it is useful enough to show for relevant searches. So, let’s unpack what indexation means, how crawling, indexing and ranking are different, why some pages are crawled but not indexed, and why not every single page on your website should be indexed.

What is indexation?

Indexation is the process of a search engine storing information about a page so it can be considered for search results. A simple way to think about it is to imagine Google’s index as a huge library. Crawling is Google discovering that a book exists. Indexing is Google reading enough of that book to understand what it is about and adding it to the library system. Ranking is Google deciding whether that book is the best recommendation when someone asks a particular question.

If your page is not indexed, Google may know the URL exists, but it has not stored it in a way that allows it to appear in search results. That is why indexation is so important. It is the stage where a page moves from simply existing online to becoming eligible to appear when someone searches for something relevant. That does not mean the page is guaranteed to rank, it just means it can be considered.

Crawling, indexing and ranking: what is the difference?

Crawling, indexing and ranking often get grouped together, but they are not the same thing. This is where a lot of confusion starts, especially when Google Search Console says a page has been crawled but it still is not appearing in search (This is one of many reasons why your technical SEO may have a thousand yard stare). To make sense of indexation properly, it helps to understand each stage and what Google is doing at each point.

Crawling

Crawling is when search engines discover and visit URLs. Googlebot follows links, reads sitemaps, revisits known pages and looks for new or updated content. At this stage, Google is essentially trying to understand what pages are available and whether it can access them. A page can be discovered through internal links, external links, XML sitemaps, redirects, previously known URLs and other sources Google has found over time.

Once Google discovers a URL, it may crawl it. This means it requests the page, checks what comes back from the server, and tries to understand what content or information is available. However, crawling does not automatically mean indexing. This is one of the most common misunderstandings in SEO, just because Google has crawled a page, it doesn’t mean Google has decided that page deserves a place in the index. It is a bit like someone walking into a shop, having a look around, and then leaving without buying anything. Yes, they visited. But that does not mean the visit led to the outcome you wanted.

Indexing

We then move to step two, which is indexing. At this stage Google tries to understand the page. It looks at the content, title tag, headings, images, videos, canonical tags, structured data, internal links, duplicate signals and other information to work out what the page is about and whether it should be stored in the index. This is where quality, clarity and uniqueness start to matter.

If a page is thin, duplicated, blocked, canonicalised elsewhere, low value, confusing, or simply not useful enough compared with other pages Google already knows about, it may not be indexed. Again, not every crawled page gets indexed. That is not always a bad thing either. In some cases, it is exactly what you want!

Ranking

Ranking is the next stage. Once a page is indexed, Google can consider it for relevant search queries. Ranking is where Google decides whether that page should appear, and where it should appear, based on how useful, relevant and trustworthy it appears for a particular search. This means an indexed page can still get no clicks, no impressions and no visibility.

Indexing is not the same as ranking. It simply means the page is eligible to appear. You still need the page to match search intent, be useful, be technically accessible, have decent internal links, compete with what is already ranking and actually deserve to appear. In simple terms, crawled means Google has visited the page, indexed means Google has stored and understood the page, and ranking means Google is showing the page for relevant searches. You need all three, but each one solves a different problem.

Why does indexation matter?

Indexation matters because pages that are not indexed cannot generate organic search traffic from Google. That sounds obvious, but it is easy to overlook. You might have a product page with strong commercial value, a service page targeting an important keyword, or a blog post designed to answer a high-intent query. If that page is not indexed, it does not matter how good it is. It is invisible in search.

Indexation issues can affect organic visibility, traffic, leads, revenue, product discoverability, content performance and how search engines understand your site. For small sites, one or two indexation issues might not seem like much. For larger websites, especially ecommerce, property, recruitment, healthcare, finance or multi-location sites, indexation can quickly become a much bigger problem. A few messy filters, duplicate parameter URLs or low-value tag pages can suddenly turn into thousands of URLs being crawled, discovered or excluded. That is when indexation stops being a simple SEO check and starts becoming a site quality and crawl efficiency issue.

Why some pages are crawled but not indexed

This is where people tend to panic, and it’s caused many SEO’s to scratch their heads. You open Google Search Console, go into the Page Indexing report, and there it is: “Crawled – currently not indexed.” This means Google has crawled the page but has not indexed it. That does not always mean something is technically broken, but it does mean Google has chosen not to include that page in the index at that point There are a few common reasons this can happen. In some cases, it may be a technical issue, in others it may be a content quality issue, a duplication issue, a canonical issue, or simply a sign that the page is not giving Google enough reason to store it in the index. The possibilities are (unfortunately) endless!

The page is too thin

If a page has very little useful content, Google may decide it is not worth indexing. This often happens with empty category pages, very short blog posts, product pages with barely any description, location pages with copied text and only the town name changed, auto-generated pages, or filter pages with no unique value.

Thin content is not just about word count. A short page can be useful, and a long page can still be completely useless. The real question is whether the page gives users enough information to justify its existence. If the answer is “not really”, indexation may be a struggle.

The page is too similar to another page

Google does not need ten versions of the same thing. If you have multiple URLs with near-identical content, Google may choose one version to index and ignore the others. This is common on ecommerce websites where filters, sorting options, tracking parameters and product variants create lots of duplicate or near-duplicate URLs.

For example:

/mens-trainers/
/mens-trainers/?sort=price-low
/mens-trainers/?colour=black
/mens-trainers/?utm_source=email
/mens-trainers/page/2/

Some of those URLs may be useful for users, but that does not mean they all need to be indexed. If Google sees a lot of duplication, it may simply decide another URL is the better version.

The canonical points somewhere else

A canonical tag tells search engines which version of a page you prefer to be treated as the main version. If Page A has a canonical tag pointing to Page B, you are essentially saying, “Google, please treat Page B as the main one.” That can be useful for managing duplication, but it can also cause confusion if implemented badly.

If you are wondering why a page is not indexed, check whether the canonical tag points to itself or another URL. Then check what Google has selected as the canonical in Search Console. Sometimes you suggest one thing with your canonical tag, but Google decides another URL looks like the stronger or more appropriate version.

The page has a noindex tag

A noindex tag tells search engines not to index the page. This is useful when used intentionally, but painful when added by accident. Common accidental noindex issues include staging sites pushed live with noindex still in place, blog categories or tags noindexed by a plugin, product pages noindexed due to template rules, development settings left on after launch, or CMS-level SEO settings applying wider than expected.

