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By J. David Miller ·

Search in the Agentic Age, Part 5: It Takes a Village

This is part 5 of 5, the final post in our series, Search in the Agentic Age.

Remember the ghost in the back room? In parts 3 and 4, we covered what to put on your website and how AI finds it. Now the question is who writes it.

Your teams, working together

Your digital team brings skills few others in your organization have. They know search engine optimization (SEO), and the newer terms for getting found by AI: generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO). They know how to structure a page, keep listings consistent and make sure your site gets crawled and indexed.

Your experts and your customer-facing team hear the questions customers ask, in their own words, and know the deep, narrow answers to them. AI matches meaning, not just keywords, and customers ask in plain language.

When these teams work together, that synergy optimizes how you're presented online. It gives AI specific, meaningful answers to match, and more reasons to choose your business.

What that looks like in healthcare

The surgeon knows the details that build authority: how many tonsillectomies they perform, how many are in children, and when they recommend a partial rather than a full removal. The front desk knows how parents ask: "My son snores and stops breathing at night," or "She keeps getting strep." The content team joins the two into a page that uses the parent's words and backs them up with the surgeon's expertise.

FAQs carry it further. Parents ask predictable questions: What's the difference between a partial and a full tonsillectomy? What are the risks? What can my child eat afterward? Each is likely one of the smaller searches AI runs when it breaks a question apart. A practice that answers each one is more likely to be pulled in for each piece.

Answers that agree with clinical guidelines and other trusted sources likely give AI more reason to use them. So in healthcare, FAQ answers should follow the guidelines and be reviewed by the clinician who does the work.

What that looks like in any business

A homeowner calls and says, "My hot water smells like rotten eggs." The technician knows why: inside the tank, bacteria and the tank's metal anode rod can turn sulfate in the water into hydrogen sulfide gas, the source of the smell. The content team turns that into an FAQ titled "Why does my hot water smell like rotten eggs?", answered in plain words.

Each team holds part of that answer. Together, they publish the whole thing.

What AI weighs

It draws on many sources: what it learned in training, outside articles and directories, and general knowledge about what you do. But three sources are within your control: what your company says, what your customers say, and the quality of the work behind both. When those three tell the same story, AI likely has more reason to trust you.

What your company says is your website, FAQs, blog and listings, everything from parts 3 and 4.

What your customers say is your reviews and ratings. When a homeowner writes, "The technician explained why our hot water smelled like rotten eggs and fixed it the same day," the review backs up what your website says, in a customer's own words.

The quality behind both matters most. No page can make up for poor work, because customers will say so. How you reply matters too. In BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey, 80% of consumers said they're more likely to use a business that replies to all its reviews. In healthcare, privacy rules like HIPAA change how you can reply, as we covered in part 3.

What comes next

Agents are AI systems that use tools to accomplish goals: doing research, scheduling patients and performing tasks. Today, most agents live inside the AI tools themselves, and they go out and search the web. Soon, agents are likely to work inside the systems your business already uses, as part of your scheduling, finance and marketing teams. Then you'll have agents talking to agents.

That future is already starting. On November 10, 2026, Google Cloud launched Gemini for Healthcare in preview. It's an AI agent system for hospitals and insurers that connects to the health record and coverage systems they already use, with read-only access to patient records. Launch customers include HCA Healthcare and Northwell Health.

A well-documented online presence, well sourced and deep in knowledge, will likely prepare you for the day your agents start working with your customers' agents to solve their problems.

Try this

  1. Ask your front desk to write down the five questions they hear most this week, in the customers' own words.
  2. Ask your expert to answer each one in two or three plain sentences.
  3. Check whether your website answers each question, using those words.
  4. Read your reviews. Do customers praise what your website says you do well?
  5. Have your digital team publish one of those answers as an FAQ this week.

Be patient. These changes won't show up overnight, because crawling and indexing take time, as we saw in part 4. But they help you two ways: your website becomes stronger for the people who visit it, and you give AI systems more reasons to recommend you and your business. Treat this as the start of an ongoing process, not a one-time project. It takes a village: your experts, your customer-facing team and your digital team.

Putting it together

So, who's the AI gonna call? The business that shows what it knows. The synergy of your experts, your front desk and your digital team gives the AI exactly what it needs to recommend you when someone hears strange noises in the attic.

That's the whole series in one line. Customers ask in their own words. AI matches meaning. And the business that answers clearly, specifically and consistently is likely the one that gets named.

Who's in your village? Tell me in the comments which teams you'd bring together first.

Thank you for reading, and for staying with us through all five parts. We appreciate it. You'll find more posts on our blog.

This is part 5 of a 5-part series. Read part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.

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