JRL Intelligence
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By J. David Miller ·

Search in the Agentic Age, Part 3: What AI Finds When It Gets to You

In part 2, we looked at how AI searches. Now the question is what it finds when it gets to you.

Start with your goals

Before you touch your website, decide as a business what work you want to do and what work you don't. What services and products matter most? What specialties do you want to be known for? If you aren't clear on that, the AI won't be either.

This matters more than it sounds. An ENT practice that wants to grow its pediatric care should say so loudly, not bury it on page four. An HVAC company that would rather install new systems than chase small repairs should lead with installations. Your website tells the AI what you are. Decide that on purpose.

Your website's job has changed

A website still needs to be attractive and simple to navigate. But in an AI world, fewer customers are likely to click through it. Pew Research found that Google users clicked a traditional search result in 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, compared with 15% when it didn't. The AI will often read your site for them and pull out what it needs.

Your website is still the most important source you control. In BrightLocal's 2026 study of how AI tools cite local businesses, business websites made up 93% of the unique websites the AI cited. But they accounted for only 42% of all citations. The rest came from third-party sites, like listings and review sites. So your site has two jobs now: persuade the people who visit, and give the AI clear, accurate material to work from.

First, the basics

Your hours, your location, your service area and how to contact you should be easy to find and stated plainly. Don't make the AI guess.

Google says businesses with complete and accurate information are easier to match with the right searches. A few specifics that are easy to miss:

  • Put the basics in text, not only in an image or a PDF.
  • Name the towns you serve. "Serving the greater metro area" is vague. A list of towns is not.
  • Use the same phone number and address everywhere.
  • In healthcare, add the details patients ask first: whether you're accepting new patients, which insurance you take, and what ages you see.

Second, prove you're real

Link your website to your Google Business Profile, your Yelp page and your LinkedIn company page, usually in the footer or on your About page. These connections can help AI tools confirm you're a legitimate business. When the details match everywhere, that confidence is likely to go up.

Your listings carry real weight. In the same BrightLocal study, Google Business Profile was cited for 94% of the businesses studied, and Yelp for 85%. Different tools lean on different sources. Google's AI features rely heavily on Google Business Profile, while ChatGPT draws more on Yelp. So it's worth keeping both accurate.

There's also a behind-the-scenes version of this step. Websites can include a small block of code, called structured data, that tells search engines which profiles belong to the business. Google documents this for organizations. It's a quick job for whoever manages your site. Think of it as good housekeeping, not a shortcut: Google says no special structured data is needed to appear in its AI features.

Third, be explicit about what you do

Spell out your services and products, why they matter, how you help, and exactly who you serve. Be specific and narrow. If you have a specialty, say so directly.

Here's why it matters. Say a parent asks AI who performs tonsil surgery for children. One practice's website says it performs tonsil surgery. Another says it provides extensive pediatric care, including tonsil surgery for children. Both do the procedure, but only one answers the question the parent actually asked. The second practice is the closer match, and the first may be left out.

Now go a step further. Compare a typical service page with a specific one.

Typical: "We offer tonsillectomy for adults and children."

Specific: "Dr. Smith has performed more than 1,000 tonsillectomies over the past five years, most of them in children, at our surgery center on Main Street. The two most common reasons children need their tonsils out are repeated throat infections and blocked breathing during sleep, including sleep apnea. Depending on your child's needs, Dr. Smith may recommend a partial tonsillectomy, which removes most of the tonsil but leaves a thin layer in place, or a full tonsillectomy, which removes the whole tonsil. We'll explain which fits your child, and why."

The specific version answers questions a parent might actually ask: How experienced is the surgeon? Where is it done? Why would my child need this? Are there options? Each of those is a question the AI may search for separately. The specific page gives it an answer to each one.

It can also explain the trade-offs honestly. In children with blocked breathing, studies have found that a partial tonsillectomy often means a faster, less painful recovery and fewer bleeding problems in the days after surgery. The trade-off is a small chance the tonsil grows back and may need more treatment. That's the kind of detail a worried parent is looking for, and a generic page never gives it.

The same is true outside healthcare. "Full-service HVAC" says very little. Compare:

Typical: "We handle heating, cooling and water heaters."

Specific: "We repair and replace gas and electric furnaces, with emergency service on weekends. We also install and service every common type of water heater: gas and electric tank models, tankless units that heat water only when you need it, and heat pump water heaters. If you're replacing an old tank, we'll help you compare running costs, how much hot water your household uses, and the space and venting each option needs."

