Construction is a relationship-led industry, and when the cost, complexity and risk of getting a project wrong are high, knowing that someone else has had a positive experience with a company is incredibly reassuring.

So, why should construction companies stop relying on referrals? Absolutely not, the problem is relying on them alone.

The way people find, research and short-list construction companies has changed. A potential client might still ask a colleague, “Do you know a good contractor?” But increasingly, that recommendation is followed by something else: they search for the company online.

Now your prospective clients look at prospective websites and check that businesses previous projects. Increasingly, they search for reviews and look far deeper into a companies expertise. Let not forget that in todays world it is infinitely easier to compare alternatives. This is all because they are looking for evidence that the company can actually deliver what they need.

However now its highly likely that they will ask an AI search tool those very same questions. That means a referral may get you into the consideration set, but your online presence can determine whether you stay there.

The main reason referrals are so powerful because they reduce perceived risk which is why they work so well in construction. Choosing a construction company can involve a significant financial commitment, long project timelines, multiple stakeholders and considerable reputational risk. A poor decision can mean delays, additional costs, quality problems and difficult relationships.

Now the buyer therefore isn’t simply asking who can do this work, they are also asking who can I trust to do it properly. A recommendation from someone they already trust provides a shortcut to what can be a long search for the right fit.

This is closely linked to the psychological principle of social proof when people are uncertain about a decision, they often look at the behaviour and experiences of others to help determine what is credible or appropriate. Psychologist Robert Cialdini describes social proof as the tendency to look to people similar to ourselves when deciding how to act – and we see this more in referral based businesses.

In construction, that might mean a developer trusting another developer’s recommendation, an architect asking another architect who they use, or a facilities manager seeking a contractor that another organisation has already worked with. The referral effectively says someone I trust has already taken the risk –  that in itself is incredibly powerful.

However there is a clear problem with this method of winning business – you cannot control when someone recommends you. This is the weakness of a referral-only strategy.

Imagine a construction company has spent 20 years building an excellent reputation, completing hundreds of projects, their clients love them, previous customers regularly recommend them – but its website is outdated. The site has very little useful content and the projects aren’t properly showcased, then simply put, it will not appear for the questions its potential customers are searching for online. Regardless of it that company may has an excellent reputation among people who already know it, its what happens when someone who doesn’t know it starts looking. This is where referrals become limiting.

As a referral strategy is largely dependent on someone else knowing the right person, remembering your company at the right moment and being asked the right question – so your odds are getting slimmer!

Your digital presence creates another route into the business and instead of waiting for someone to say I know a company that could help with that, you can build visibility around the things potential customers are already trying to understand. That changes the relationship between marketing and sales.

Construction buyers are no longer following a simple path to purchase

B2B purchasing is increasingly non-linear, Gartner describes today’s B2B buying journey as a series of “jobs” buyers need to complete rather than a straightforward journey from awareness to purchase. These include identifying a problem, exploring solutions, establishing requirements, selecting suppliers, validating their decision and gaining agreement from other stakeholders.

That is particularly relevant to construction as a business might not start by searching for your company, it might start with a problem. For example, let’s start with a simple question:

How much does a commercial roof replacement cost? → How long does a commercial roof replacement take? → What type of roofing system is best for a warehouse? → Commercial roofing contractors Manchester → Company X reviews.

The company they eventually contact may be the company that appears consistently throughout that research process and this is an important distinction. Remember, people don’t always search for suppliers first, they often search for answers first and the psychology behind this matters.

When someone is making a high-value decision, uncertainty creates friction and what is really needed is evidence, reassurance and they want to feel that they understand their options. They want to know that other people have made similar decisions successfully and they want to reduce the possibility of making a mistake. This is where content, case studies, reviews, project examples, expertise and third-party coverage become important.

Gartner’s research into B2B buying found that buyers consult multiple information sources before making a decision, with its research indicating that B2B buyers typically consult four to 10 information sources. The same research highlights the importance of authentic advice from peers, colleagues and other organisations. In other words the referral isn’t necessarily being replaced by digital research, it is being joined by it.

Your referral is probably being Googled

This is one of the biggest reasons construction companies should think beyond referrals. Imagine someone recommends your business, your potential customer has never heard of you, so what do they do? They Google you. Suddenly, your website, reviews, case studies, social profiles and search results become part of the referral. The recommendation gets you through the first psychological barrier – someone I trust says they’re good.

Now, your digital presence then has to answer can I see evidence for myself? This is where construction companies can lose opportunities. A company may have an outstanding reputation offline but fail to communicate that reputation online. The result is a strange disconnect:

Great business → great referrals → weak online presence → lost opportunities.

Its critical your website needs to reassure, not just inform and a construction website shouldn’t simply be an online brochure – it should help someone make a decision.

That means answering the questions buyers actually have. Who do you work with? What types of projects do you specialise in? What sectors do you understand? What geographical areas do you cover? What types of projects have you delivered? What problems can you solve? What does working with you actually look like? You get the idea, but this matters because buyers increasingly research suppliers without speaking to a salesperson.

Gartner research published in 2024 found that 75% of B2B buyers said they preferred a rep-free purchasing experience, while also highlighting the need for better digital information to help buyers make confident decisions. Rest assured, that doesn’t mean construction buyers don’t want human relationships, its quite the opposite. It means the first conversation may happen later than it used to and so your website has to do more of the early work.

Case studies turn reputation into evidence

One of the most powerful ways construction companies can replicate the reassurance of a referral online is through case studies. A statement such as we deliver high-quality commercial construction projects is easy to write and it is also easy for every competitor to say. A detailed case study is different as it can show far more – from the challenge to what did the client need, its much easier to give a full and detailed account as well as giving the prospective customers something to evaluate. It transforms an abstract claim into something tangible. Psychologically, that matters because uncertainty is reduced when people can see evidence of previous success.

And then there is search!

Search gives construction companies something referrals cannot: visibility before the buyer knows who they want to hire. If they later search your brand name, your previous content and project work can reinforce the recommendation they’ve already received.

This is why SEO shouldn’t simply be viewed as a way of getting more traffic as for construction companies, it can help build familiarity and trust before the first conversation takes place.

The construction industry is becoming more digitally driven

This isn’t happening in isolation – the UK construction industry itself is becoming increasingly data and technology driven. The Office for National Statistics reported that construction new orders increased by 5.6% in 2024 to £71.7 billion, while also highlighting increasing adoption of digital technologies including BIM, drones and artificial intelligence across the sector.

At the same time, construction businesses operate in a market where identifying future projects and opportunities is increasingly data-led. ONS itself uses project information from Hubexo and Barbour ABI to help measure construction new orders, with data gathered from planning applications, project information, media and industry contacts.

The broader point is simple – construction buyers are becoming more digitally informed and your marketing needs to keep pace.

So, what happens when you combine referrals with digital marketing?

This is where the real opportunity lies! You don’t need to choose between referrals and marketing, you need them to reinforce one another.

They contact you, with the referral created the initial trust – and your digital presence validated it. That is much stronger than either approach operating alone.

Don’t just market the company. Market the expertise behind it.

One of the biggest opportunities for construction businesses is to stop thinking solely about promoting their services and start thinking about demonstrating their knowledge.

A collection of these resources begins to create something much more valuable than a list of keywords as it creates authority.

This becomes increasingly more important as AI search grows as the way people discover businesses is changing again. Search engines and AI tools increasingly help users research questions, compare options and understand complicated subjects. That means construction companies need to think beyond how do I rank for my service.

Instead start asking what questions does my potential customer need answered before they choose a company like us. That could include questions about costs, materials, regulations, timescales, project management, sustainability, specifications, maintenance, risks and different approaches. The companies that consistently demonstrate genuine expertise around these subjects give search engines and AI systems more useful information to understand and potentially surface.

At the forefront of your mind should be that the goal isn’t to manufacture content for an algorithm – it’s to make the company’s expertise visible and useful.

Construction will always be a relationship-driven industry and of course people will continue to trust recommendations from people they know as they should.

A referral from a respected client or industry contact is one of the most valuable forms of marketing a construction company can receive. However the buyer journey doesn’t stop when the recommendation is made. It often begins there.

The construction companies that understand this can use digital marketing to extend the reach of their reputation. Their digital presence gives potential customers somewhere to go when they inevitably start researching. The objective isn’t to replace referrals, it’s to make sure that when someone recommends your business, the internet backs them up.

The post Why Construction Companies Need to Stop Relying on Referrals Alone appeared first on Koozai.com

Rather than simply carrying out individual marketing tasks, a good digital marketing agency connects these channels around a wider commercial strategy. That might mean improving visibility in Google and AI search, generating qualified leads through paid advertising, building brand authority through digital PR, creating content that supports buying decisions, or improving how effectively a website turns visitors into customers.

The exact work depends on the business, its audience and what it is trying to achieve.

Put simply: a digital marketing agency works out where your potential customers are looking, what influences their decisions and how your business can become more visible and persuasive at the right points in that journey.

For some businesses, that means investing heavily in SEO. For others, paid search produces the quickest commercial return. Another business might have strong Google rankings but weak brand authority, poor AI search visibility or content that attracts traffic without generating enquiries.

That is why digital marketing should not be treated as a collection of unrelated channels.

What services does a digital marketing agency provide?

Digital marketing agencies can provide services including:

* Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
* paid search and PPC
* content marketing
* digital PR
* AI search optimisation
* paid social advertising
* social media marketing
* digital marketing strategy
* analytics and measurement
* conversion optimisation
* website and landing page optimisation

Not every business needs every service.

The role of the agency is to identify which combination of channels is most likely to help the business achieve its objectives, rather than recommending a bit of everything because it happens to be on the agency’s service list.

