AI Search
Search where an AI engine returns a synthesised, often cited answer instead of a ranked list of links.
What is AI search?
AI search is search where an engine returns a synthesised, often cited answer instead of a ranked list of links — spanning AI Overviews, conversational assistants and answer engines that read and summarise the web.
AI search collapses the funnel: discovery, evaluation and answer happen in one synthesised reply, and only a few brands make it in.
AI search covers AI Overviews in Google, conversational assistants like ChatGPT and Claude, and answer engines like Perplexity. Instead of ten links, the user gets one composed answer that may cite a handful of sources. The decisive question is whether your brand is one of those sources.
This reorders the playbook. Classic SEO chases rank; AI search rewards being citable — answer-first content, clear entities, structured data and authority an engine trusts. Visibility moves from position on a list to inclusion in an answer.
AI search is the surface AEO and GEO optimise for, and the surface SkuLift measures. Its share of voice quantifies how often and how prominently a brand appears across these engines, turning a diffuse shift into a tracked metric.