The Youth Lab
ARE YOU LEGIBLE TO THE MACHINE?
For 20 years, finding something online meant one thing: Google it. Type in a question, get a list of links, click, compare, decide. Brands spent billions fighting to be at the top. We called it SEO.
Now we’re not just searching. We’re asking. And AI isn’t giving us a list of places to look. It’s increasingly giving us the answer.
So what happens when your next customer doesn’t search for you at all?
Welcome to the new world of AI discovery…. Here’s our 6 key takeouts.
SEO HAS COMPANY
SEO asks: How do I rank? AEO asks: How do I become the answer? GEO asks: How do I become a source AI uses? There are plenty of other acronyms being fought over on LinkedIn, but they’re all asking the same bigger question: How do I make sure machines understand who I am, why I’m credible and when I’m relevant? Call it GEO, AI Search Optimisation or whatever name survives. The important thing is that this isn’t simply SEO for ChatGPT.
FROM RANKING TO RECOMMENDATION
Imagine you’re looking for a beer for a summer festival. You could search “best beer brands in Ireland” or ask AI, “I’m going to a festival with friends and want something refreshing, widely available and not too expensive. What should I bring?” Search gives you a ranking. AI gives you a recommendation, potentially narrowing hundreds of brands to a handful before you’ve visited a single website. The machine has already done part of the consideration. That changes the prize. Being number one isn’t necessarily the objective anymore. Being included in the answer might be.
THE INTERNET HAS A NEW AUDIENCE
Brands have spent years making digital experiences work for humans. Now there’s another audience to consider: machines. AI increasingly sits between brands and people, retrieving, interpreting, comparing and recommending information. That means your digital presence needs to make a few things incredibly clear: Who are you? What are you good at? Why should you be trusted? And when should you be recommended? Brands have always told people what they want to be known for. AI is trying to understand what they’re actually known for based on the information it can find. Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.
THE INTERNET HAS A NEW AUDIENCE
Hertz Iceland didn’t try to own every conversation about car rental. It focused on something it could credibly own: driving in Iceland. It built useful content around the questions people were asking AI and reportedly saw a 50% increase in bookings attributed to AI sources. The lesson is simple: don’t try to be an authority on everything. Own something useful, and own it properly.
AI DOESN’T NEED MORE MEDIOCRE CONTENT
AI has made generic content almost limitless. So don’t add to it. The opportunity isn’t publishing 500 articles designed to game ChatGPT. It’s creating things AI can’t easily manufacture: original research, first-party data, real expertise, useful tools and genuine points of view. As synthetic content grows, what you actually know becomes more valuable.
PR, SEO AND CONTENT ARE ABOUT TO GET VERY FRIENDLY
Brands might separate PR, SEO, social and content. AI doesn’t. It sees your website, media coverage, creator content, Reddit threads, reviews and customer conversations as one connected ecosystem. Together, they help AI understand who you are, what you’re known for and whether you’re worth recommending. The opportunity isn’t optimising channels in isolation. It’s building authority everywhere that matters.
Neal Cummins, Head of Integrated Communications at THINKHOUSE:
“Understanding how AI and PR work together is fundamental to modern reputation management. AI systems gather information from a range of sources, meaning the stories, facts and commentary that exist about your brand or organisation, shapes how it is understood and presented by AI. Good PR helps to determine the quality of information AI has to work with, so ensuring accurate and credible information is constantly present in the wider information ecosystem, has never been more important.”
BRAND TAKEOUTS
DON'T OPTIMISE FOR CHATGPT. BUILD AUTHORITY: Platforms will change. Models will change. The acronyms definitely will. Genuine expertise is harder to disrupt.
MAKE YOUR BRAND EASY TO UNDERSTAND: Clear products, expertise, evidence and relationships are good for people and increasingly important for machines.
YOUR REPUTATION LIVES BEYOND YOUR WEBSITE: Owned content matters. So does everything the wider internet can credibly say about you.
OWN SOMETHING SPECIFIC: Trying to become the answer to everything is unlikely to work. Find the questions and territories where your brand has genuine permission to lead.
MEASURE THE ANSWER, NOT JUST THE CLICK: Start understanding how AI systems describe, cite and recommend your brand. The customer journey may increasingly begin before anyone reaches your website.