A homeowner asking AI "Who installs tankless water heaters near me?" or "Should I replace my electric tank with a heat pump water heater?" now has a reason to be sent to you. The first version may never come up.

Industry research points the same way. One analysis of Google's AI Overviews found that pages ranking for both the main question and at least one of the narrower follow-up searches were 161% more likely to be cited than pages ranking for the main question alone. Specific pages are built to answer those narrower searches.

Talk to your customer service team and your specialists to learn what customers actually ask about. Your front desk hears it every day. Parents call about a child who keeps getting strep throat or snores at night. Homeowners call because the heat went out or the water never gets hot.

You don't need to match their exact words. As we saw in part 2, AI matches meaning, so "my heat went out" can still find a page about furnace repair. But the AI can only match meaning that's actually on your page. If your site never mentions repeated throat infections, snoring or sleep apnea, there's nothing for that parent's question to connect to.

Without specifics, someone else can take your place in AI search. With AI, meaning matters as much as matching words.

Fourth, answer questions before they're asked

A strong frequently asked questions section is good content for your website, but it becomes fantastic when it gives the AI clear answers it can use to recommend you.

What separates good from fantastic is mostly format:

  • Write each question the way a customer would ask it, so a reader instantly recognizes their own question.
  • Answer it in the first sentence or two, then add detail.
  • Keep each answer about one thing, so it makes sense on its own.

For a medical practice, that might be "Do you see children?", "Do I need a referral?" or "How soon can I get an appointment for a hearing test?" For an HVAC company, it might be "Do you offer emergency service on weekends?" or "Do you install heat pumps in older homes?"

Blogs can do the same thing at greater depth. Each post that answers a real question is one more place the AI can find a clear answer from you. This is likely how more customers will find you and start to trust you through AI search.

Fifth, make it easy to see what others say about you

Link to your reviews, and respond to them, good and bad. Your responses show customers how you treat people, and the AI may read them as well.

Customers notice. In BrightLocal's 2026 consumer survey, 80% said they're more likely to use a business that replies to all of its reviews. But 50% said generic, templated replies put them off. Write each reply like a person, not a form letter. Google gives the same advice, noting that replying to reviews shows you value your customers and their feedback.

In healthcare, privacy rules like HIPAA can limit how you respond to public reviews. Most other businesses can reply freely.

What's new is who's reading

None of this is new advice on its own. What's new is who's reading. Your next customer may never see your homepage, but the AI that sends them to you could read every word.

Try this

Want to see where you stand? It takes about fifteen minutes.

  1. Ask a few different AI tools, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Grok, for the best business like yours in your town. For example: "Who's the best HVAC company near me?" or "Who does tonsil surgery for children near me?"
  2. Ask each tool more than once. The answers may not match, since each tool is likely to draw on different sources. Even the same tool can change its answer: BrightLocal found that a business named once reappeared only about half the time when the same question was asked again.
  3. Write down who each one names, and whether you're on the list.
  4. Then ask about your own business: "What does [your business name] do?" Compare what comes back with what you'd want a customer to hear.
  5. Pick one gap: a missing service, a vague description or an unanswered question. Fix it on your website this week.

Coming next

In part 4, we'll look under the hood at why each of these steps works. In part 5, we'll look at how to build your website and your data now for a future where bots talk to bots.

What's one thing on your website that's still just good content?

This is part 3 of a 5-part series. Read part 1 and part 2.

Sources

  • Pew Research Center, "Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results," July 22, 2025: pewresearch.org
  • BrightLocal, "What 200k local AI searches tell us about what businesses get recommended," September 16, 2026: brightlocal.com
  • BrightLocal, "Top sources and directories for local AI search," 2026: brightlocal.com
  • BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026: brightlocal.com
  • Google Business Profile Help, How to improve your local ranking on Google: support.google.com
  • Google Search Central, Organization structured data: developers.google.com
  • Victorious, query fan-out and AI Overview citations (industry analysis): victorious.com
  • Mitchell RB et al., Clinical Practice Guideline: Tonsillectomy in Children (Update), Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, 2019: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30921525
  • Walton J et al., Systematic review of randomized controlled trials comparing intracapsular tonsillectomy with total tonsillectomy in a pediatric population, Arch Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg, 2012: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22431869
  • Systematic review and meta-analysis of powered intracapsular tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy versus extracapsular tonsillectomy in children (tonsil regrowth higher with the partial technique), 2017: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29068049
  • U.S. Department of Energy, Selecting a New Water Heater: energy.gov