At Koozai, for example, our work spans SEO, paid search, Digital PR, content marketing, paid social and AI marketing and AI search visibility.

These disciplines can work independently, but they are often much more effective when they share data, audiences, messaging and commercial goals.

What does a digital marketing agency do for a business?

A digital marketing agency typically does five things for a business:

1. Identifies where the biggest digital opportunities are.
2. Creates a strategy for reaching the right audience.
3. Suggests implementation activity across the most appropriate digital channels.
4. Measures whether that activity is generating meaningful results.
5. Continuously improves the strategy using performance data and changes in customer or competitor behaviour.

The important bit is number four.

Traffic, rankings, impressions, clicks and followers can all be useful indicators, but they are not normally the ultimate reason a business hires an agency.

Businesses usually want more enquiries, better-quality leads, increased sales, stronger brand awareness, greater market share or improved return on their marketing investment.

A digital marketing agency should therefore be able to connect marketing activity with business outcomes rather than simply report that some graphs went upwards.

What does an SEO agency do?

An SEO agency helps businesses become more visible when potential customers search for relevant products, services, information and solutions.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can include technical SEO, keyword and audience research, search intent analysis, content optimisation, internal linking, website architecture, link acquisition, Digital PR and user experience improvements.

At Koozai, our SEO agency services focus on helping businesses increase relevant organic visibility across traditional search engines while also considering how people discover brands through AI-powered search experiences.

SEO work might include:

* finding technical issues preventing pages from being crawled or indexed
* researching what potential customers search for
* identifying gaps in existing website content
* improving service, product and category pages
* creating useful content around customer questions
* strengthening internal linking
* earning relevant links, mentions and citations
* improving website speed and user experience
* analysing competitors
* measuring organic traffic, enquiries and revenue
* improving how clearly search engines understand a brand, its expertise and its services

SEO is therefore much broader than “putting keywords on a website”.

Its job is to make it easier for search engines and potential customers to discover, understand and trust a business.

What does a PPC or paid search agency do?

A paid search agency manages advertising campaigns that place businesses in front of people actively searching for relevant products or services.

This commonly includes Google Ads and Microsoft Ads.

Unlike SEO, where visibility is earned organically over time, paid search allows businesses to pay for visibility for selected searches and audiences.

A paid search agency can handle:

* account and competitor research
* keyword research
* campaign structure
* audience targeting
* Google Ads
* Microsoft Ads
* Shopping campaigns
* remarketing
* ad copy
* bidding strategies
* budget allocation
* landing page recommendations
* conversion tracking
* campaign testing
* optimisation
* attribution
* reporting on leads, sales, cost per acquisition and return on ad spend

Paid search is particularly useful when there is clear existing demand.

Someone searching for a specific service, product or solution is already signalling intent. A well-managed PPC campaign tries to capture that demand efficiently while avoiding wasted spend on searches unlikely to convert.

Businesses wanting specialist management can also use Google Ads management services.

What does a content marketing agency do?

A content marketing agency plans, creates, improves and distributes content designed to attract, inform and persuade a particular audience.

Content marketing can include:

* website copy
* service and product content
* blog articles
* guides
* research
* reports
* whitepapers
* case studies
* landing pages
* thought leadership
* video content
* visual assets
* social content

The important distinction is that content marketing is not simply “writing blogs”.

Effective content marketing starts with a purpose.

A piece of content might exist to answer a potential customer’s question, improve organic search visibility, demonstrate expertise, earn links, support a sales conversation or help someone move from researching a problem to choosing a supplier.

Our beginner’s guide to content marketing explains the discipline in more detail.

Businesses that specifically need ongoing editorial content can also use blog content creation services, while commercial website copy may require website content creation or specialist SEO copywriting.

What does a Digital PR agency do?

A Digital PR agency helps businesses earn online media coverage, brand mentions, links and third-party authority.

Traditional PR and Digital PR overlap, but Digital PR usually places greater emphasis on how media coverage contributes to online visibility as well as brand awareness.

A Digital PR agency might:

* develop stories and campaign ideas
* analyse data to find newsworthy angles
* create research-led PR campaigns
* provide expert commentary to journalists
* conduct media outreach
* secure coverage in relevant publications
* earn authoritative backlinks
* generate brand mentions
* support online reputation
* strengthen signals of brand authority

This can support SEO because links and relevant third-party references help establish authority around a website and brand.

It can also have a wider effect.

When prospective customers research a company, they do not necessarily rely on what that company says about itself. They may look for reviews, press coverage, expert commentary and references from sources they already trust.

AI systems can also encounter these independent sources when building an understanding of brands and topics.

Digital PR therefore sits at the intersection of brand visibility, reputation, SEO and AI search visibility rather than existing purely to generate backlinks.

What does an AI search optimisation agency do?

An AI search optimisation agency helps businesses understand and improve how their brands are represented in AI-generated answers.

People increasingly discover and evaluate companies through tools and experiences such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity alongside traditional search.

Our guide to AI search vs Google search explains how these discovery experiences differ.

An AI marketing agency may look at:

* whether AI platforms mention a brand for relevant questions
* which competitors are being recommended
* which sources AI systems cite
* whether information about the brand is accurate and consistent
* the entities and topics associated with the brand
* website structure and crawlability
* content depth and clarity
* brand mentions and citations
* third-party authority
* Digital PR
* structured information
* expert signals
* how clearly services, people, locations and expertise are connected online

This does not mean traditional SEO has suddenly become obsolete.

Many of the foundations that make a website useful and understandable to search engines are also important when trying to build visibility across AI-powered discovery.

The difference is that businesses increasingly need to think beyond whether their own web page ranks.

They also need to consider whether their brand is understood, referenced and recommended across the wider web.

What does a paid social agency do?

A paid social agency runs advertising campaigns on social media platforms to reach specific audiences.

Depending on the audience and business model, that can include LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and X.

Paid social advertising can be used to generate leads, increase sales, build awareness, retarget website visitors and reach potential customers before they actively search.

The work can include:

* audience research
* platform selection
* campaign strategy
* creative development
* professional and demographic targeting
* retargeting
* budget management
* landing page alignment
* creative testing
* campaign optimisation
* conversion tracking

For B2B organisations, LinkedIn advertising can be particularly useful because campaigns can target professional audiences by criteria such as role, seniority, industry and company characteristics.

Consumer campaigns may lean more heavily towards channels such as Instagram advertising.

The right platform depends on where the intended audience actually spends time and how they make purchasing decisions.

How do SEO, PPC, Digital PR and content marketing work together?

SEO, PPC, Digital PR and content marketing perform different jobs, but they can support the same customer journey.

For example:

SEO helps a business become discoverable when people search.

AI search optimisation** considers how the brand is understood and surfaced within AI-generated discovery and recommendation experiences

PPC allows the business to pay for targeted visibility around commercially important searches.

Content marketing gives potential customers useful information and helps answer the questions they ask while researching.

Digital PR builds awareness and authority through independent third-party coverage, links and mentions.

Paid social can reach and retarget defined audiences beyond search engines.

A potential customer might therefore:

1. see a company mentioned in an industry publication
2. later encounter it in Google or an AI-generated answer
3. read one of its guides
4. see a LinkedIn ad
5. search for the brand
6. compare its services with competitors
7. read a case study
8. finally submit an enquiry

Marketing channels rarely operate in the neat little boxes found in monthly reports.

Customers are inconsiderate like that.

They move between search, social platforms, websites, review sites, media publications, AI tools and recommendations before making decisions.

That is why an integrated digital marketing strategy considers the whole journey rather than giving each channel its own separate universe.

For B2B organisations in particular, our guide to mapping digital marketing strategy to the B2B buyer journey explains how different marketing activity can support awareness, consideration and decision stages.

What is the difference between a digital marketing agency and an SEO agency?

An SEO agency specialises primarily in organic search visibility. A digital marketing agency can provide SEO alongside other disciplines such as paid search, Digital PR, content marketing, paid social and wider digital strategy.

There can be considerable overlap.

Some SEO agencies provide content and Digital PR because those disciplines directly support organic search. Equally, some full-service digital agencies have specialist SEO teams.

The difference is therefore usually breadth of expertise rather than an entirely different type of company.

If your main problem is highly specialised technical SEO, a specialist SEO provider may be appropriate.

If your challenge spans organic visibility, paid acquisition, brand authority, content and multiple stages of the buying journey, a broader digital marketing agency may make more sense.

Is a digital marketing agency the same as an advertising agency?

No. A digital marketing agency and an advertising agency can overlap, but they are not necessarily the same thing.

Advertising agencies traditionally focus on paid promotion and creative campaigns.

Digital marketing agencies may manage advertising, but can also work across organic search, content, PR, websites, analytics, conversion optimisation and digital strategy.

A digital marketing agency can therefore influence both **paid and unpaid digital visibility**.

Is a digital marketing agency the same as a social media agency?

No.

A social media agency specialises primarily in social platforms, while a digital marketing agency usually works across a broader mix of channels.

Social media can form one part of a wider digital strategy alongside SEO, paid search, content, Digital PR and other activity.

What is the difference between B2B and B2C digital marketing?

The biggest difference is how customers research, evaluate and purchase.

B2C marketing commonly targets individual consumers and can involve relatively short buying journeys.

B2B marketing often involves several decision-makers, longer research periods, higher-value purchases and more scrutiny before a supplier is selected.

That changes which channels, content and measurements matter.

Our guide to B2B vs B2C digital marketing looks at these differences in detail.

For example, B2B marketing may rely heavily on search visibility, LinkedIn, detailed content, case studies, thought leadership and Digital PR because buyers need evidence before committing.

Our guide to B2B content marketing explains how content can support that longer decision-making process.

Does a digital marketing agency create a marketing strategy?