If a page should be indexed, make sure it does not have a noindex tag in the HTML or HTTP header. This is one of those checks that sounds basic, but it has caught out plenty of websites. Nobody is above the accidental noindex.

The page is blocked from crawling

If a page is blocked in robots.txt, Google may not be able to crawl it properly. This is different from noindex. Robots.txt controls crawling, while noindex controls indexing. If you block Google from crawling a page, Google may not be able to see the page content or the noindex tag on the page.

That can create messy situations where Google knows a URL exists but cannot properly evaluate it. So, if you want a page removed from the index, do not just block it in robots.txt and hope for the best. Use the right method for the job.

The page is not internally linked well

Internal links help search engines discover pages and understand their importance. If a page exists but is buried deep in the site, only linked from an old sitemap, or not linked from any meaningful page, Google may see it as low priority. This is especially common with orphan pages, old campaign landing pages, blog posts not linked from category hubs, product pages hidden behind filters, or service pages missing from navigation and supporting content.

If a page matters, link to it like it matters. Internal linking is one of the few SEO levers you fully control, so do not make Google work harder than it needs to. Go get those links!

The page has quality issues

Sometimes the technical setup is fine, but the page still does not get indexed because it is not strong enough. That can include poor or duplicated content, weak search intent alignment, no clear purpose, too much boilerplate content, lack of useful information, poor page experience, confusing structure or weak trust signals.

This is where SEOs need to avoid treating indexation as purely technical. Yes, check the tags, canonicals, robots.txt and status codes. But also ask the uncomfortable question: is this page actually worth indexing? Because sometimes the answer is no, and Google has simply noticed before you have.

Why not every page should be indexed

This is the bit that often gets missed. A healthy website does not need every single URL indexed. In fact, trying to force every page into the index can make your website weaker, not stronger. Some pages exist for users, functionality or tracking, but do not need to appear in search results. That includes things like basket pages, checkout pages, internal search results, login pages, thank you pages, filter combinations with no search value, duplicate parameter URLs, thin tag pages, admin or account pages, staging URLs and PPC landing pages not built for organic search.

Indexation should be intentional. You want Google spending time on the pages that matter: your key services, products, categories, guides, resources and commercially useful content. If your site is full of low-value indexed pages, it can dilute quality signals and make it harder for search engines to understand what your important pages are. Think of it like inviting people to a meeting. You do not need everyone there. You need the right people there. Otherwise, suddenly there are 43 people on a call, nobody knows who owns the action, and someone is still screen sharing from the previous agenda item. Your index should be focused.

How to check indexation in Google Search Console

Google Search Console is usually the best starting point for checking indexation issues. There are two main areas to use: the Page Indexing report and the URL Inspection tool. The Page Indexing report is useful for spotting wider patterns across the site, while the URL Inspection tool is better when you want to look into one specific URL.

Used together, they can help you understand whether a page is indexed, whether Google has crawled it, whether indexing is being blocked, what canonical Google has selected, and whether there are wider issues affecting groups of URLs.

Page Indexing report

The Page Indexing report gives you an overview of which pages are indexed and which are not. You can use it to identify issues such as Crawled – currently not indexed, Discovered – currently not indexed, Duplicate without user-selected canonical, Alternate page with proper canonical tag, Excluded by noindex tag, Blocked by robots.txt, Not found 404, server errors and redirect issues.

The important thing here is not to panic when you see excluded URLs. Some exclusions are perfectly fine. For example, if checkout pages, account pages or duplicate parameter URLs are not indexed, that is usually expected. If important service pages, product pages or articles are excluded, that is where you need to investigate. The trick is to separate “this is a problem” from “this is Google doing exactly what we wanted”.

URL Inspection tool

The URL Inspection tool lets you check a specific URL. This is useful when you want to understand what Google knows about an individual page. You can check whether the URL is indexed, when it was last crawled, whether crawling is allowed, whether indexing is allowed, what canonical Google selected, whether the page is in a sitemap, whether Google could fetch the page and whether there are enhancement issues.

This is especially useful when a client or stakeholder asks, “Why is this page not on Google?” Instead of guessing, you can inspect the URL and look at the actual signals. That said, remember that “URL is on Google” does not mean the page is ranking well. It means the page is eligible to appear. Ranking is still a separate battle.

How to use crawl data to check indexation issues

Search Console tells you what Google is reporting. Crawl data tells you what your website is actually doing. Tools like Screaming Frog, Sitebulb and other crawlers help you check the technical setup at scale. This is where you can start spotting patterns that are harder to see one URL at a time.

A crawl can help you review status codes, indexability, canonical tags, noindex tags, robots.txt blocks, internal links, orphan URLs, sitemap URLs, duplicate titles, duplicate content, thin pages, redirect chains, pagination, parameter URLs and JavaScript-rendered content. The real value comes from comparing crawl data with GSC data.

For example, if GSC says a page is excluded by noindex, your crawl should confirm where that noindex is coming from. If GSC says Google selected a different canonical, your crawl can show whether your canonical signals are consistent. If GSC shows lots of discovered but not indexed URLs, your crawl can help identify whether they are internally linked, included in sitemaps or buried deep in the site. If important pages are not indexed, your crawl can show whether they are technically indexable in the first place. This is where SEO becomes less about staring at one report and more about joining the dots.

A simple indexation investigation process

If you are checking why a page is not indexed, start simple. The first question should always be whether the page should be indexed in the first place. Before trying to force a page into the index, you need to understand whether it actually deserves to be there. If the page has no organic purpose, no unique value and no reason to appear in search, then keeping it out of the index may be the right outcome.

If it is commercially important, useful and technically clean, then it is worth investigating properly. A simple checklist would be: does it return a 200 status code, is it blocked in robots.txt, does it have a noindex tag, does the canonical point to itself, is it included in the XML sitemap, is it internally linked from relevant pages, is the content unique and useful, does it match a clear search intent, is Google selecting a different canonical, has Google crawled it recently, and are similar pages being indexed?

Common indexation mistakes

Indexation issues often come from small decisions that scale badly. These mistakes are not always dramatic on their own, but when they happen across lots of pages, templates or URL types, they can create much bigger indexation problems. That is why it is important to look for patterns rather than only checking one URL at a time.

Adding every URL to the sitemap

Your XML sitemap should include the URLs you want search engines to crawl and index. It should not be a dumping ground for every URL your CMS can find. If your sitemap includes redirected URLs, noindexed URLs, canonicalised URLs, 404s, filtered URLs and low-value pages, you are sending mixed signals.

