For a long time, digital marketing performance came down to a fairly simple playbook: rank well, get clicks, convert. That playbook is breaking.
AI-powered search, from ChatGPT to Google’s AI Overviews, isn’t just changing how consumers find information. It’s changing how they decide what to buy and who to buy it from. For marketers, that’s a big deal.
The question worth asking isn’t “are we ranking?” anymore. It’s “are we being referenced, cited, and recommended by AI?”
What Marketers Need to Know About AI Search
Traditional search gives you a list of links. AI search gives you an answer. That’s a deceptively simple distinction, but it changes everything.
When someone asks ChatGPT “what’s the best coffee machine under $500?” or Google’s AI Overview pulls together a summary at the top of the results page, the AI engine is making the call on which brands get mentioned. It’s acting like a gatekeeper. If you’re not one of the handful of sources it trusts and cites, you don’t appear in the answer. Full stop.
Think about what that means. In the old world, page-one rankings meant you were at least in the mix. Now, you could have great content sitting on your site and still be completely invisible to someone who’s actively looking for what you sell.
Jaywing’s recent analysis across major Australian retail categories backs this up. AI search results are dominated by a small group of authoritative brands per category, and the factors that earn those spots aren’t the same ones that drive traditional search rankings.
How AI Search Changes Performance
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the metrics most marketers live by are increasingly telling an incomplete story. Click-through rates, keyword positions, organic traffic. None of them capture whether your brand is showing up inside AI-generated answers.
The numbers are striking. Jaywing found that nearly 70% of AI retail queries carry clear commercial or transactional intent. These aren’t people idly browsing. They’re in buying mode. And more than half of those searches land in the mid-funnel, the consideration phase where shoppers are comparing options and narrowing their shortlist.
Put simply: AI search has become a critical layer in the purchase journey. If your brand isn’t in the sources AI draws from, you’re losing ground at the exact moment people are making decisions.
One encouraging finding? Size isn’t everything. In health and beauty, specialist skincare brands like CeraVe and The Ordinary hold meaningful AI visibility right alongside Chemist Warehouse and Amazon. Clear positioning and genuine content authority can absolutely compete with scale.
What Brands Should Measure Instead of Traditional Attribution
If your current dashboard doesn’t account for AI, it’s time to rethink what you’re tracking. Here are five metrics worth building into your measurement framework:
AI Brand Visibility Share: How often does your brand appear in AI-generated answers for the queries that matter in your category? Think of it as a share of voice, but for AI.
Citation Authority: Which of your content assets are actually being cited by AI models? Once you know what AI trusts, you can build more of it.
AI-Driven Referral Traffic: Separate out the traffic arriving from AI platforms. These visitors behave differently from traditional search users, and they deserve their own lens.
Consideration-Stage Presence: With over half of AI queries hitting at the mid-funnel, it matters whether your brand surfaces during comparison and evaluation, not just at the checkout.
Content Format Effectiveness: AI models tend to favour certain formats: data-led reports, expert commentary, structured guides. Track which of your content types get picked up most.
Immediate Actions: What to Stop and What to Start
You don’t need to tear up your strategy overnight. But some course corrections are overdue.
What to Stop
Treating keyword rankings as your primary success metric. A number-one position means a lot less when AI answers the query before anyone scrolls.
Producing thin, keyword-stuffed content built for old-school SEO. AI models reward depth, expertise, and trustworthiness. Keyword density doesn’t impress them.
Running competitive analysis without looking at AI platforms. If you’re only watching Google’s organic results, you’re missing a growing share of where purchase decisions actually happen.
What to Start
Investing in Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO). This is the practice of optimising specifically for AI-generated answers. It doesn’t replace SEO. It’s the next layer on top of it.
Creating authoritative, data-backed content. Original research, expert analysis, structured data. AI models gravitate toward brands that bring something genuinely useful to the table. Proprietary insights give you an edge here.
Auditing your AI visibility now. Find out where your brand currently shows up in AI search results across your key categories, and where it doesn’t. You can’t fix what you can’t see.
Building a brand narrative, not just a keyword list. AI surfaces brands it can confidently describe and differentiate. That comes from a clear, consistent story across trusted sources, not a spreadsheet of target keywords.
The Opportunity
This isn’t a trend on the horizon. It’s already here. The brands that move now will lock in a visibility advantage that compounds over time. The ones that wait? They risk becoming invisible in the very channels where more and more consumers are making their choices.
As Jaywing CEO Tom Geekie puts it: “It’s no longer about ranking number one for a keyword. It’s about being one of the few sources an AI model chooses to cite and summarise. Brands investing in Generative Engine Optimisation have a real chance to shape how AI systems describe, recommend, and prioritise them.”
The window to build AI search authority is open. The question is whether your brand will be part of that conversation, or watching from the outside.
Curious about where your brand stands? Grab a copy of Jaywing’s full “Winning Retail Visibility in AI Search” report for the complete analysis and a category-by-category breakdown.