Is Your Brand AI-Search Ready? A Checklist to Survive the Generative Engine Takeover

40% of Gen Z internet users already prefer AI search over Google. Plus, in 2025, Google has promised to roll out its AI Mode globally. That means more users than ever will have the power of AI search at their fingertips when looking for products, solutions, and advice. 

So, if you’re not preparing your website, app, and brand image for the rise of generative engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Mode, you might be losing visibility, traffic, and, ultimately, revenue.

That’s why we’ve put together this guide to help you adapt to the new trends in SEO: generative engine optimization. We’ll tell you how you can repurpose your existing content and create fresh, AI-ready content to recover traffic through AI citations.

Let’s dive in. 

How to Make Your Brand AI-Search Ready: Table of Contents

• Why AI Search Matters: The Rise of Generative Engines
• How AI Search Works
• 10 Tips for Making Your Brand AI-Search Ready
• Conquer AI Search with Lean Summits
• How to Make Your Brand AI-Search Ready: FAQs

Why AI Search Matters: The Rise of Generative Engines

Before we explore how you can pivot to generative engine optimization from traditional SEO, let us answer the question, “Do I even need to worry about the rise of AI search?”

It’s a fair question: you might not want to redirect your resources away from search engine optimization, especially if it’s working. But here’s the thing: while it might be working fine for your enterprise and in your industry today, it might not tomorrow.

For example, only 1% of Americans used ChatGPT as their primary search engine in 2024. Today, that number is up to 8%. That’s a rise of 800%. That’s not all: 58% of searches end without any clicks, which means your traffic now increasingly depends on AI citations.

If you’re still not convinced, here’s the kicker: since January 2025, there has been a 72% increase in the number of searches that show AI overviews. In short, users now prefer conversational and summarized answers without having to click through multiple websites. 

So, if you’re not already optimizing your content for the rise of AI, you’re playing a losing game. Generative engines are coming: in fact, they’ve already arrived and will progressively take over most of the search in the coming years.

But don’t worry: we’ve got you covered. We’re going to tell you exactly how search works and how you can easily switch from SEO to GEO with minimal disruption and maximum efficiency.

How AI Search Works

The core of AI search has not changed: Google has been using Natural Language Processing since the early 2000s to understand the content of search. One way you must have seen this is in the autocorrection of spelling mistakes. Even before the rise of generative engines, Google used to automatically correct spelling mistakes by assuming that the user had made a mistake and meant to say “hospital near me,” instead of “hospital near me.”

The present-day Google and other generative engines use the same logic and process of natural language processing, but on a much more advanced level. 

Here are four ways in which AI search is different from purely keyword-dominated search:

1. Natural Language Understanding

The first and most noticeable shift from keyword to AI search is from natural language processing to natural language understanding. Earlier, Google or any other search engine would only show results that include perfect matches for a given keyword, like “auto shipping companies.”

However, natural language understanding is designed to go beyond keyword matching. It grasps context, sentiment, and intent commonly associated with keywords as well as user search history. 

2. Semantic Data Retrieval

Earlier, Google used to crawl through and index hundreds of thousands of pages regardless of whether the data was structured or not. The AI algorithm is different. It gives priority to structured data from trustworthy sources. These include:

• Knowledge Graphs, including entities like brands, people, and places. 
• Authoritative Websites like .gov and .edu.
• Schema Markup for content types such as FAQs and Product Reviews.

So, indexing algorithms prefer data that is clearly marked and easily accessible as opposed to unstructured content. This has also renewed the importance of EEAT guidelines on the authority and trustworthiness of websites. 

3. Content Synthesis

Till now, we’re used to performing Google searches and selecting one or several of the top-ranking websites to get an answer to our query. Generative engines, on the other hand, compile information from multiple sources and synthesize it into one response that answers long-tail queries. 

This means that if your content is generic and doesn’t answer specific questions or give unique recommendations, AI is less likely to cite it. You’ll need unique data, original search, as well as thought leadership to appear in generative searches. 

4. Citations & Zero-Click Searches

Nearly half of all searches now end without any clicks whatsoever. These are what we call zero-click searches. So, even if your website is ranking on the first page of the SERP, users might not click on it. Now, you must optimize your website such that it is cited on AI searches rather than ranked first on the SERP. 

So, what exactly do you need to do to ensure that your website appears on AI search engines? Let’s find out.

10 Tips for Making Your Brand AI-Search Ready

In this section, we’ve compiled a list of expert tips based on our year-long experience of successfully optimizing websites for a diverse range of industries for generative engines. Here’s what you need to do to make your website visible in the era of generative engine takeover: 

1. Publish Original Data & Insights

As we’ve seen above, AI doesn’t favor generic information. It prioritizes unique data, actionable insights, and original research that it can use to answer long-tail queries.

Switching from traditional SEO, which usually involves the creation of keyword-driven content, might seem challenging. However, you must think of this as an opportunity to get more data, build trust with your users, and attract new customers by positioning your brand as authoritative. 

You can conduct user surveys to find out how they found your company and why they prefer working with you. This will give you insights into the pain points of your existing customers and potential ones that you want to target.

Optimizing for generative search will thus automatically make your marketing and sales process much stronger compared to just traditional SEO. 

2. Structure Content for AI Phrasing

Search engine optimization does involve structuring content by using clear headers, metadata data and bullet points for scanability. But generative search optimization makes these practices non-negotiable.

It’s not that your traffic will take a hit if you don’t follow these practices; rather, you won’t get any AI citations at all unless you use structured content. So, not only must you include H2s, H3s, and H4s, bullet points, and marked FAQ sections, you must do so consciously in each and every page on your website.