A clean sitemap should mainly contain indexable, canonical, important URLs. Basically, do not hand Google a map where half the roads lead to a wall.

Noindexing pages that should rank

This happens more often than people like to admit. A page gets noindexed during development, testing or migration, then everyone forgets about it. Weeks later, someone asks why traffic has dropped. Cue panic, Slack messages, and someone asking whether anything has changed recently, even though yes, obviously, lots of things have changed recently.

Always check noindex tags during launches, migrations and template changes. It is a simple check, but it can prevent a lot of unnecessary confusion.

Blocking important pages in robots.txt

Robots.txt is powerful, but it is also very easy to misuse. Blocking low-value crawl paths can be useful, but blocking important sections of the site can stop search engines from accessing content they need.

This is especially risky during migrations or redesigns, when staging rules accidentally end up on the live site. If an important page is not being crawled, robots.txt should be one of your first checks.

Ignoring internal linking

If a page matters, it should not be an orphan. Important pages need clear internal links from relevant areas of the site. That might include navigation, category pages, hub pages, related blog posts, breadcrumbs or contextual links.

Internal links help users move through the site, but they also help search engines understand which pages are important and how topics connect. If your key page is only linked from a forgotten blog post from 2019, do not be shocked when Google treats it like a forgotten blog post from 2019.

Creating too many low-value pages

This is a big one for larger sites. More pages does not automatically mean more traffic. Creating hundreds or thousands of pages with little unique value can cause indexation problems, especially when those pages are repetitive, thin or generated at scale.

Examples include location pages with near-identical copy, filter pages targeting tiny variations, tag pages with no useful content, AI-generated pages with no real editorial value, and product variant pages with duplicated descriptions. The goal is not to create as many URLs as possible. The goal is to create useful pages that serve a purpose. Very boring. Very effective.

Submitting URLs again and again

Requesting indexing in GSC can be useful for a small number of important URLs, especially after updates. But repeatedly submitting the same URL is not a strategy. If a page has underlying quality, duplication or technical issues, pressing “request indexing” like it owes you money will not fix the problem.

Find the issue, fix the issue, and then request indexing if needed. Otherwise, you are just asking Google to look at the same unresolved problem again.

So what about AI?

Well it wouldn’t be normal to talk about 2026 SEO without mentioning AI, would it?

AI search is slightly different from traditional search, but it still relies on many of the same foundations and principles. AI systems need to discover, access, understand and retrieve information before they can use it in an answer. Depending on the platform, this may happen through traditional search indexes, AI-specific crawlers, or real-time retrieval when a user asks a question. For example, Google’s AI experiences are still closely tied to Google Search, which means your important pages still need to be crawlable, indexable, useful, well structured and clearly linked from relevant areas of the site.

The important thing to remember is that being indexed in Google and being used in an AI-generated answer are not exactly the same thing. A page might be indexed and ranking, but still not be selected as a source in an AI response. Equally, some AI tools may retrieve information from the web in ways that do not perfectly mirror traditional rankings. This is why the basics still matter: your content needs to be accessible, easy to understand, clearly structured and genuinely useful.

For AI visibility, the goal is not to create strange content written purely for our algorithmic overlords, it is to make your key information easy for both users and machines to find, interpret and trust. Using clear headings, strong internal links, visible on-page content, helpful summaries, specific answers, schema where appropriate and clean technical foundations all help. AI may change how answers are presented, but it has not removed the need for good technical SEO, strong content and a clean, machine friendly website.

So what’s the key takeaway?

Indexation is not just a technical SEO checkbox. It is the bridge between your website existing and your website being eligible to appear in search. Crawling means Google has found and visited a page. Indexing means Google has understood and stored it. Ranking means Google has decided it is relevant enough to show for a search (that’s the part your stakeholders will care about).

The mistake is assuming those three things happen automatically, when in reality each stage depends on a mixture of technical accessibility, content quality, internal linking, duplication signals and overall page value. Some pages will be crawled but not indexed. Some pages should not be indexed at all. Some pages are technically indexable but not good enough to earn visibility. Others are blocked, canonicalised, duplicated, orphaned or accidentally noindexed because websites, much like marketing teams, are held together by processes, plugins and mild panic.

The best approach is to be intentional. Know which pages matter. Make sure they are crawlable, indexable, internally linked, useful and included in your sitemap. At the same time, keep low-value pages out of the index where appropriate. A clean, focused index helps search engines understand your website properly. More importantly, it helps your important pages stand a better chance of being found by the people actually looking for them. And that is the whole point of SEO.

The post SEO Unpacked: What Is Indexation And Why Does It Matter? appeared first on Koozai.com

It gives journalists additional context, demonstrates genuine expertise and helps turn a collection of facts or data into a meaningful story.

Yet many expert quotes do little more than repeat the headline.

They confirm what the journalist has already been told, describe an obvious trend as “increasingly popular” or add a vague sentence about why businesses should pay attention.

The quote might sound credible, but it does not actually say anything.

From a digital PR perspective, this is a missed opportunity. A strong expert quote should not simply decorate a press release. It should make the story more useful, provide a journalist with a new angle and establish why the person or brand commenting deserves to be part of the conversation.

What does a generic expert quote look like?

Generic expert quotes often sound professional at first glance. The problem is that they could have been attributed to almost anyone.

They tend to include statements such as: “This trend is becoming increasingly popular, and we expect more people to take advantage of it in the future.” or “These findings demonstrate how important it is for businesses to stay aware of changing consumer behaviour.”

Neither quote is necessarily incorrect. However, neither adds information that could not already be inferred from the story and it doesn’t give the journalist anything of value to add to their story. A strong relationship with a journalist may help your expert quote be seen, but it won’t make weak commentary worth using. In digital PR, success isn’t just about who you know. It’s about how you approach the story and the value you can add.

If a press release reveals that searches for a particular product have increased, a quote confirming that the product has become more popular is simply repeating the finding.

Journalists do not need an expert to describe the data back to them. They need the expert to interpret it.

A quote should move the story forward

Before including any expert commentary, ask one simple question:

What does this quote add that is not already contained elsewhere in the press release?

A useful quote should give the journalist at least one additional reason to include it in their coverage.

