AI Quietly Rewrote the Rules. Here’s How Your Business Can Catch Up!
Many business owners don’t realize how much AI-powered search is already changing the rules. For years, consumers’ online searches followed a familiar pattern: type a question into Google, review the results and click the link to a website. But today, that model is rapidly disappearing.
AI-powered search is reshaping how people discover, evaluate and choose businesses. Instead of clicking through to websites, consumers are increasingly getting AI-generated answers.
The shift raises an urgent question: What is AI saying about your business, and is it accurate? Strategic America’s Digital Marketing Director Trista Webster and SEO Manager Beka Duntz have the answer.
AI Is Transforming Search
“AI has shifted search from what used to be a very click-based model to something much more recommendation-driven,” explains Webster. “It’s no longer just about where you rank in the SERPs (search engine results pages), but whether you’re actually showing up in AI-generated answers.”
Customers are learning more about you through AI results rather than directly on your website. The brands doing well with this transition have built a strong digital footprint beyond their website, across platforms like Reddit and on trusted directories like Yelp and Angi.
“At the end of the day,” Webster said, “this shift in how brands get surfaced within AI-powered search is changing how people discover and choose businesses — and ultimately, who wins that demand.”
AI Is Transforming SEO
AI has impacted SEO in many ways! According to Duntz, how AI impacts performance depends heavily on what type of content was driving results before AI features were added to the search experience.
“People are increasingly getting answers without ever clicking a link,” she explains. “Google is making it easier than ever for people to get quick information directly from the results page.”
Here’s what that means for businesses:
- Declines in organic traffic for informational content
- Smaller impacts for commercial, local-intent pages
- Increased importance of Google Business Profiles
In short, AI visibility and accuracy now matter as much as traffic, because AI often answers the question before a user clicks anything at all.
“Referral traffic from AI sources remains at around less than 1% of total website traffic,” Duntz said.
She points to a case study with a recent client in which SA implemented monitoring of AI-powered search results and found that the brand wasn’t being cited or recognized in AI-powered search at all. After aligning their business listings with a consistent Google Business Profile strategy that ensured accurate locations, services, and contact information, the business advanced from being largely absent in AI-powered search results to appearing more frequently in results within three months.
Why Reddit Suddenly Matters So Much
Reddit’s influence on both SEO and AI search results visibility has accelerated quickly, and for good reason. It’s another key change businesses need to understand and factor into their overall digital strategy.
“Two things happened,” Duntz explained. “First, Google struck a data licensing deal with Reddit, allowing it to be used as training data for AI-powered search results. Soon after, Reddit threads began surfacing much more prominently in search results.”
Estimates suggest that anywhere from 5–15% of AI training data now comes from Reddit. But just as important is the type of content Reddit provides.
“AI systems treat Reddit as a source of real-world, experience-based information,” Duntz said. “The conversations feel authentic, and that’s exactly what Google wants to surface.”
Now is the time for brands to learn how to use Reddit, not for promotion but for authority.
“Helpful, non-promotional answers get indexed and increasingly referenced by both AI tools and Google,” Webster says. “Reddit’s Q&A style makes it highly digestible and frequently cited by AI-powered search.”
Over time, this increases the likelihood that a brand’s expertise and name appear in both AI-generated responses and traditional search results.
The Reality Check: Where Most Businesses Start
Many businesses just assume their search results are probably OK. Most are shocked by where they now stand.
That’s why SA developed AI Health Checks, a way to jumpstart the process of taking back control.
Webster estimates that most brands start with less than 10% visibility across AI platforms, often missing entirely or weakly represented without third-party citations.
“As a result,” Webster explains, “they’re rarely surfaced in AI-generated responses. Our role is to show them where they stand and then give clear, tangible next steps to improve.”
Businesses that don’t adapt won’t disappear overnight, but they will slowly fall behind.
“As adoption grows and more users start to see more AI-powered search results, or as Google’s results change over time to prioritize AI search recommendations, the businesses will need to adapt, as they always have, to the shifting digital experience”, said Duntz.
AI Health Checks: How Do You Get Started?
SA’s AI Health Checks are designed to assess and improve how a business appears across:
- AI-powered search tools
- Traditional search engines
- Third-party directories and community platforms
“We handle the heavy lift,” Webster said. “That includes auditing how your brand shows up across AI platforms, search and third-party sources. Then we build a roadmap to improve visibility and AI citations.”
The roadmap is key to providing a clear, prioritized action plan instead of guessing where to focus.
From the business, Strategic America needs:
- Website access
- Key messaging and priorities
- Alignment on services, markets, and competitors
“It’s a minimal lift for the client,” Webster said, “but it ensures the strategy actually reflects your brand.”
Tracking AI Health Check Success
Beyond traditional search or SEO rankings, AI Health Checks track:
- Brand presence in AI-generated answers
- Competitive share of voice
- Sentiment of AI responses
- Citation sources (brand vs. third party vs. competitors)
These insights help businesses understand how AI is interpreting them today — and what to fix first. Most businesses have never seen this kind of visibility into how AI interprets their brand.
When you start using AI Health Checks, what improves first?
“All three — accuracy, alignment, and content — need to be present, but if I had to weigh one, it’s accuracy,” said Webster. “If a dealer has three different phone numbers across their website, Yelp, and Angi, LLMs won’t trust which one is correct, and they won’t cite the brand at all.”
Traditional SEO reporting focuses on rankings and traffic. AI Health Checks add an entirely new layer: visibility inside AI-generated answers themselves.
The dashboard below shows how Strategic America tracks and benchmarks a brand’s presence across the most widely used AI-powered search platforms, so businesses can see where they’re showing up, how they’re described, and who AI cites in search results. AI Health Checks demonstrate that AI visibility can be monitored, benchmarked, and improved, just like traditional SEO.
How Long Does It Take to See Results?
How fast you see results depends on several factors. There’s no single timeline.
“For one client, it took three months,” Webster said. “For others, it takes longer. This is a long-term strategy, not something you’ll see lift from in weeks.”
Consistency and breadth matter. The stronger and more aligned the business’s overall digital strategy, the faster the results compound.
Getting Started Today
AI isn’t a future problem. It’s a current and growing filter between your business and consumers.
AI Health Checks help businesses correct inaccuracies and strengthen how they’re represented across AI-powered search.
Strategic America’s AI Health Checks give you a clear view into how your brand is represented across AI-powered search — and what to do next. Request an AI Health Check today to get started.
Trista Webster is Digital Marketing Director, and Beka Duntz is SEO Manager. Learn more about SA’s digital marketing services.