It should.

A digital marketing strategy defines who a business wants to reach, what it wants those people to do, which channels can influence them and how success will be measured.

Without that, marketing activity can quickly become a collection of disconnected tactics.

An agency should normally understand:

* your business model
* products and services
* commercial objectives
* target audiences
* customer journeys
* competitors
* market conditions
* current marketing performance
* available budget
* internal resources
* sales process
* measurement and attribution

Only then does it make sense to decide which channels deserve investment.

How does a digital marketing agency decide which channels to use?

A good digital marketing agency chooses channels based on audience behaviour, commercial opportunity, available evidence and business objectives.

It should not automatically recommend every service it sells.

For example:

If customers are already making high-intent searches for a product, SEO and paid search could be priorities.

If a brand has excellent products but little authority or awareness, Digital PR and content may play a bigger role.

If a B2B company knows precisely which types of professionals it needs to reach, LinkedIn advertising might be useful.

If a company already ranks strongly in Google but is rarely mentioned by AI platforms, the opportunity may sit around entity clarity, content, authority and AI search visibility.

Channel selection should follow the problem, not the agency’s org chart.

What should a digital marketing agency measure?

A digital marketing agency should measure the metrics that show whether marketing activity is contributing to the organisation’s objectives.

Depending on the business, these can include:

* qualified leads
* sales
* revenue
* pipeline contribution
* cost per lead
* cost per acquisition
* return on ad spend
* organic conversions
* conversion rate
* search visibility
* relevant organic traffic
* AI search mentions and citations
* media coverage
* backlinks and brand mentions
* engagement with commercially important content

Supporting metrics such as rankings, clicks, impressions and reach are useful for diagnosing performance, but they should not automatically be treated as business results.

Ten thousand extra visitors are considerably less exciting if none of them are remotely interested in buying anything.

How does a digital marketing agency work with an in-house marketing team?

A digital marketing agency does not have to replace an internal marketing team.

Often, agencies work alongside in-house marketers by providing specialist skills, additional capacity, technology, data or an outside perspective.

For example, an internal marketing manager might own the overall brand and commercial strategy while an agency provides specialist SEO, paid search or Digital PR expertise.

Other businesses outsource most of their digital marketing because they do not have the resources to employ separate specialists in every discipline.

The right model depends on the skills already available internally and where the gaps are.

What are the benefits of using a digital marketing agency?

The main benefit of using a digital marketing agency is access to multiple areas of specialist expertise without having to recruit a full internal team.

Other potential benefits include:

* access to specialists across several disciplines
* greater capacity
* experience from different markets and campaigns
* access to specialist tools and technology
* independent analysis
* faster identification of problems
* joined-up channel strategy
* ongoing testing and optimisation
* clearer performance measurement

An agency can also challenge assumptions.

Internal teams naturally become very familiar with their own products, terminology and market. An external team can often spot gaps between how the company talks about itself and how customers actually search, ask questions and make decisions.

What are the disadvantages of using a digital marketing agency?

Using an agency is not automatically the right answer.

Possible disadvantages include:

* less day-to-day proximity to the business than an internal employee
* the need for regular communication and access to internal knowledge
* additional approval processes
* poor results if the agency does not understand the business
* dependency on an external supplier
* wasted budget if objectives and measurement are unclear

Most of these risks come down to the relationship.

An agency cannot develop a strong strategy if it is given limited information, and a client should not have to guess what its agency is doing.

Clear objectives, access to the right people, transparent reporting and honest communication matter on both sides.

When should a business hire a digital marketing agency?

A business may benefit from hiring a digital marketing agency when:

* growth has stalled
* competitors are gaining digital visibility
* internal teams lack specialist expertise
* paid advertising is becoming less efficient
* organic traffic is declining
* leads are poor quality
* the website receives traffic but does not convert
* marketing channels operate separately
* the business is entering a new market
* a new website or migration is planned
* there is no clear digital strategy
* Google visibility is strong but AI search visibility is weak
* marketing performance cannot be linked clearly to commercial outcomes

The right time is not necessarily when everything has gone wrong.

Agencies can also help businesses that are performing well but need specialist support to identify the next stage of growth.

What should you expect from a digital marketing agency?

You should expect a digital marketing agency to understand your business before prescribing tactics.

At a minimum, a good agency relationship should provide:

* clear objectives
* an agreed strategy
* defined responsibilities
* access to relevant specialists
* transparent communication
* realistic expectations
* appropriate measurement
* regular analysis
* evidence behind recommendations
* willingness to change course when the data shows something is not working

You should also expect your agency to explain its recommendations.

Digital marketing can be technical, but that is not an excuse to make it deliberately mysterious.

How long does digital marketing take to work?

There is no single timeframe because different digital marketing channels work at different speeds.

Paid search campaigns can start generating traffic as soon as campaigns are live, although effective optimisation takes time and data.

SEO usually takes longer because websites need to be crawled, evaluated and compete against existing results.

Digital PR depends partly on campaign quality, news cycles and media response.

Content marketing often builds value over time as content becomes visible, earns authority and supports different stages of the customer journey.

The wider answer is that digital marketing should be treated as an ongoing process of research, implementation, measurement and improvement, rather than a one-off campaign with a universal finishing date.

How much does a digital marketing agency cost?

Digital marketing agency costs vary significantly depending on the services required, the competitiveness of the market, the size and complexity of the website, campaign budgets and how much specialist time is needed.

Agencies may charge through:

* monthly retainers
* fixed projects
* day rates
* consultancy fees
* campaign fees
* combinations of the above

A small local business requiring limited support will have very different requirements from an ecommerce company with thousands of products or an international organisation operating across multiple markets.

Price therefore makes more sense when considered alongside scope, expertise, expected commercial value and the resources required to achieve the objective.

How do you choose a digital marketing agency?

Choose a digital marketing agency based on whether it understands your business problem and can demonstrate a credible approach to solving it.

Questions worth asking include:

* Have you worked with businesses with similar challenges?
* Who will actually work on our account?
* Which services do you provide in-house?
* How will you decide which channels we should invest in?
* What will you measure?
* How will you connect marketing performance with leads or revenue?
* How often will we communicate?
* What do you need from our internal team?
* What happens if the initial strategy does not perform as expected?
* Can you show relevant case studies or examples of your work?
* How do SEO, paid media, content and PR teams work together?
* How are you adapting your work for AI-powered search?

Be wary of an agency that has decided what you need before it understands what is actually wrong.

Do small businesses need a digital marketing agency?

Not necessarily.

Some small businesses can manage digital marketing effectively in-house, particularly when their requirements are simple and someone internally has the necessary expertise and time.

An agency becomes more useful when the business needs specialist knowledge, wants to grow more quickly, operates in a competitive market or cannot justify recruiting several individual specialists.

The question is less “Does every small business need an agency?” and more “Do we have the skills and capacity internally to achieve what we want?”

Can a digital marketing agency guarantee results?

No reputable digital marketing agency can guarantee specific rankings, revenue or marketing outcomes.

Agencies can control the quality of their strategy, implementation, testing and optimisation.

They cannot completely control competitors, customer demand, search engine algorithms, advertising platforms, media interest, economic conditions or how prospective customers behave.

A credible agency should therefore talk about evidence, opportunities, forecasts and objectives rather than guarantees.

Is hiring a digital marketing agency worth it?

Hiring a digital marketing agency can be worthwhile when the value generated by better marketing exceeds the cost of the agency and associated media or production investment.

That value may come from:

* additional revenue
* more qualified leads
* lower acquisition costs
* increased organic visibility
* stronger brand awareness
* better conversion rates
* reduced wasted advertising spend
* access to skills that would be expensive to recruit internally
* stronger visibility across traditional and AI-powered search

Whether an agency is worth the investment depends on the quality of the agency, the opportunity available to the business and whether both sides are working towards clear commercial objectives.

What does Koozai do as a digital marketing agency?

Koozai is a UK digital marketing agency that works across SEO, paid search, Digital PR, content marketing, paid social and AI search visibility.

We have been working in digital marketing since 2006, helping organisations improve how they are discovered, evaluated and chosen online.

Our core services include:

* SEO services to improve organic search visibility

* AI marketing and AI search services to understand and improve brand visibility in AI-generated answers

* paid search services to generate measurable traffic, leads and sales from search advertising

* digital PR services to build brand exposure, authority, links and media coverage

* content marketing services to create content around search intent and buying decisions

* paid social services to reach defined audiences through social advertising
The important part is how those services connect.

Someone does not become a customer because an SEO ranking moved from position six to position three.

They become a customer because they had a need, discovered a business, investigated it, found evidence that made it credible, compared it with alternatives and decided to act.

The job of a digital marketing agency is to improve that journey: helping the right people find your business, understand it, trust it and ultimately choose it.

That is what digital marketing is supposed to do.

The post What Does a Digital Marketing Agency Actually Do? appeared first on Koozai.com

Now its totally different – the way people search is changing. Of course, Google is still hugely important, but now it is commonplace for people to use AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI-powered search experiences to research. Here, with the help of AI they choose their  products, suppliers, materials, regulations – they can even work out costs and potential solutions.

Essentially this creates a significant opportunity for construction businesses, because being found online is no longer simply about ranking number one for a keyword. Now it is increasingly about becoming the business that AI systems understand, trust and recommend when someone asks a question related to what you do.

Its critical to remember that construction buyers aren’t always searching for you and that a potential customer doesn’t necessarily start their search by looking for a company. Todays user is much more likely to start with a problem.

For example, a surveyor might search “what are the current requirements for fire safety in commercial buildings?” An architect might ask “which sustainable materials can be used for this type of project?” And someone managing a construction project might simply ask “how much does X typically cost and what factors affect the price?”