It might explain:

• Why the trend is happening
• What has recently changed
• What people commonly misunderstand
• What the data does not immediately reveal
• What is likely to happen next
• What action readers should take
• What risks or opportunities are being overlooked

This is the difference between commenting on a story and contributing to it.

For example, imagine a campaign showing an increase in searches for last-minute holidays.

A generic quote might say: “Last-minute holidays are becoming increasingly popular as more people look for flexible and affordable ways to travel.”

A more useful expert quote could say: “The increase in last-minute searches is not necessarily being driven by spontaneous travellers. Many holidaymakers are delaying bookings because they are uncertain about prices, flight disruption and household spending. That means travel brands may need to provide greater reassurance around flexibility and cancellation policies, rather than relying solely on late discounts.”

The second quote explains the possible motivation behind the behaviour, challenges an easy assumption and gives businesses something practical to consider.

It earns its place in the story.

Explain why something is happening

Data can tell us what is happening, but it does not always tell us why.

This is where genuine expertise becomes valuable.

An expert may be able to connect a trend to changing regulations, seasonal behaviour, economic pressure, new technology or shifts within a particular industry.

Rather than saying: “More businesses are investing in cybersecurity.”

An expert could explain: “Cybersecurity investment is increasing partly because businesses are becoming more dependent on external platforms, cloud services and third-party suppliers. This creates a wider network of potential vulnerabilities, meaning organisations are no longer only responsible for securing their own internal systems.”

The improved version provides context that strengthens the story and makes the expert’s knowledge visible.

Challenge what people are getting wrong

Some of the strongest expert commentary questions the obvious interpretation of a story.

Journalists are often interested in the gap between public perception and professional reality. If your expert can highlight a misconception, the quote immediately becomes more distinctive.

This might involve explaining why:

• A popular solution does not address the real problem
• A commonly quoted statistic is being misinterpreted
• Consumers are focusing on the wrong risk
• An industry trend is more complicated than it first appears
• Conventional advice no longer reflects current behaviour

For example: “Although many businesses assume a technical SEO audit is a one-off project, websites are constantly changing. New templates, plugins, redirects and content can introduce fresh issues, so technical performance needs to be monitored rather than treated as a completed task.”

This does more than confirm that technical SEO is important. It corrects a misunderstanding and explains why the misconception matters.

Show what has changed

Words such as “growing,” “changing” and “evolving” regularly appear in expert quotes without any explanation of what the change actually involves.

A better quote identifies the specific shift.

Has customer behaviour changed? Has a new platform affected the market? Are people making decisions differently? Has a previously effective tactic become less reliable?

Specificity creates authority.

If we compare “The digital PR landscape is constantly evolving” with “digital PR campaigns are increasingly expected to do more than generate links. Brands are also looking at how expert mentions, third-party coverage and consistent subject knowledge can support their visibility across traditional search, AI-generated answers and wider online research.”

The second version tells the reader what the evolution looks like and why it matters.

Tell the reader what happens next

Predictions can strengthen expert commentary, provided they are grounded in experience rather than vague speculation.

Phrases such as “this trend will continue” rarely add much. Instead, the expert should explain what the trend could lead to.

A useful forward-looking quote might address:

• How businesses will need to adapt
• Which groups are likely to be affected
• What the next stage of the trend could look like
• What could slow or reverse the change
• Which consequences have not yet received much attention

This gives the journalist a future-facing angle and may make the commentary relevant beyond the immediate campaign.

Give people something practical to do

Expert commentary can also turn awareness into action.

If a press release identifies a risk, problem or behavioural change, the quote can explain what readers should do with that information.

However, this advice needs to be specific.

“Businesses should review their strategy” is not particularly useful. What should they review? What should they look for? What is the first step?

A stronger quote might say: “Businesses should begin by identifying which pages generate the most revenue or enquiries before prioritising technical fixes. Resolving every issue in a crawl is not always realistic, so teams need to focus first on problems affecting their most commercially important areas.”

This advice demonstrates expertise because it shows how the expert approaches the issue in practice.

Expert quotes should sound like experts

It might sound obvious, but an expert quote should contain something that only an informed person could confidently say.

That does not mean filling it with technical language. In fact, the strongest commentary often makes a complicated subject easier to understand.

The aim is not to make the expert sound clever. It is to make their knowledge useful.

To achieve this, avoid quotes that:

• Could apply to almost any industry
• Repeat the campaign headline
• Simply describe a statistic
• Rely on vague predictions
• Include promotional claims about the business
• Contain so much jargon that the meaning is lost
• Try to cover several unrelated points at once

A quote should also sound natural when read aloud. If it feels like a paragraph from a corporate report, a journalist is less likely to use it unchanged.

The value goes beyond the press release

Strong expert commentary is not only useful for earning media coverage.

It can also help build a consistent association between a brand and the subjects it wants to be known for.

When an expert regularly provides informed commentary on a defined group of topics, they begin to create a recognisable area of authority. Journalists know what they can approach that person about. Potential customers can see evidence of their knowledge. The brand develops a clearer and more credible voice.

This can also support the organisation’s wider SEO and content strategy.

Expert commentary should reinforce the same core topics covered across the brand’s website, thought leadership, guides, case studies and media activity. Each quote becomes another opportunity to demonstrate experience and subject knowledge.

This does not mean inserting keywords unnaturally or forcing a product mention into every comment. It means being intentional about the areas in which the brand wants to develop genuine authority.

An expert in financial technology, for example, will build a stronger position by consistently contributing detailed insights on payment security, fraud prevention and consumer trust than by commenting superficially on every technology story.

Treat your experts as positioning assets

Experts should not be brought into a campaign at the final stage simply because the press release needs a quote.

Their knowledge should help shape the story from the beginning.

They may be able to identify:

• A more interesting interpretation of the data
• A caveat that needs to be included
• An emerging issue the campaign has overlooked
• A stronger angle for a particular publication
• A practical recommendation for the reader
• A claim that does not reflect how the industry actually works

Involving experts earlier can improve both the accuracy and originality of the campaign.

It also allows the PR team to build a bank of useful commentary that can be adapted for reactive media opportunities, interviews, articles and future campaigns.

A simple framework for stronger expert quotes

Before approving a quote, check whether it answers at least one of these questions:

• Why is this happening?
• What are people getting wrong?
• What has changed?
• What does the data not tell us?
• What is likely to happen next?
• What should the reader do now?
• Why is this expert particularly qualified to comment?

It does not need to answer all seven. Trying to include too much can make the quote unwieldy.