This includes more than just blogs or guest posts; it even includes product and service pages. For instance, you must have questions like, “How much warranty do you offer and what does it cover?” or “Do you offer a free trial for your services?”

Structuring your content will thus help algorithms index your website faster and cite it in response to long-tail queries.

3. Create EEAT-friendly Content

Since generative engines want to ensure that they deliver trustworthy answers that actually help users, they prioritize content that meets the Experience-Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trustworthiness guidelines.

Here’s how you can optimize your webpages and content so that it meets these benchmarks: 

• Include an author bio with every blog.
• Provide links to reputable sources for your claims.
• Cite data or claims from peer-reviewed sources.

For example, you can say, “As an FMSCA-licensed car shipping company, we’ve successfully delivered over 100,000 vehicles across the US over the last 10 years.”

4. Add Schema Markup

All the content that you create in the era of generative engines needs to be written for two different audiences: the reader and the AI. However, the AI will read and index your page before the reader. 

But that doesn’t mean you need to have two different sets of content on every page or even different sections for AI and readers. It just means that while you have to create content that answers search queries for humans, you need to structure it for AI.

So, you must mark up different sections like FAQs, Article schemas, and “How To” guides. We highly recommend using Google’s Schema Markup generator to find out how you can structure your content for faster and smoother indexing.

5. Prioritize Mobile-First Design

More than half of all organic traffic comes from mobile websites. But that was on websites and apps, right? Are AI engines also dominating mobile search? Yes!

Since Perplexity, ChatGPT, Google, and other similar generative engines have their mobile websites, they will also reduce organic mobile traffic – unless you optimize your content to mobile devices.

To do so, you must create mobile-first experiences, including fast-loading websites and responsive layouts. Remember, Google automatically ranks mobile-friendly websites higher than desktop versions on mobile devices. 

Again, you can use Google’s mobile-friendly testing website to find out if your website is properly optimized for mobile searches. 

6. Compress Images

Since a lot of your users might be “visual learners,” it’s critical that you use infographics and product pictures to attract more traffic. However, it’s also true that AI can’t “read” images in the same way that it can interpret text. Plus, using images can make your website slower, requiring more time to index, and therefore cutting into your “crawl budget.” 

So, how can you solve this problem? Should you use fewer images on your websites and blogs? Not at all.

You just need to ensure that you include marked metadata for your images, including their title and description. To maintain quick crawl times, you can compress images or use WebP and CDN file types. This way, you can include images for better user experiences without compromising site speed or indexability.

7. Create High-Authority Backlinks

If there’s one thing that hasn’t changed in the shift from SEO to GEO, it’s the importance of authoritative backlinks. AI is as likely to cite a website with strong backlink profiles as Google is to rank it on its SERP.

This means you can (and must) continue guest-posting campaigns on niche and high-DA websites. However, you should also create schema-marked-up content, even for guest posts, to achieve the maximum increase in visibility and citations. 

8. Optimize for Voice Search

Generative Engines don’t just include ChatGPT and Perplexity. They also include voice-enabled search engines such as Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Apple Siri. With voice search projected to have more than 150 million users by the end of 2025, you can’t ignore its rising importance or popularity. 

Thankfully, you don’t need to devote additional resources to optimize for voice search. All you need to do is write in a conversational tone and language, and include snippet-friendly content. 

One thing we’ve noticed is that there’s a 40-word cut-off limit for snippets to qualify for voice search. That means you should ensure that your answers to FAQs or long-tail keywords are always less than 40 words in length. 

9. Use AI Chatbots on Your Website

Let’s say ChatGPT cites your website multiple times for an answer to a long-tail query. As a result, the user decides to visit your website and browse through your product/service pages. But, here too, they might look for an AI chatbot to help them out. 

That’s why you must deploy a state-of-the-art AI chatbot trained on your unique knowledge base to:

• Capture leads through directed questions.
• Respond to routine user queries.
• Hand over high-value, high-intent chats to human agents.

Plus, if all your competitors are deploying AI chatbots, you might fall behind in the game and lose leads to websites with better accessibility. 

10. Update Old Content for AI Relevance

Lastly, it’s not enough that you ensure that all your new content is AI-friendly. You must dig up old content, especially the content that’s still generating leads, and revamp the content for generative search.

You can add new data, new claims, and EEAT signals to boost the AI-friendliness of your content. You should also include relevant FAQs and convert unstructured content into structured data.

Conquer AI Search with Lean Summits

In a recent SEMrush survey, 58% of all marketers reported losing organic traffic due to the rise of AI. However, brands cited by AI and featured in generative overviews reported 3 times higher search volumes for their enterprises. 

So, intent-powered search can still lead to conversions and growth. All you need to do is revamp your content to meet the new guidelines. We know what you’re thinking: you’d love to implement these changes and pivot to GEO, but you don’t know how exactly to create an entire GEO campaign.

That’s where we at Lean Summits come in!

As growth marketing consultants, we’ve successfully adapted to new search trends for over a decade. For us, GEO is just another update in a long line of changes we’ve already successfully integrated into our marketing toolkit.

We can help you develop a tailored growth-marketing plan structured around generative search optimization. If you’re wondering how, please tell us a little about your company and its growth goals, and we’ll provide you with a roadmap to achieving GEO success.

Thus far, we’ve helped enterprises conquer the summit of search. Now, we’re leading the way in empowering you to survive and thrive in the age of generative engine takeover.

Connect with us and start your journey to the top of generative engine citations!

How to Make Your Brand AI-Search Ready: FAQs