All these searches can eventually lead to a supplier or contractor, but they major shift is clear – they don’t necessarily begin with “construction companies that provide X near me” and that distinction matters.

This creates the opportunity to be discovered before the buyer knows they need you and so if your website only talks about your products and services, you may be missing a huge part of the journey.

The businesses that have the opportunity to appear in these early searches are the ones providing genuinely useful information around the questions their customers are asking.

What has changed?

Traditional search generally works like this:

Question → Google → Search results → Website → Answer

AI search is increasingly becoming:

Question → AI → Research across multiple sources → Combined answer → Recommendation / sources

That’s a huge shift. Consider that an AI system doesn’t necessarily need to send someone to one website to answer their question. It can draw information from multiple sources and combine it into an answer.

That means your website isn’t just competing for a position in a list of ten blue links, your content could become one of the sources used to construct the answer itself. This shift changes the way construction businesses need to think about digital marketing.

Construction businesses need to think beyond keywords – this doesn’t mean keywords suddenly don’t matter, they absolutely still do, but they need to be considered as part of a much bigger picture.

Let’s say you manufacture a particular type of construction material. You could optimise a page for “X construction material supplier” which would be useful, but your potential customers may also be asking:

• What is X material?
• What is it used for?
• How does it compare with alternative materials?
• How much does it cost?
• What are its advantages?
• What are its limitations?
• Is it suitable for commercial projects?
• How long does it last?
• How is it installed?
• Is it environmentally friendly?
• What regulations apply?
• What should I consider before choosing it?

Suddenly its easy to see that you’ve gone from one keyword to an entire collection of questions and that those questions represent different stages of the buying journey.

This is where construction businesses have an advantage because the construction industry has something that AI desperately needs…expertise.

Questions, questions!

There are thousands of questions around construction that require genuine knowledge and experience. Materials, regulations, specifications, installation, costs, safety, sustainability, maintenance, design, planning, compliance – to name just a handful! If your business has experts who know these subjects inside out, you already have something incredibly valuable.

The challenge is turning that expertise into useful, accessible content and importantly, you don’t need to give away your entire business for free. What you need to do is demonstrate that you know what you’re talking about and your website needs to answer the questions your customers are asking.

If, for example you’re a specialist roofing contractor, its likely you have a website containing pages about commercial roofing, roof repairs, roof installation and your services which is all useful.

In addition also having genuinely helpful content is crucial, answering questions such as how long does a commercial roof typically last, how do you know when a commercial roof needs replacing, or what are the different types of commercial roofing systems? Your website isn’t simply saying  “we sell roofing services”, It’s demonstrating thar you understand commercial roofing and that’s a much stronger position. This is useful for both traditional search and AI-driven search. So, don’t just create content, create evidence.

So simply publishing lots of generic, AI-written blog posts isn’t going to give your business a competitive advantage. In fact, it could have the opposite effect if the content is vague, repetitive or doesn’t demonstrate genuine expertise. Think about what your business knows that other businesses don’t.

Give search engines and AI systems more evidence about who you are, what you know and why your business is relevant and your experts could become your biggest marketing asset.

Here at Koozai, another opportunity that construction businesses sometimes overlook is that their people know stuff. If you think about your technical director, surveyors, engineers – whoever it may be, they are constantly answering questions from customers. Those conversations are marketing opportunities.

Its hugely likely a customer asks your team “what’s the difference between these two materials?” and that’s a potential piece of content.

If the business is regularly asked particular questions that’s a potential piece of content. You can look at it like your customers are effectively handing you your content strategy, so listen to them.

What does this mean for construction businesses?

It means the traditional approach of  “we need a few blogs this month” really, really needs to evolve. Instead, think what does our customer need to know before they are ready to buy from us? Then build you can look to build your content around that journey – leading them to a decision.

Here’s where AI gets really interesting. As someone might never search for your company name and instead they might ask ChatGPT “who are the leading UK suppliers of X” or“Can you recommend companies that specialise in X”  if your business has built a strong online presence around that subject, there is a greater opportunity for your brand to be understood and potentially surfaced within those answers.

Keep in mind that this isn’t something you can achieve by publishing one article and crossing your fingers, it comes back to authority and trust. AI needs to understand who you are you, what you specialise in, what evidence supports your expertise and are other reputable sources talking about you.

It is critical that your information accurate and useful and that you have genuine experience in this area. That means your website, content, Digital PR, reviews, industry coverage and wider online presence all become part of the picture.

Digital PR matters too!

One of the reasons Digital PR is becoming particularly interesting for construction businesses is that getting mentioned by a relevant industry publication, news website or respected organisation can do more than generate a backlink, (great news!) it can help establish credibility around your brand and expertise.

Imagine you’re a specialist construction manufacturer and you’re regularly quoted in industry publications about sustainability or construction costs for example, you’ve suddenly got third-party sources demonstrating that your business knows its stuff.

That’s much more powerful than simply publishing “We’re industry leaders” on your own website – because anyone can say they’re an expert and evidence is harder to fake.

So, what should you actually do?

If you’re responsible for marketing a construction business, don’t panic and immediately decide you need to publish 100 AI-generated blogs – you don’t.

Start with these five steps.

1. Find the questions your customers are already asking

Speak to sales teams, technical teams and customer service. Look at enquiries, emails, FAQs, search data and ask your customers what they struggled to find online. From this you’ll probably uncover dozens of content opportunities.

2. Build content around problems, not just products

Don’t only write “our X product” think how do I solve X problem? Then position your product or service as part of the solution.

3. Demonstrate genuine expertise

Use your people, add real examples, share data, explain technical subjects clearly. Show your experience and don’t be afraid of being specific!

4. Build authority beyond your website

Look at Digital PR, industry publications, partnerships, expert commentary and relevant third-party coverage – your reputation shouldn’t exist only on your own website.

5. Think about the entire buying journey

Don’t just optimise the page where someone can request a quote, think about everything they need to know before they’re ready to request that quote. That’s where some of your biggest opportunities could be.

The construction search journey is getting bigger but the biggest change isn’t that Google is disappearing, it’s that search is expanding. People can now discover information through Google, AI search engines, ChatGPT, social media, industry publications, forums, YouTube and countless other sources and they’re using these platforms at different points in the buying journey.

For construction businesses, this means your digital presence needs to do more than simply rank for a handful of commercial keywords, it needs to demonstrate expertise, relevance, authority and trust.

Your future customer may not begin their search by looking for a supplier, they may begin by asking a question. The businesses that answer those questions today have an opportunity to become the businesses customers find tomorrow.

The takeaway

If there’s one thing to take away from all of this, it’s this: don’t just try to be found when someone searches for your company or your product. Become the company people discover while they’re researching the problem you solve. That’s the real opportunity with AI search and for construction businesses, it could be a particularly valuable one.

You already have the expertise, the projects, the people and the knowledge – now you need to make sure the internet can find it!

Don’t just take our word for it

Construction output is still a challenging picture. ONS reports that total construction output grew just 0.3% in Q2 2026, while new construction orders fell 11.8% quarter-on-quarter, driven largely by private commercial and public-sector work.

The industry is actively being pushed towards digital transformation and AI adoption. The Construction Leadership Council has a dedicated Digital, Data and Knowledge workstream and its Construct AI initiative is specifically designed to accelerate AI adoption across construction.

CIOB is similarly positioning AI as a practical tool for construction rather than science fiction – particularly for analysing data, identifying trends, forecasting risk and improving decision-making.

There is still an adoption gap. CIOB notes that many construction businesses are experimenting with tools such as ChatGPT for reports and correspondence but haven’t yet moved into more strategic applications.

Digital adoption itself is becoming increasingly important to competitiveness. CIOB says BIM, drones, 3D printing, augmented reality and data analytics are becoming commonplace, while businesses that are slow to adopt digital technology risk being left behind.

The bigger story isn’t AI is replacing Google its construction buyers are becoming more informed before they ever contact you and AI is changing how they get that information.

The website isn’t necessarily the starting point anymore. It can be the evidence that validates the decision.

The wider construction picture

The Construction Leadership Council is actively promoting digital transformation across the built environment and has established Construct AI to accelerate AI adoption across the industry.

CIOB also describes digital technology as increasingly integral to the built environment, highlighting technologies including BIM, drones, 3D printing and data analytics.

More recently, CIOB has been talking about the adoption divide around AI: businesses are already experimenting with tools such as ChatGPT, but many have yet to move from simple productivity tasks into more strategic applications.

So this isn’t really a story about some distant future – the construction industry is already moving. The question is how quickly individual businesses move with it.

The same fundamentals still matter: useful content, strong technical foundations, authority, reputable links and a website that provides a good experience.

But now there is another layer – can AI understand who you are, what you know, what you’ve done and why someone should trust you?

The construction companies that win the next stage of digital search won’t necessarily be the ones publishing the most content, they’ll be the ones answering the best questions.

The goal isn’t simply to rank number one anymore. It’s to become the company that keeps appearing throughout the research journey.

Useful Reading

Office for National Statistics – Construction output in Great Britain

Construction Leadership Council – Digital, Data and Knowledge

CIOB – Digital Technology and Innovation

CIOB – AI and Construction: The Power of Progress, Not Perfection

CIOB – AI in Construction: The Adoption Divide is Underway

The post From Google to ChatGPT: How Construction Buyers Are Searching for Suppliers and Contractors appeared first on Koozai.com

The difficult part is knowing whether your own brand is showing up alongside them.

For years, SEO reporting has given marketers a relatively clear set of measures. Rankings, organic traffic, click-through rates and conversions all help us understand how a website is performing in search.

AI search is making that picture more complicated.