One clear, useful insight is far more valuable than several sentences of generic commentary.

Make every quote earn its place

Expert commentary should not be included simply because press releases are expected to contain a quote.

It should deepen the story.

A strong quote helps the journalist understand the significance of the information, gives the reader something they would not have known otherwise and demonstrates the expert’s authority without relying on promotional language.

The next time an expert says that a trend is “becoming increasingly popular,” ask them what is driving that popularity, what people are overlooking and what it means in practice.

That is where the real story usually begins.

The post How to Write Expert Quotes Journalists Will Actually Use appeared first on Koozai.com

AI search has changed how people find brands online. Your customers are no longer only typing keywords into Google and scrolling through blue links. They’re asking ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews for answers, options and recommendations. That means your brand needs to be visible in more places than traditional search results.

What is AI Search Optimisation?

AI Search Optimisation is the process of helping your brand appear in AI-generated answers.

That includes tools such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot.

Some people call this Generative Engine Optimisation, GEO, Answer Engine Optimisation, AEO, or LLM optimisation.

The names can get a bit alphabet-soupy, but the aim is simple.

When someone asks an AI tool about your products, services or sector, your brand has a better chance of being mentioned, cited or recommended.

Why AI search matters for brands

AI tools are now shaping buying decisions.

People use them to compare suppliers, shortlist agencies, ask for trusted brands and get quick answers before they visit a website.

That means search visibility is no longer only about rankings.

You need to be understood, trusted and referenced across the web.

Good AI search work helps your brand show up where your customers are asking questions.

AI search success needs SEO, content marketing and digital PR

This is the bit many agency lists miss.

Being found in AI search does not come from one tactic.

It usually needs three teams working together:

• SEO, to make sure your website is technically sound and easy for search engines and AI systems to understand.
• Content marketing, to answer real customer questions clearly, accurately and usefully.
• Digital PR, to build authority through trusted mentions, links and third-party coverage.

If those teams work in silos, the strategy can become patchy.

The SEO team may spot demand, the content team may create useful answers, and the PR team may earn authority, but the full benefit comes when everyone joins the dots.

At Koozai, our SEO, content marketing and digital PR specialists work together day in, day out.

That matters because AI visibility depends on connected signals, not one lonely blog post hoping for the best.

You can see more about our joined-up approach on our AI Marketing Agency service page.

What to look for in an AI Search Optimisation agency

1. A clear explanation of what they actually do

A good agency should explain AI search in plain English.

They should be able to tell you what they’ll do, why it matters and how it supports your business goals.

If the pitch is stuffed with acronyms but light on practical steps, that’s not a great sign.

2. Strong SEO foundations

AI search still relies heavily on the wider web.

That means technical SEO, crawlability, site structure, internal linking, schema markup and helpful content still matter.

Schema markup means structured code that helps search engines understand your content.

No need to panic, it’s less scary than it sounds.

3. Content that answers real questions

AI tools favour clear, useful information.

Your agency should understand how to create content that answers customer questions directly.

That might include comparison guides, FAQs, service pages, thought leadership, product explainers and sector-specific advice.

The best content feels useful to people first.

AI systems are more likely to pick up clear answers when humans find them helpful too.

4. Digital PR and authority building

AI tools often draw confidence from repeated, trusted mentions across the web.

That’s where digital PR comes in.

Coverage, citations, expert commentary and quality backlinks can all help strengthen your brand’s authority.

Your agency should understand how PR activity supports search visibility, not treat it as a separate nice-to-have.

5. Joined-up teams

Ask how the SEO, content and PR teams work together.

Do they share insights?

Do they plan campaigns together?

Do they report against shared business goals?

If the answer is vague, the delivery may be vague too.

6. Useful reporting

AI search measurement is still developing, but your agency should have a sensible approach.

They should be able to track a mix of visibility, traffic and business impact.

Useful measures include:

• Brand mentions in AI-generated answers
• AI referral traffic
• Visibility across target prompts
• Organic search performance
• Conversions and leads
• Content coverage across key topics
• Links, citations and trusted mentions

For more detail, these Koozai guides are useful next reads:

• How To Prove The Business Value Of AI Search
• The AI Search Readiness Audit
• Why Your AI Search Prompt Library Is Letting You Down And How To Fix It
• How To Measure AI Search Performance

Questions to ask before hiring an AI Search Optimisation agency

• How do you improve visibility in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews?
• How do your SEO, content and digital PR teams work together?
• How do you decide which prompts and topics to target?
• How do you measure AI search visibility?
• How do you connect AI visibility to leads and revenue?
• Can you audit our current AI search presence?
• What will you need from our internal team?
• How will this work support our wider SEO strategy?

AI Search Optimisation agencies worth researching

This is not a ranking.

The right agency depends on your goals, budget, sector and internal team setup.

These agencies are worth researching if you’re looking for AI search, GEO or broader organic visibility support.

Koozai

Koozai is a UK digital marketing agency helping brands become more visible across traditional search, AI search and wider online discovery.

Our AI search approach brings together SEO, content marketing and digital PR, with teams working together rather than passing work between silos.

That means technical fixes, content strategy and authority building all point in the same direction.

Visit Koozai’s AI Marketing Agency page

The SEO Works

The SEO Works offers GEO services focused on helping brands appear in AI tools and large language models.

They’re worth researching if you want an agency with a strong search background and a dedicated GEO service offering.

Visit The SEO Works

Passion Digital

Passion Digital offers AI search and GEO services, including work across content structure, schema and strategic mentions.

They’re worth reviewing if you’re comparing agencies with a stated AI search service.

Visit Passion Digital

POLARIS

POLARIS positions itself around GEO, AI search and SEO support.

They may be a good agency to research if you want a search-focused partner with AI visibility services.

Visit POLARIS

Bird Marketing

Bird Marketing offers Generative Engine Optimisation services alongside wider SEO and digital marketing support.

They’re worth considering if you’re comparing agencies with international reach and AI search services.

Visit Bird Marketing

Exposure Ninja

Exposure Ninja offers GEO services as part of its wider digital marketing offer.

They’re worth researching if you want an agency that combines AI search with broader SEO, content and digital activity.

Visit Exposure Ninja

Buried

Buried is an organic search agency offering GEO and SEO services.

They’re worth reviewing if you want a specialist organic search partner with a focus on AI-driven search visibility.

Visit Buried

SUSO Digital

SUSO Digital offers AI SEO services alongside technical SEO, content and authority building.

They’re worth researching if technical search expertise is a key part of your brief.

Visit SUSO Digital

Quirky Digital

Quirky Digital offers GEO services that connect traditional SEO with AI search visibility.

They’re worth reviewing if you want a search agency with a stated focus on both SEO and GEO.

Visit Quirky Digital

Red flags to watch for

AI search is moving quickly, so it’s sensible to be cautious.

Be wary of agencies that:

• Guarantee specific placements in ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews
• Talk only about prompts and ignore SEO fundamentals
• Create content without understanding your customers
• Treat digital PR as separate from search visibility
• Cannot explain how they measure progress
• Use lots of jargon but offer few practical details

No agency can control exactly what an AI tool says.

A good agency can improve the signals that make your brand easier to understand, trust and reference.

How Koozai can help

Koozai helps brands become visible wherever their customers are searching.

That includes traditional Google results, AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and social search platforms.

Our team brings SEO, content marketing and digital PR together, so your strategy works as one joined-up programme.

We can help with:

• AI search visibility audits
• Prompt and topic research
• Technical SEO improvements
• Content strategy and creation
• Digital PR and authority building
• Measurement and reporting
• Ongoing AI search optimisation

See how Koozai can help with AI search visibility

Final thoughts

Choosing an AI Search Optimisation agency is not about finding the team with the newest acronym.

It’s about finding a partner that understands how search, content and authority work together.

AI tools need clear, trusted information to draw from.

Your customers need helpful answers.

Your business needs visibility that supports real commercial goals.

When those three things line up, AI search starts to feel less like a mystery and more like a practical part of your marketing strategy.

And thankfully, no crystal ball required.

The post How To Choose An AI Search Optimisation Agency appeared first on Koozai.com

Google has been talking openly about a new era for AI-powered search. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has started looking closely at how AI search uses publisher and brand content. And adoption data out of the UK shows businesses are past the “should we try this” stage and into full rollout.

At Koozai, we think there are three shifts marketers and product teams need to get ahead of before the summer slowdown, because the work to prepare for them won’t wait for September.

1. The First Click Isn’t What It Used To Be

The traditional search journey – type a query, scan ten blue links, click through, land on a website, is being squeezed by AI search experiences that hand the customer a single synthesised answer instead.

That’s a genuine problem for brands that have spent years optimising the click-through, not the explanation. If an AI tool is now doing the summarising on your behalf, the obvious question is: how confident are you that it’s getting your story right?

A few things worth checking now:

• Would an AI engine accurately describe what you sell, who it’s for, and why someone should pick you over a competitor?
• Is your pricing, delivery, returns and availability information clear, current and easy to find? Not just on your site, but anywhere it’s referenced?
• Are your product pages, FAQs, structured data and reviews doing enough heavy lifting to be understood by a machine, not just a human reader?

This isn’t a new SEO trick. It’s just a shift: your product content now has two audiences; the person, and the system summarising you to that person.

Worth doing this month: Pick one priority customer journey and audit it purely from an “AI readability” angle. Look at product descriptions, FAQs, schema markup, review structure, and policy pages as a single connected information set, not separate jobs for separate teams.

2. Agentic Commerce Is Quietly Becoming Real Infrastructure

“Agentic commerce” can sound like a buzzword, but the substance behind it is moving fast. AI agents are increasingly able to compare products, interpret reviews and policies, check availability, and act on a customer’s behalf; sometimes right through to completing a purchase.

Google has already announced new standards and tools aimed at retailers for exactly this kind of agent-driven shopping, including machine-readable commerce data designed for systems talking to systems, not just people browsing a page.

That changes what a product page is actually for. It still needs to persuade a human; imagery, storytelling, social proof all still matter. But an agent acting on a customer’s behalf cares about a different set of signals entirely: complete and accurate product data, clear delivery and returns information, structured and credible reviews, and a clear way to confirm that a transaction is properly authorised.

That last point is the tricky one. A lot of existing fraud and bot-detection systems are built to block exactly the kind of automated, non-human behaviour that a legitimate shopping agent might display. The question retailers need to start answering isn’t just “is this a real person?” – it’s “is this agent authorised to act for a real person, right now, in this context?” That touches identity, payments, fraud prevention and customer service all at once, which means it can’t sit with just one team.

Worth doing this month: Walk your commerce journey as if a machine were the customer. Where would it need clean, structured information? Where might it hit a wall? Where would proving identity or permission become the bottleneck?

3. Trust Is Turning Into an Actual Product Feature

As AI gets embedded deeper into customer journeys, trust stops being a brand values slide and starts being something customers actively test. Can they tell when they’re talking to AI rather than a person? Do they understand what it can and can’t do? Can they get to a human when they need one? Do they know where an answer came from, and how their data is being used?

Regulation is catching up here too. The EU AI Act brings transparency obligations into effect from August 2026, including requirements around making sure people know when they’re dealing with certain AI systems. Even businesses outside the EU’s direct reach should read the direction of travel: customers will expect more openness, and regulators will expect more accountability.

The good news is that building trust into an AI experience is mostly about good, honest design rather than legal box-ticking. A chatbot that’s upfront about what it can’t help with. A recommendation engine that explains its reasoning. A checkout flow that doesn’t bury the important terms. A support journey with a real, easy way out when automation isn’t cutting it.

Worth doing this month: Pick one AI-enabled touchpoint in your customer journey and make it more honest; clearer labelling, a better fallback to a human, or a plainer explanation of what the tool is actually doing.

A Practical Pre-Summer Checklist

Before the summer break, it’s worth getting these on the table:

• Audit one important customer journey for AI search readiness: could an AI engine describe it accurately and fairly?
• Treat product data as part of the customer experience, not back-office admin. Completeness and structure now influence conversion.
• Map where AI agents might touch your systems: discovery, comparison, checkout, support and returns all deserve a look.
• Design trust in deliberately; labelling, fallback options, and honest limitations shouldn’t be afterthoughts.
• Get the right people in the room early. This cuts across marketing, product, tech and legal, no single team owns it.

The Bigger Picture

None of this is really about AI getting cleverer. It’s about AI getting closer to the customer. Closer to how people search, compare, decide and buy. That means the customer journey isn’t just the screens you design anymore. It’s the data, systems and trust signals sitting underneath them too.