A potential customer can now ask an AI tool to recommend a provider, compare products or explain which options are worth considering. They might see your competitors mentioned without ever visiting their websites. They might see your brand too, but that visibility won’t necessarily appear in Google Analytics.

This creates a new consideration for SEO teams: how visible is your brand when customers use AI to research the products and services you offer?

Search visibility is becoming harder to measure

Traditional search gives us a useful visual reference. You can see the businesses ranking above you, understand the type of content Google is rewarding and track changes over time.

AI-generated answers work differently.

A customer might ask:

“Which are the best companies for [service]?”

They could receive a shortlist of several businesses, along with an explanation of what each one offers.

Another customer might ask:

“What should I consider when choosing a [product or service]?”

The response could reference information from several websites, reviews, publications and other sources.

There may be no obvious ranking position to track. There may not even be a click.

For marketers, that means an important part of search visibility can sit outside the metrics we’ve traditionally used to assess SEO performance.

Your competitors could be influencing customers before you know it

Consider someone who is researching a significant purchase.

They might start by asking an AI tool for advice, rather than typing a product category into Google. They could ask for recommendations, compare different providers or ask which brands are considered reliable.

If your competitor appears repeatedly during that research, they’ve already gained an opportunity to influence the customer’s shortlist.

You may still see that person arrive at your website later through branded search, direct traffic or another channel. By that point, the original AI interaction could be invisible in your analytics.

This is where the distinction between traffic and influence becomes important.

A website visit is easy to measure. The interactions that contributed to someone choosing to visit are harder to see.

Ranking well doesn’t automatically mean appearing in AI search

It’s reasonable to assume that a strong organic presence should help a brand appear in AI search. There are certainly overlaps between the signals used to understand websites and the information surfaced in AI-generated responses.

However, the relationship isn’t one-to-one.

AI systems can draw on a broad range of information. Depending on the platform and the question being asked, that might include websites, product information, reviews, publications, forums and other third-party sources.

This means a brand’s wider online presence can matter alongside its traditional rankings.

For example, you could have strong rankings for your core commercial terms but relatively little content addressing the questions customers ask before they are ready to buy.

A competitor might have built a much broader body of useful information around the same subject. They may also have reviews, expert commentary and third-party coverage that reinforce their position.

When someone asks an AI tool for a recommendation, those differences can become visible.

What makes a brand more likely to appear?

There isn’t a formula that guarantees inclusion in an AI-generated response. The results can vary between platforms, queries and even individual searches.

There are still some fundamentals worth getting right.

Build depth around the subjects that matter

If you want your business to be associated with a particular area, your website needs to demonstrate knowledge of it.

That means looking beyond a list of target keywords.

Think about the questions customers ask before making contact. What are they comparing? What problems are they trying to solve? What information would help them decide between different options?

Useful content can cover those areas in much more detail than a page designed around a single keyword ever could.

The aim should be to provide genuinely helpful information, rather than simply increasing the number of pages on the site.

Make your business easy to understand

Search engines and AI systems need to understand what a business does and where it has expertise.

A clear website structure helps. So does well-organised content, descriptive page titles, useful internal linking and appropriate structured data.

Consistent information matters too.

If your business details, products, services or areas of expertise are presented differently across different sources, it becomes harder to build a consistent picture of the brand.

Technical SEO remains important here. Crawlability, indexation and a well-structured website provide the foundations for everything else.

Build credibility beyond your own website

Your website only tells part of the story.

Reviews, industry publications, expert commentary, reputable directories, partnerships and other third-party sources can all contribute to how a brand is understood.

This is particularly relevant when AI systems are drawing information from multiple sources.

If competitors have a strong presence across their own websites and the wider web, that gives them more opportunities to be associated with the subjects and qualities that matter to customers.

For SEO teams, this is another reason to look beyond on-site optimisation alone.

Focus on customer questions

Keyword research remains useful, but it shouldn’t be the end of the process.

Look at the questions surrounding your main commercial terms.

What does someone want to know before they contact a provider?

What would they ask when comparing two products?

What could make them hesitate before buying?

What information would help them decide which option is right for them?

These questions can uncover content opportunities that aren’t obvious from a traditional keyword list.

They also give you a better understanding of the information customers need during the consideration process.

AI referrals are already showing up in client data

We’ve been tracking visits from AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini.

In August, AI tools sent 216 sessions to a client’s website, compared with 136 in August 2025. That’s a 59% year-on-year increase.

ChatGPT accounted for 92% of AI referral traffic, with the remainder coming from Gemini, Claude and Perplexity.

The overall numbers are still small compared with traditional organic search, but the year-on-year growth is worth paying attention to. AI referrals are becoming another source of website traffic that SEO teams should be monitoring.

There’s also an important limitation to this data. Referral traffic only captures the people who actually click through from an AI tool. It doesn’t show how many people saw the brand in an AI-generated response, took note of it and then returned later through another channel.

For example, someone might ask ChatGPT to recommend providers in a particular category. Your brand appears in the response, but they don’t click immediately. They might later search for your brand on Google and visit the website directly.

Analytics could record that as direct or organic traffic. The influence of the original AI interaction would be much harder to see.

That’s why AI referral traffic is useful, but it shouldn’t be treated as the full picture of AI visibility.

The question for SEO teams is becoming broader: how often is your brand appearing in AI search, what are people being told about you, and are those interactions leading to visits or conversions later?

How can you see what your competitors are doing?

The simplest place to start is with the questions that matter commercially to your business.

Build a list of prompts based on your customers’ research behaviour. Include questions about products, services, comparisons, problems and recommendations.

For example:

• “What are the best [products/services] for…?”
• “Which [providers/brands] should I consider for…?”
• “What are the main differences between [option A] and [option B]?”
• “What should I look for when choosing a [product/service]?”
• “What are the most reliable [products/services] in this category?”

Run those questions through the AI search platforms your audience is likely to use.

Then record the results.

Look at:

• Which brands appear
• How often your brand appears
• Which competitors are mentioned
• How the brands are described
• Which sources are referenced
• Whether your brand is recommended or simply mentioned

The aim isn’t to produce a perfect score for AI visibility. AI-generated answers can change, so a single test isn’t enough to draw meaningful conclusions.

Repeated testing gives you something much more useful. You can start to identify patterns and see where your brand is consistently present, where competitors have an advantage and where there are gaps.

Context matters as much as the mention

A brand mention on its own doesn’t tell you very much.

Imagine three different results.

Your brand is listed alongside four competitors.

Your brand is described as a leading option for the specific problem the customer is trying to solve.

Your brand is mentioned briefly, while a competitor is recommended as the preferred choice.

All three count as visibility. Their potential commercial value is very different.

That’s why AI search monitoring should look at the context around the brand.

What are you known for?

Look at the attributes associated with your brand. If customers care about quality, reliability, expertise, price or a particular product feature, are those qualities coming through?

Which competitors appear?

The businesses competing with you in AI search may not be the same businesses you see competing for traditional rankings.

Which sources are being used?

The sources cited or referenced in AI responses can reveal useful information. They may highlight content gaps, third-party opportunities or areas where competitors have established greater credibility.

Are you being recommended?

There’s a meaningful difference between being included in a list and being presented as a strong choice.

These details make the analysis far more useful than simply counting how many times a brand name appears.

What should you do if competitors are ahead?

Resist the temptation to respond by producing lots of new content.

Start by understanding what’s happening.

Take the questions where competitors are appearing consistently and look at the information available about those brands.

You might find that they have more comprehensive content around a particular subject. Perhaps they’re frequently mentioned by reputable publications. They could have stronger product information, a larger volume of reviews or clearer evidence of expertise.

The answer will vary by business.

Once you’ve identified the gap, you can decide what needs to change.

That might mean improving existing content rather than creating something new. It could involve building out useful information around an important topic, improving technical foundations or strengthening your brand’s presence across relevant third-party sources.

In some cases, the work won’t sit entirely within SEO.

That’s fine. AI search visibility brings together several areas that have traditionally been managed separately, including SEO, content, digital PR, brand and reputation.

What does this mean for SEO reporting?

This is where AI search creates one of the biggest challenges for marketers.

If someone sees your brand in an AI-generated response and never clicks through, traditional analytics won’t record that interaction.

If they do click, you may be able to see the referral. You still won’t necessarily know what happened before that visit.

For SEO teams, this makes it worth looking beyond traffic and rankings when assessing search performance.

Depending on your business, useful measures could include:

• Visibility across important commercial questions
• Brand mentions and recommendations in AI search
• Competitor visibility
• Non-brand search demand
• Organic engagement and conversion quality
• Assisted conversions and influenced revenue
• AI referral traffic
• The topics and questions where your brand is gaining or losing visibility

That doesn’t mean every one of these measures belongs in a monthly report.

The right metrics depend on the role search plays in your customer journey and the commercial outcomes you’re trying to influence.

The important thing is to understand what your reporting can actually tell you, and where it leaves gaps.

 A practical way to get started

You don’t need a complicated AI search monitoring programme to start learning.

Choose 20 to 30 questions that have genuine commercial relevance.

Include a mixture of early research questions, comparison searches and queries closer to a purchasing decision.

For each question, record:

1. Which brands appear.
2. How your brand is described.
3. Which competitors are mentioned.
4. Which brands are recommended.
5. Which sources are referenced.
6. Whether your brand appears consistently across different tests.

Repeat the exercise over time.

You’ll start to build a picture of how your brand and competitors are being represented in AI search. More importantly, you’ll have a useful source of insight for your wider SEO and content strategy.

The search results are getting bigger

AI search isn’t replacing the fundamentals of SEO. Strong technical foundations, useful content, authority and relevance still matter.

The difference is that there are now more ways for those factors to influence a customer’s decision.

Someone might discover your brand through a traditional Google result. They might encounter it in an AI-generated recommendation. They could read a review, see your product mentioned by a third party and then search for your brand directly.

The final website visit is only one part of that process.

For marketers, the opportunity is to understand the wider picture.

Are your competitors appearing when customers ask important questions? Are you being considered alongside them? And can your current reporting tell you when that happens?

Those are questions worth adding to your SEO strategy now, while AI search is still developing.

Because if customers are using AI to decide which brands deserve their attention, being visible in that conversation could become just as important as where you rank in the traditional results.

The post Your Competitors Are Showing Up in AI Search. Are You? appeared first on Koozai.com

This time, we spoke with Matt Seabridge, Freelance Digital PR Specialist at Digital PR Tips, about why marketers shouldn’t panic about GEO, how data collection tools are opening up new opportunities for digital PR campaigns, and why PR teams need to develop a stronger understanding of branding.

Matt is a freelance digital PR specialist with close to a decade of experience across SEO and PR roles. He specialises in data-led digital PR campaigns and supports brands with their wider digital PR strategy.

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 Matt had to say.

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

Right now, I think there’s a lot of overreaction to GEO trends in the industry.

There’s plenty of good advice and research being shared, but there are also a lot of hot takes that make the changes happening in SEO seem scarier than they need to be.

The vast majority of the strategy for earning strong visibility in ChatGPT, AI Overviews and similar platforms still comes down to tactics that have been good SEO practice for the past five years, especially for SEO teams that have adopted digital PR as part of their strategy.

When there’s a big shift in the industry, it’s easy to overreact and feel like you need to rip up your existing strategy and start again. SEOs don’t need to do that.

Ignore the “SEO is dead” nonsense. SEO is changing, and much of the new advice covers things that digital PR teams have already been doing for years.

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

Apify has been a real game changer for me when producing data-led PR campaigns.

It’s essentially a library of web scrapers that people have built, making it much easier to collect data from lots of popular sites without needing coding knowledge or having to build your own scraping tools.

You do have to pay to use them, but you can usually find very cost-effective tools that make collecting literally millions of social posts or user reviews much more accessible.

It opens up a whole new range of possibilities for the data-led campaigns PR teams can create.

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

I wouldn’t say I’ve completely changed my mind on this, but my opinion has strengthened considerably. Digital PR teams at agencies need to develop a better understanding of branding principles.

We’ve always talked about the importance of brand to campaigns from a relevancy point of view, but I think understanding a brand’s positioning, target audience and tone of voice will become increasingly important for agencies pitching for digital PR work.

I’m seeing more brands take digital PR in-house, and one of the key reasons I see cited is that internal PR teams can know and understand the brand better when developing campaigns.

It can be difficult for agencies to achieve the same level of familiarity when digital PR budgets aren’t huge and people have to split their time across multiple brands.

I think bringing more brand thinking into digital PR activity is something agency teams need to catch up on. The gap between digital PR and traditional PR is getting thinner, which means both sides need to learn from each other and build their skills in those areas.

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

Honestly, I think there’s a lot of value in PRs watching films and TV shows as they come out to help them spot newsjacking opportunities.

Speed is so important for landing this type of coverage, so being able to spot pop culture moments as they start trending and publications begin writing about them can be a really valuable asset for PR teams.

I’d also recommend The Digital PR Podcast by Propellernet and the BuzzStream Podcast for anyone looking to expand their digital PR and SEO knowledge.

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

I think, and hope, we’ll see more integration between digital PR and other channels when it comes to how the campaigns we produce are used.

Content marketing sits at the core of so many marketing channels, whether that’s PR, social, email, brand or even out-of-home advertising. We’re all working towards creating engaging content that gets in front of a brand’s target audience.

I’ve seen first-hand how beneficial this can be for brands. There are also lots of great campaigns produced by digital PR teams that have brought other marketing channels into their production and execution.

As the SEO industry increasingly recognises the importance of brand marketing, I think we’ll see more PR campaigns designed so brands can use them across their wider marketing activity too.

Thank you, Matt!

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

His answers are a useful reminder that marketers don’t necessarily need to rip up what already works every time something new arrives. Strong SEO and digital PR principles still matter, even as GEO attracts more attention.

At the same time, there’s an opportunity for digital PR teams to think more broadly. Better brand understanding and closer collaboration with other marketing channels could help campaigns work harder and reach audiences in more places.

Catch up on previous Koozai Couch interviews

Enjoyed Matt’s interview? There are more perspectives from across the digital marketing industry on the Koozai Couch.

Catch up with Jojo Furnival, Marketing Manager at Sitebulb, as she discusses technical SEO fundamentals, AI workflows and why brand building should be firmly on marketers’ agendas.

You can also read our Koozai Couch interview with Sean Barber, SEO Manager at Macmillan Cancer Support and host of Search with Sean, for his thoughts on AI search, SEO fundamentals and where the industry could be heading next.

Fancy taking a seat on the Koozai Couch?

We’re always keen to hear different perspectives from people working across digital marketing.

If you’d like to feature in a future Koozai Couch interview, submit your answers via our Koozai Couch form. We’d love to hear what you think.

The post Koozai Couch: Interview with Matt Seabridge appeared first on Koozai.com

GEO. AEO. AI SEO. LLM optimisation. AI Search Optimisation.

The search industry has created quite the collection of names for the work involved in helping brands appear more often across ChatGPT, Google’s AI features and other AI-generated answers.

But are people actually using the same language?

We surveyed 160 respondents to find out which AI Search terms they recognise, which they understand, which they prefer and, crucially, what they say they would search for when looking for an agency to help.

The results reveal a fairly sizeable gap between recognising GEO and actually choosing to use it.

 

GEO is recognised far more than it is used

Nearly seven in ten respondents could correctly identify what GEO stands for.

But when we moved away from the definition and asked what they would naturally call work designed to improve AI Search visibility, fewer than one in five chose GEO.

The number dropped again when we looked at the terminology appearing in respondents’ proposed agency searches.

Perhaps GEO doesn’t have an awareness problem. Perhaps it has an adoption problem.

AI Search Optimisation is better known than GEO or AEO

We first asked respondents which search and AI Search terms they had heard of before taking the survey. SEO was comfortably the best-known term, which won’t cause many raised eyebrows. The more interesting comparison comes from the newer terminology.

74% had heard of AI Search Optimisation, compared with 43% for GEO and 33% for AEO.

Which terms had respondents heard of?

Respondents could select more than one answer. Koozai AI Search Terminology Research, 2026. Base: 160 respondents.

 

People can identify GEO even when they haven’t heard of it

This is where the results get more interesting. When we asked what GEO stands for in a digital marketing context, 69% selected Generative Engine Optimisation. That sounds like fairly convincing evidence that GEO is well understood.

There’s a catch.

Only 43% had previously told us they’d heard of GEO.

Among the 92 respondents who said they hadn’t heard of GEO before taking the survey, 50% still selected the correct definition.

That suggests multiple-choice recognition and genuine familiarity aren’t necessarily the same thing.

“Generative Engine Optimisation” may simply be reasonably easy to work out when it’s sitting alongside a few alternative definitions.

50% of respondents who said they hadn’t previously heard of GEO could still correctly identify what it stood for. That matters when we talk about how established GEO has become.

Someone being able to recognise the right definition doesn’t automatically mean they use the term, hear it regularly or would think to search for it themselves.

 

What do people think GEO stands for?

Knowing what GEO means doesn’t mean wanting to call it GEO

We then removed the acronym test and described the work itself. Respondents were asked what they would most naturally call work designed to improve how often an organisation appears within ChatGPT, Google’s AI features and other AI-generated answers. The most popular answer was AI Search Optimisation. Almost a third chose it.

GEO came second at 19%, virtually level with AI SEO at 18%.

What would respondents naturally call the work?

AI Search doesn’t really have an agreed name yet

There’s a temptation to look at those results and crown AI Search Optimisation the winner. We’re not sure that’s the most useful conclusion. Yes, it’s the most popular term in our research. But it still only attracts 32% of respondents.

GEO and AI SEO sit behind it, while further responses are split between AI visibility, AEO, SEO and other descriptions. No terminology wins even a third of respondents.

So rather than asking which acronym has won, perhaps the better answer is that the market hasn’t settled on one yet. That’s worth remembering when people inside the search industry talk as though everyone else has already agreed on the vocabulary.

 

What would people actually search for when looking for an agency?

What someone says they prefer is useful. What they say they’d type into Google when looking for help takes us a little closer to commercial behaviour. We asked respondents what they would search for if they wanted an agency to help their company appear more prominently within ChatGPT and other AI Search experiences.

We then coded the free-text answers according to the terminology used.

37% used “AI search” wording.

By comparison, 13% mentioned GEO and just 6% mentioned AEO.

Terminology used in proposed agency searches

Confidence doesn’t always equal terminology accuracy

Most respondents felt reasonably comfortable talking about AI Search terminology. But confidence wasn’t a perfect predictor of identifying the correct GEO definition. Among respondents who described themselves as very or extremely confident, 22% didn’t select the correct definition of GEO.

22% of very or extremely confident respondents didn’t select the correct GEO definition.

 

One multiple-choice definition isn’t an entrance exam for AI Search expertise, of course. It does show why self-reported confidence and actual terminology recognition shouldn’t automatically be treated as the same thing.

 

Are GEO and AEO actually helpful?

We also asked whether terms such as GEO and AEO help when agencies explain AI Search services. The answer was mixed. Around 42% found the terminology helpful, while 31% found it confusing.

Jargon isn’t what makes an AI Search agency credible

Finally, we asked what would make respondents trust an agency more when discussing AI Search. The clearest answer was proof. 68% chose demonstrable results, while 62% selected a clear explanation in plain English and 56% selected case studies. Specialist terminology such as GEO or AEO sat much further down the list at 11%.