The brands that come out ahead won’t necessarily be the ones with the flashiest AI demo. They’ll be the ones that machines can understand correctly, that customers genuinely trust, and that teams can run responsibly day to day.

If you’d like help auditing how AI-ready your customer journey actually is, that’s exactly the kind of thing the team at Koozai can dig into with you.

The post Why AI Search and Agentic Commerce Should Be on Every Marketing Team’s Radar This Summer appeared first on Koozai.com

Some of that comes down to outdated advice that’s never been revisited. Some comes from genuine confusion between SEO disciplines. And some of it is just down to “technical SEO” being used as a catch-all term for anything that sounds complicated.

Across both in-house and agency settings, the same five misconceptions come up again and again, from business owners, marketing teams, and occasionally from other SEOs. These misconceptions are exactly why we built our technical SEO services around real audits and data, not assumptions.

Here they are, along with why they’ve stuck around for so long.

1. Technical SEO is a one-off job

This is the one we see most, and it’s also the most costly. Many businesses treat a technical SEO audit as something you do once, fix, and then forget about. But websites change constantly. New pages get published, plugins get updated, developers push releases, and content management systems quietly alter how pages render. Each change can introduce a new technical issue.

Why it sticks: a single audit is easy to scope and price. It has a clear start and end point. Ongoing monitoring doesn’t sound as exciting, so it’s a harder sell.

Sites that treat technical SEO as continuous maintenance, rather than a project with a finish line, avoid the slow build-up of indexing issues, broken structured data and crawl problems that pile up over months.

Worth doing: build a simple monthly check into your reporting, even if it only covers crawl errors, indexing status and Core Web Vitals. Catching small issues early is far cheaper than fixing a backlog later.

2. If Google can find your site, it must be indexed properly

Crawling and indexing get treated as the same thing. They’re not. A page can be crawled by Google and still never make it into the index, or it can sit in a strange in-between state such as “Discovered, currently not indexed” or “Crawled, currently not indexed.”

Why it sticks: Search Console terminology is genuinely confusing, even for experienced SEOs. Most business leaders never look at this data at all. They assume a sitemap and a clean robots.txt file mean the job is done.

In reality, thin content, duplicate pages, weak internal linking and crawl budget all affect whether a page that’s been found ever earns a place in the index.

3. More pages means better SEO

This one has its roots in genuinely good advice from years ago, when broad content coverage and a wide spread of keywords were rewarded fairly reliably. Somewhere along the way, the nuance got lost, and it became “more pages, more rankings” in a lot of people’s minds. The result is bloated sites full of thin, near-duplicate pages built to target slight keyword variations.

Why it sticks: it feels intuitive. Surely more content means more chances to rank? Search engines have got much better at spotting low-value pages and either ignoring them or treating them as a signal that drags down how the wider site is perceived.

A smaller number of genuinely useful, well-structured pages will usually outperform a sprawling site full of filler.

Worth doing: before adding a new page, check whether an existing one could simply be expanded or updated instead. Consolidation often beats creation.

4. Site speed is just about Core Web Vitals scores

Core Web Vitals get a lot of attention, and rightly so, but hitting a good score in a testing tool isn’t the end goal. Plenty of sites pass their Core Web Vitals checks comfortably while still delivering a slow, frustrating experience for real users on real devices and real connections.

Why it sticks: Core Web Vitals scores are easy to measure and easy to put in a report. Real-world performance, tested across different devices, locations and network conditions, is messier and harder to summarise neatly.

The scores are a useful proxy, not the whole picture. A site can be technically compliant and still lose visitors to slow-loading images, unoptimised third-party scripts, or clunky JavaScript rendering that a lab test doesn’t fully capture.

5. Structured data guarantees rich results

Adding schema markup is often presented as a straightforward way to win rich results in search, whether that’s review stars, FAQ accordions or product pricing. Structured data tells search engines what your content is about. It doesn’t force them to display it in any particular way.

Why it sticks: the link between structured data and rich results used to feel more direct, and plenty of guides still frame it as a guarantee rather than an opportunity.

Search engines have become more selective about which rich results they show, when, and for whom, often based on content quality, page authority and even device type. Structured data still matters, not least because it helps search engines and AI tools understand and trust your content, but it’s an input into a decision, not a switch you can flip on demand.

Why these myths matter

None of these misconceptions are wildly outlandish on their own. Most have a grain of truth somewhere in their history, which is exactly why they’ve proven so hard to shift. Acting on outdated or oversimplified assumptions can lead to wasted budget, missed opportunities, and sometimes real damage to a site’s visibility.

If there’s one thread running through all five, it’s this: technical SEO rewards ongoing attention, not a quick fix. Whether that means treating audits as continuous, understanding the gap between crawling and indexing, or recognising that structured data is a conversation with search engines rather than a command, the businesses that get this right are the ones asking better questions, not settling for easy answers.

No one likes a guessing game. If you’d rather have a clear picture of what’s actually happening on your site, get in touch with us at Koozai to find out how we can help you with your digital marketing.

The post Common Misconceptions About Technical SEO (And Why They Persist) appeared first on Koozai.com

The answer is that observed AI referral traffic is the floor of AI’s commercial contribution, not the ceiling. And if you’re only reporting that number, you’re systematically understating the impact.

This post is about how to build a more complete, credible picture, one that accounts for the AI influence you can see and the influence you can’t, without making claims you can’t support.

The Four Confidence Layers

When you’re reporting on what AI search is actually doing for your business, don’t try to squeeze everything into one number. Instead, think of it as four separate buckets, each with a different level of reliability:

What you can see directly: This is traffic that arrives on your site from an AI platform and gets recorded in your analytics. Someone clicks a link in ChatGPT, lands on your site, you can see it. Solid data, but it only tells part of the story, plenty of people see your brand in an AI answer and never click, they just go and search for you later.

Clues from your own data: This is where you look for signs that AI is influencing people even when you can’t prove it directly. Things like: are more people searching for Koozai by name than usual? Is traffic growing to specific pages without any campaign pushing people there? Are more people ticking “AI assistant” when you ask how they found you on your contact form? None of these definitively prove AI drove it, but together they paint a picture.

What external tools tell you: Tools like Similarweb can estimate how much AI traffic you and your competitors are getting across the web. It’s not your own data so it’s less reliable, but it’s the only way to see how you’re doing compared to others, and to understand which types of questions are sending people to your pages in the first place.