What builds trust when an agency talks about AI Search?

 

“People prefer results to jargon” is hardly the marketing scoop of the century. But alongside the rest of the research, it tells us something useful. People don’t necessarily need agencies to stop using terminology such as GEO. They need agencies to explain what it  means, connect it to an outcome and show that they can actually do the work.

 

So, does GEO have a branding problem?

Our research doesn’t suggest GEO is impossible to understand. Most respondents can identify what it stands for. Among people who said they had encountered GEO before the survey, the vast majority selected the correct definition. The gap appears later.

Recognition doesn’t translate neatly into preference, and preference doesn’t necessarily translate into the words people say they would search for.

AI Search Optimisation is more widely recognised than GEO or AEO.

It’s also the most popular description of the work in our research, while broader AI Search language appears considerably more often when respondents describe how they would look for an agency.

The search industry may be settling on terminology faster than everyone else is adopting it.

For agencies and marketing teams, the practical answer is fairly simple.

Use language people understand first.

Explain the acronyms where they’re useful.

Then focus on the bit people actually care about: helping the right customers find your brand wherever they’re searching.

 

What this means for marketing teams

Recognition isn’t the same as adoption

Someone knowing what GEO means doesn’t mean that’s the phrase they’d naturally use themselves.

Lead with the outcome

If you’re talking about improving visibility across ChatGPT, Google’s AI features and other AI-generated answers, make that clear.

The acronym can come afterwards.

AI Search Optimisation is currently a useful bridge

Our research doesn’t show that one term has definitively won.

But AI Search Optimisation combines relatively high awareness, the highest stated preference and language that closely matches how respondents say they would search for help.

It also has the small advantage of telling people roughly what it does without requiring a glossary.

If you’d like to download the full report you can do so here.

About the research

Koozai surveyed 160 respondents who all described themselves as Marketers, during August and September 2026 about their awareness, understanding and use of terminology relating to AI Search.

Responses were collected using Prolific and SurveyMonkey.

The survey covered awareness of SEO, AI SEO, AI Search Optimisation, AEO, GEO and LLM optimisation, confidence explaining these terms, understanding of GEO, preferred terminology, proposed agency-search language, attitudes towards GEO and AEO, and the factors that influence trust when an agency discusses AI Search.

Questions allowing multiple selections are reported as the percentage of respondents selecting each answer, so percentages do not necessarily total 100%.

Free-text agency-search responses were coded according to terminology appearing within each answer. Individual responses may therefore appear in more than one category.

The agency-search question appeared after respondents had already encountered AI Search terminology elsewhere in the survey. These answers should therefore be treated as post-exposure search phrasing rather than completely unaided terminology.

Twenty-seven Prolific respondents stated that they were not currently working in marketing. We retained these responses because current employment status doesn’t necessarily mean someone lacks marketing experience. They may, for example, be between roles or taking a career break.

The findings should therefore be described as responses to Koozai’s UK marketing terminology study rather than as a nationally representative survey of currently employed UK marketers.

Figures have been rounded, so totals may occasionally differ slightly.

Using this research

Journalists, publishers and marketing teams are welcome to reference or reproduce the findings and charts from this research with attribution to Koozai and a link back to this page.

If you’re looking for additional data, commentary or expert input on AI Search, GEO, AEO or AI Search Optimisation, get in touch with the Koozai team.

The post GEO, AEO Or AI Search Optimisation? appeared first on Koozai.com

Your Gemini and Google Business Profile checklist

The post Should You Let AI Manage Your Google Business Profile? appeared first on Koozai.com

Polished opening. Short paragraphs. Generic leadership lesson. Neat conclusion.

AI has made it much easier to produce content at scale, but LinkedIn is now taking steps to reduce the amount of low-value, repetitive material appearing in users’ feeds.

The platform refers to this kind of content as “AI slop”, and brands that rely heavily on LinkedIn should pay attention.

LinkedIn Isn’t Banning AI Content, but it is Targeting Low-Value Posts

LinkedIn isn’t banning AI-generated content.

Instead, it’s focusing on content that appears generic, repetitive or lacking a clear point of view. It has also said it wants to reduce automated comments, engagement bait and activity designed to artificially boost reach.

LinkedIn has introduced systems to identify generic AI content and says posts without meaningful insight may be less likely to reach people outside the author’s immediate network.

It has also added a “Seems like AI slop” feedback option, allowing users to flag posts and comments they think fall into this category.

The message is fairly clear: publishing more content isn’t necessarily going to help if that content doesn’t offer anything useful.

What LinkedIn’s AI Crackdown Means for Brands

For brands, the real risk isn’t simply using AI. It’s publishing content that feels generic, interchangeable or disconnected from genuine expertise.

AI can still be useful for organising ideas, editing copy, summarising interviews or turning longer content into social posts.

The problem comes when AI starts replacing the thinking behind the content.

If your LinkedIn strategy relies on prompts such as “write five thought-leadership posts about digital marketing”, you’re likely to end up with content that could have been published by almost anyone.

So what should brands do differently?

Give People Something Only Your Brand Can Say

The strongest LinkedIn content usually starts with something specific.

That might be:

• A trend your team is seeing in client work
• An interesting campaign result
• A common customer question
• An opinion from one of your specialists
• Original data or research
• A lesson from something that didn’t go to plan

AI can help turn that information into a polished post, but the insight should come from your business.

Ask yourself a simple question before publishing:

Could one of our competitors post this word for word?

If the answer is yes, it probably needs more personality or substance.

Turn Your In-House Expertise Into Content

One of the easiest ways to avoid generic content is to speak to the people doing the work.

Your specialists already have useful opinions, examples and experiences. You just need a process for getting those ideas out of their heads and into your content.

That could mean a quick interview, a few questions over Teams or a conversation after a client meeting.

You can then use AI to help structure or edit the material.

The important bit is the order.

Human expertise first. AI assistance second.

Focus on Content Quality Rather Than Posting More Often

Generative AI makes it possible to produce a lot more content.

That doesn’t mean you should.

Publishing 15 generic posts is unlikely to do more for your brand than publishing three genuinely useful ones.

LinkedIn’s changes reinforce something marketers should already know: posting frequency is only useful if the content deserves attention.

Rather than asking, “Are we posting enough?”, ask: “Are we giving people a reason to stop scrolling?”

Make Sure Your Comments Add Something Too

LinkedIn is also targeting automated and low-value comments.

Responses such as “Great insights, thanks for sharing” don’t add much to a conversation, whether they were written by AI or not.

Good comments add an opinion, ask a relevant question or share another useful example.

Treat engagement as a conversation, not another box to tick on the content calendar.

How Should Brands Use AI for LinkedIn Content?

The answer isn’t to stop using AI completely.

The smarter approach is to use it where it genuinely helps while keeping people responsible for the ideas, expertise and opinions behind the content.

AI can be useful for:

• Improving a first draft
• Repurposing existing content
• Organising expert interviews
• Suggesting different headlines
• Shortening or clarifying copy

But don’t expect it to create original expertise from nothing.

LinkedIn’s crackdown is less about whether AI touched a piece of content and more about whether that content gives the reader anything worthwhile.

Human Expertise Still Gives Brands an Advantage on LinkedIn

AI has made creating content easier.

Creating content people actually want to read is still the hard part.

For brands, that means prioritising expertise, experience and clear opinions over sheer publishing volume.

Use AI as a tool, not as your entire content strategy.

Because if your LinkedIn posts could have come from any brand in your industry, there’s a good chance your audience will treat them that way too.

Want to make your social content work harder without adding to the noise? Get in touch with Koozai to talk through your social media and content marketing strategy.

The post LinkedIn Is Cracking Down on AI. What Does That Mean for Brands? appeared first on Koozai.com

In March 2026, Rightmove became the first UK property portal to launch a dedicated app inside ChatGPT. Type “@Rightmove” followed by a plain English description of what you want, and it will search live listings for you, inside the chat window, without you ever visiting rightmove.co.uk.

That is quite the move [forgive the pun]. The UK’s largest property portal has just decided that meeting buyers inside an AI assistant matters enough to build for it directly. If Rightmove is showing up where the conversation is happening, the question for every estate agent, letting agent, surveyor and developer is simple: are you showing up there too?

It starts with a question, not a name

Somebody wondering whether now is a good time to sell in their town. A landlord trying to work out what new regulation actually means for them. A family quietly doing the sums on whether they can afford to move. None of them start by typing your business name into anything. They start with a question that feels personal, and increasingly, that question goes to ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, Gemini or Perplexity before it goes anywhere near a search box.

Property is not formally classed by Google as a “Your Money or Your Life” topic in the way health and personal finance are. But let’s be honest about what buying, selling or letting a property actually is: for most people, it is one of the largest financial decisions they will ever make. Search engines and AI systems still lean on the same underlying question when deciding who to trust: is this experienced, is this trustworthy, is this safe. That is the heart of what is known as E-E-A-T, and it applies here just as much as it does anywhere formally labelled high stakes.

Property is not one journey. It is several, wearing the same website

This is the bit most property marketing gets wrong. A residential buyer, a portfolio landlord, a commercial tenant and a solicitor instructing a chartered surveyor are not the same person on different days. They ask different questions, check different sources, and are convinced by entirely different evidence.

• A buyer checks Rightmove, Zoopla and Google reviews, and is swayed by recent, specific feedback and a jargon-free fee structure.
• A landlord checks HM Land Registry sold price data and Propertymark guidance, and wants proof you actually understand current legislation, not just that you say you do.
• A commercial occupier checks RICS guidance and sector press, and cares about a named MRICS or FRICS surveyor with a track record on assets like theirs.
• A solicitor, lender or asset manager checks the RICS Regulated Firm register and published case studies, and barely glances at your star rating.