Your best educated guess: This is where you take everything above and work out a rough commercial number for planning purposes. Something like: “We think AI influenced roughly 30% of our branded search growth this quarter. Based on how that traffic normally converts, that’s probably worth somewhere between £X and £Y in pipeline.” Be upfront that it’s an estimate with assumptions behind it; never present it as hard revenue or it’ll fall apart the moment someone asks how you got there.

Each layer answers a different question. Keep them separate in your reporting, label the confidence, and never present a modelled estimate as proof.

Setting Up GA4 to Catch What It Can

First, check whether you already have an AI channel in GA4

Go to Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic Acquisition, and set the primary dimension to Session default channel group. If you’ve had AI traffic since May 2026, you should see an AI Assistant row appearing automatically. If it’s there, that’s your starting point.
But don’t rely on it alone. The built-in channel misses Perplexity entirely, and a significant chunk of AI-driven visits still land in Direct or Referral because the referrer information gets lost along the way. To catch more of it, you need to set up a custom channel group as well.

Setting up a custom AI channel group

Go to Admin, then Data display, then Channel groups. Create a new group, add a channel called something like “AI Search”, and set it to capture traffic from the main platforms by their domain names: chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, claude.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com, and any others showing up in your referral data. One thing to get right: custom channel groups apply from the date you create them and do not backfill historical data, so set this up as soon as possible. Also make sure your AI channel sits above the general Referral channel in the list  as GA4 assigns traffic to the first matching rule it finds, so if Referral comes first, your AI traffic gets absorbed into it before the AI rule fires.

What about Google’s own AI features?

This is still a blind spot in GA4. Traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode doesn’t appear as a separate source, Google’s own AI surfaces stay invisible in GA4 because Google doesn’t separately attribute them. The new Search Console reports help here, because they’ll show you impressions inside those features even if GA4 can’t track the clicks cleanly. Use both together.

Even with all of this set up properly, you’re still only seeing part of the picture. The sessions you can track directly are the floor of AI’s contribution, plenty of people see you in an AI answer, don’t click, and come back later through branded search or direct. That’s why the proxy signals covered earlier in this post matter just as much as the traffic data itself.

The Survey Question Worth Adding Today

There’s one proxy signal that’s disproportionately useful relative to how easy it is to set up: a single survey question in your signup or post-purchase flow.

Something like: “Before signing up, did you come across us in an AI assistant or AI search experience, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, or Google’s AI features?”

Yes / No / Not sure. Optional. One question, no follow-up.

The insight this gives you is significant. Users who arrive via branded search but answer “yes” are the invisible AI influence; they wouldn’t have searched for you without seeing you in an AI answer first. Users who arrive via direct traffic and answer “yes” are the mobile-to-AI copy-paste cohort that GA4 is entirely blind to.

A rising “yes” rate among branded and direct visitors is one of the strongest first-party signals you have that AI is driving real commercial impact beyond what your analytics can see.

How to Report This to Leadership

Nobody’s asking you to prove AI search is responsible for every new lead. The goal is simply to put together an honest monthly picture that helps you make better decisions about where to invest time and budget.

Here’s an example of what that could look like in practice for a digital marketing agency:

What GA4 is showing us directly

450 sessions arrived from AI platforms this month. Those visitors spent significantly longer on the site than our average organic visitor and were more likely to look at our case studies and service pages. Small number, but decent quality.

What our own data suggests

Searches for our agency name are up noticeably compared to the same period last quarter, without any paid activity or PR push that would explain it. Traffic to our SEO and digital PR service pages has also grown, despite us not running any campaigns pointing specifically at them. That pattern is consistent with people seeing us mentioned somewhere and then coming to check us out. AI answers are the most likely explanation.

What third-party tools are showing

Tools like Similarweb suggest the actual number of AI-influenced visits is probably higher than the 450 GA4 is recording, because a lot of AI-driven traffic loses its referrer data before it hits your analytics. On the competitive side, a rival agency appears to be getting a larger share of AI-referred traffic in our category, which tells us there’s ground to make up.

Our planning estimate

Taking the branded search growth above our normal baseline, and applying a conservative assumption that around a quarter of it is linked to AI influence, cross-checked against the number of new enquiries who told us they found us via an AI tool, we’d estimate AI search contributed somewhere in the region of £8,000 to £14,000 of influenced pipeline this quarter. The assumptions behind that are documented separately.

That last figure is a planning number, not something to drop into a client report as proof. The minute you present an estimate as hard revenue, someone will ask exactly how you got there and if the answer involves assumptions, you’ve undermined everything else on the page. Keep it clearly labelled as an estimate, show the working, and it becomes a genuinely useful tool for deciding whether to invest more in this area.

Three Patterns to Watch For

As you build up data across these layers, a few common patterns tend to emerge:

• Scenario 1: Hidden success. AI referral sessions are flat, but branded search is up significantly, direct traffic is growing, and your survey “yes” rate is rising. Reading: the visibility is working. Users are seeing you in AI answers and coming through other channels. Don’t cut investment because the observed channel looks quiet.
• Scenario 2: Traffic without fit. AI referral sessions are up, but conversion rate from AI traffic is below your organic benchmark. Reading: you’re getting cited for prompts that don’t match your most relevant pages. Check the prompts driving AI traffic and update the landing pages they’re pointing to.
• Scenario 3: Clean case. AI sessions up, branded search up, AI-assisted conversions visible, survey signal rising, competitive AI share growing. Reading: multiple independent signals all pointing in the same direction. Scale investment, expand prompt coverage, keep validating.

Pulling It All Together

If you’ve followed this series from the start, you’ll now have a framework that covers the full picture:

• Presence tells you whether and how you appear in AI search
• Readiness tells you why your visibility looks the way it does
• Business Impact tells you whether that visibility is creating commercial value

Running these three layers together turns what could be three disconnected audits into a single, connected diagnosis. You’ll know which lever to pull next; whether that’s fixing a technical access issue, building corroboration in key third-party sources, improving how you’re described on comparison pages, or simply reporting the impact you’re already generating more clearly.

AI search measurement isn’t about more dashboards. It’s about connecting what’s happening, why it’s happening, and what it’s worth, and being willing to act on what that tells you.

This series draws on frameworks developed by SEO consultant Aleyda Solis, including her 3-layer AI search measurement model and AI search prompt library guide. We’d recommend reading her original work for the full technical detail.

The post How to Prove the Business Value of AI Search appeared first on Koozai.com