Treat all four like the first one, and you will only ever be found by the first one.

The moments that decide whether you get found at all

The question moment

Most journeys now begin with a natural language question to an AI tool, one that pulls its answer from HM Land Registry data, RICS and Propertymark guidance, and structured data on property websites, not from a Google ranking. Why Nobody Googles You First in Property Anymore covers this properly.

The sense check moment

Once someone has a rough idea, they go looking for the unfiltered version, checking whether the reviews match what the AI told them, whether a firm’s accreditations actually stack up. Is This Agent Legit? walks through what that looks like for each of the four audiences above.

The comparison moment

This is where AI stops summarising and starts judging, weighing your reviews, your accreditations, and how recently your content was updated against someone else’s, and deciding who gets mentioned. Why AI Recommends Some Property Brands and Not Others explains what tips that in your favour.

The enquiry moment

By the time someone requests a valuation or a fee proposal, the real decision has already been made elsewhere. From Question to Enquiry walks through two full search paths, a buyer’s and a facilities manager’s, side by side.

Why this matters more than a nicer website

Property is inherently local. Nobody asks “which is the best estate agent in the country.” They ask about a specific postcode, village or street, and AI tools are increasingly answering those hyper-local questions directly, without sending anyone to a search engine at all.

If you are invisible across the sources these tools trust, the enquiry form on your website simply never gets used, however well designed it is. Our AI team works with estate agents, letting agents, surveyors and developers to close that gap, and you can read more about how we support the sector on our property and real estate marketing page.

Want the full unabridged version? Download the Guide to AI Search for Property, a whitepaper covering everything in this series.

The post The Real Property Search Journey: What Your Customers See Before They See You appeared first on Koozai.com

It is easier to understand all of this properly by watching two very different people go through it, step by step. Neither of them looks anything like the tidy funnel diagram most marketing plans are still built around.

Path one: a buyer looking near Manchester

Step one. They open ChatGPT and ask, “Is now a good time to buy a family home near Manchester?”

Step two. A Google AI Overview answers a follow up question about average house prices in a specific postcode.

Step three. They open Rightmove and Zoopla, browsing listings and checking the Zoopla Estimate against what they are being told elsewhere.

Step four. They check Google Business Profile and Trustpilot reviews for the two agents they have shortlisted.

Step five. A local Facebook group or Reddit thread gets searched for one specific, nagging question: is this area actually safe, actually good for families.

Step six. Only now do they land on an agent’s website, to request a valuation or book a viewing.

If that agent was not visible anywhere in steps one to five, step six simply never happens. Not because the agent was not good. Because the agent was never part of the conversation.

Path two: a facilities manager facing a dilapidations claim

This journey looks completely different, and takes place somewhere entirely separate from the one above, but the underlying lesson is identical.

Step one. They ask ChatGPT, “How do I challenge a dilapidations claim at lease expiry?”

Step two. They read RICS guidance and sector press for background on the process and likely costs.

Step three. They search LinkedIn and sector directories to shortlist two or three chartered surveying firms.

Step four. They check those firms’ own websites and published case studies for a track record on comparable assets, and confirm professional indemnity insurance cover.

Step five. They search a specific surveyor firm’s name alongside “reviews” or “case studies” on Google.

Step six. Only now do they land on a surveying firm’s website, to request a proposal or a fee quote.

Same pattern. Same lesson. Different audience entirely, different questions, different platforms, but if you are not visible somewhere in steps one to five, step six never happens, whichever of these two people, or the others like them, you are trying to reach.

The point of putting these two side by side

Property marketing plans are still too often built around a single imagined customer, usually a residential buyer. But a landlord, a commercial tenant, and a solicitor instructing a surveyor are all running their own version of this exact same search path, through entirely different sources, looking for entirely different proof.

Map your own content and case studies against each of these audiences properly, rather than assuming one “about us” page will do the job for all of them. Write the pages that actually answer the questions each of these people has, in the places they are actually asking them.

If you would like help mapping your content against these different audiences and closing the gaps, our AI Marketing team can help, and you can find out more about our work in the sector on our property and real estate marketing page.

This four part series, together with the overview, covers the full journey from the first AI assisted question through to enquiry, across every kind of property audience, not just one. For the full version, download the Guide to AI Search for Property.

The post From Question to Enquiry: Two Real Property Search Paths appeared first on Koozai.com

Most property brands still think of their competition in terms of who else is on the high street or who else bids for the same instructions. Increasingly, the more important competition is happening somewhere they cannot see: inside an AI assistant, being weighed against a rival they may never have heard of.

People are now asking AI directly to compare:

• “Is Agent A or Agent B better for selling a flat in this town?”
• “Which chartered surveyor should I use for a dilapidations schedule in Leeds?”
• “Is this developer trustworthy for off-plan investment?”
• “Best commercial property manager for a mixed use portfolio in this city?”
• “Which firm handles rent reviews for industrial units near this motorway junction?”
• This is the step most property brands underestimate entirely.

An AI comparison is not a search result. It is a verdict.

Ask Google to compare two agents and you get two sets of links, left for you to sort through. Ask an AI assistant the same question and it will actually weigh things up and tell you which one it thinks is better. That is a fundamentally different kind of exposure, and a fundamentally different kind of risk if your signals are weak.

Here is roughly what is being weighed up in the background:

Review sentiment. Transparency of fees. Professional accreditations, RICS, Propertymark, ARLA. Structured data on your website. Third party citations and press mentions. How recently your content was updated. How clearly you explain who your service is actually best for.

Weak signals across these do not mean you rank lower. They mean you may simply never be surfaced at all, however good your actual service is. There is no consolation prize for being excellent but invisible.

Practical moves that genuinely change this

Keep key service pages updated every quarter with new facts, fresh reviews and clearer wording. Outdated content undermines both trust and visibility at exactly the moment an AI tool is deciding whether to mention you.

Add a short “at a glance” box to core service pages covering fees, patch covered, typical timescales and accreditations. AI tools read information laid out this clearly with particular ease, and can lift it directly when summarising you to someone.

Make sure your structured data is genuinely clean. LocalBusiness and Organisation schema with professional body memberships included, FAQ schema, review schema, and RealEstateListing or product schema for listings, developments or services. Keep it factual. This is too high stakes a decision for marketing fluff, and machines read structured data completely literally.

The truth underneath all of this

Clarity beats cleverness here, every time. The property brands getting recommended are not the ones with the most persuasive copy. They are the ones that made it easiest for a machine to be confident repeating them, which usually just means being specific, current and honest about who you are and what you charge.

If you would like help getting your structured data, reviews and service pages ready for this kind of scrutiny, our AI team can help, and our property and real estate marketing page has more on how we work with the sector specifically.

Want the complete version of this? Download the Guide to AI Search for Property which covers everything in this series.

Next: what does this actually look like end to end? Read “From Question to Enquiry”

The post Why AI Recommends Some Property Brands and Not Others appeared first on Koozai.com

An AI assistant has just recommended you. That should be the end of the story, but for most people, it is only the beginning of a much more sceptical second act. The questions at this stage sound noticeably more pointed than the ones that came before:

“Is this agent legit?”

“Do the reviews match what the AI told me?”

“Is this area actually safe, good for families?”

“Are these fees normal?”

And the checking happens across a genuinely wide spread of places: Rightmove, Zoopla, Google Business Profile reviews, Trustpilot, allAgents, local Facebook groups and Reddit threads, anywhere that feels human and current rather than curated.

BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey found that 97 percent of consumers now read reviews before choosing a local business, and that the share of people using AI tools such as ChatGPT to discover and vet local businesses jumped from 6 percent to 45 percent in a single year, now the third most used discovery channel behind only Google and Facebook. That is a US panel, but the pattern applies directly to how UK buyers and sellers are checking out agents and surveyors today.

This looks different depending on who is checking

For a residential buyer or seller, this is largely about recent, specific reviews and a fee structure that does not need decoding.

For surveying, commercial agency and property management, the checking process is just as thorough but looks for different things entirely. Buyers of these professional services want to know whether a surveying firm is RICS Regulated and carries adequate professional indemnity insurance. They look for case studies or a track record with similar assets, industrial, retail, listed buildings, mixed use blocks. They check how a managing agent handles service charge transparency and Section 20 consultation. And they look for evidence that a commercial agent has genuinely closed deals in that sub-sector recently, not just listed them.

Why journalism carries particular weight here

Muck Rack’s Generative Pulse research, based on more than a million AI cited links, found that earned media and journalism make up around a quarter of all links AI models cite, rising to roughly half when a query implies the need for recent information. A house price or rental market question is exactly that kind of query. “Is this still true today” is baked into almost everything people ask about property.

What actually earns trust at this stage

• Show your professional memberships clearly and consistently. RICS, Propertymark, ARLA, NAEA, wherever they apply, not buried in a footer.
• Keep review responses current, and reply properly to the difficult ones. A calm, specific explanation when something has gone wrong signals accountability, which matters more here than a spotless record ever could.
• For commercial and institutional audiences, replace the star rating instinct with a named, citable case study or client testimonial. “Advised on X rent reviews across a Y square foot portfolio” does more work for this audience than any number of five star reviews.

None of this needs to be flawless. It needs to hold up to a second look, because that second look is exactly what is happening before anyone ever picks up the phone. Our AI Marketing team can help you build the kind of review and accreditation presence that survives it.

Next: once the sense check is done, how does AI actually decide who gets mentioned? Read “Why AI Recommends Some Property Brands and Not Others”

The post “Is This Agent Legit?” How Buyers, Sellers and Landlords Check You Out appeared first on Koozai.com