AI Search Optimisation: The Complete Guide for UK Businesses

RivalScope Team8 February 202612 min read

AI search optimisation is the process of improving your brand's presence in AI-generated search results. This guide covers how each major AI platform works, what influences their recommendations, and what UK businesses can do today to improve their visibility.

The Shift from Traditional Search to AI Search

The way people find businesses is changing. In 2024, the major AI providers -- OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and others -- began integrating their models directly into search workflows. By 2026, this shift has become impossible to ignore.

Traditional search works like a library catalogue. You type a query, and Google returns a list of pages ranked by relevance and authority. You click, you browse, you decide. AI search works more like asking a knowledgeable colleague. You pose a question, and the AI synthesises an answer from multiple sources, often recommending specific brands, products, or services by name.

For UK businesses, this shift has particular implications. The UK market is one of the fastest adopters of AI-powered search tools, with Ofcom reporting a 67 percent increase in AI assistant usage for commercial queries between 2024 and 2025. If your business serves UK customers, the people searching for what you offer are increasingly using AI to do so.

How Each AI Platform Works Differently

Not all AI platforms operate the same way. Understanding their differences is crucial for effective optimisation.

ChatGPT

OpenAI's ChatGPT draws primarily from its training data, supplemented by web browsing capabilities. When a user asks ChatGPT for a recommendation, the model draws on patterns learned during training -- which brands appeared most frequently and positively in its training corpus -- and, when web access is enabled, it searches the web in real time.

What influences ChatGPT recommendations: Brand prevalence in training data, positive mentions across authoritative sources, clear and consistent brand messaging, and current web presence when browsing is active.

Claude

Anthropic's Claude similarly relies on training data for most responses. Claude tends to be more cautious in its recommendations, often providing caveats and presenting multiple options rather than making a single strong recommendation.

What influences Claude recommendations: Quality and breadth of brand mentions in training data, factual accuracy of available information, presence on educational and informational sites rather than purely promotional ones.

Perplexity

Perplexity operates differently from ChatGPT and Claude. It is a search-first platform that retrieves live web results for every query and synthesises answers from those results. This makes it closer to traditional search in some respects, but the output is a synthesised answer rather than a list of links.

What influences Perplexity recommendations: Current SEO rankings, content quality and structure, domain authority, presence of relevant structured data, and the specificity of your content relative to the query.

Google AI Overviews

Google AI Overviews appear at the top of Google search results for certain queries, providing an AI-synthesised summary before the traditional organic links. These draw heavily from Google's own search index, effectively giving an AI interpretation of the same content that ranks organically.

What influences Google AI Overview inclusion: Strong organic SEO performance, content that directly answers the query, structured data markup, and domain authority within your niche.

Gemini

Google's Gemini functions as a standalone AI assistant with deep integration into Google's ecosystem. It draws on Google's search index, Knowledge Graph, and other data sources.

What influences Gemini recommendations: Google Knowledge Graph presence, Google Business Profile completeness, organic search performance, and brand consistency across Google's ecosystem.

Step-by-Step: Optimising for AI Search

Step 1: Audit Your Current Visibility

Before you optimise, you need a baseline. Run the queries your customers would ask across each AI platform and document:

Whether your brand is mentioned
How your brand is described
Which competitors are mentioned
What sources are cited
The sentiment of the response (positive, neutral, negative)

This process is time-consuming to do manually, which is why tools like RivalScope automate it across all major AI platforms simultaneously.

Step 2: Optimise Your Website Content

Your website remains the foundation of your AI visibility. AI models need clear, well-structured content to understand what your business does and why it matters.

Use clear headings and subheadings. AI models parse structure to understand content hierarchy.
Answer questions directly. Start key sections with clear, concise answers before expanding with detail.
Include factual data. Statistics, case studies, and specific numbers give AI models concrete information to cite.
Implement schema.org markup. Structured data helps AI models categorise and understand your content. Use Organisation, Product, FAQ, and LocalBusiness schemas where appropriate.
Maintain an FAQ section. This directly maps to the conversational queries people ask AI assistants.

Step 3: Build Authority Beyond Your Website

AI models do not only look at your website. They assess your overall digital footprint.

Industry publications. Contribute expert content to trade magazines, industry blogs, and professional associations relevant to your sector.
PR and media coverage. Mentions in reputable publications such as the BBC, The Guardian, industry-specific outlets, and local news sources all contribute to your brand's authority in AI training data.
Review platforms. Maintain active profiles on Trustpilot, Google Reviews, and sector-specific review sites. AI models reference these when assessing brand quality.
Professional directories. Ensure accurate listings on Companies House, industry directories, and professional body websites.

Step 4: Optimise for UK-Specific Queries

UK businesses have an advantage when it comes to location-specific queries. AI assistants are increasingly sophisticated at understanding geographic context.

Use British English throughout your content. This is not merely a style preference; it signals relevance to UK audiences and queries.
Reference UK-specific information. Mention UK regulations, standards, locations, and cultural context where relevant.
Maintain your Google Business Profile. This feeds directly into Google's AI systems.
List on UK-specific directories. Yell.com, Thomson Local, and sector-specific UK directories all contribute to your UK brand presence.

Step 5: Create Content That AI Models Want to Cite

Not all content is equally valuable for AI visibility. The content most likely to be cited shares certain characteristics:

Comprehensive coverage. Long-form content that covers a topic thoroughly is cited more often than thin pages.
Original research or data. AI models prioritise primary sources.
Clear structure. Content with logical headings, bullet points, and tables is easier for AI to parse and reference.
Practical utility. How-to guides, step-by-step instructions, and actionable advice are frequently cited.
Recency. Keep content updated. Outdated information is less likely to be cited, particularly by RAG-based platforms.

Step 6: Monitor and Adapt

AI search is dynamic. Model updates, algorithm changes, and new content from competitors all affect your visibility. Establish a regular monitoring cadence -- weekly or fortnightly -- to track changes in your AI visibility and adjust your strategy accordingly.

For a deeper understanding of what these metrics mean, see our guide on Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).

Measuring Results

Tracking the effectiveness of your AI search optimisation requires specific metrics:

AI mention rate. How often your brand appears in AI responses to relevant queries.
Platform coverage. Which AI platforms mention you and which do not.
Competitor comparison. How your visibility compares to key competitors.
Citation frequency. How often your website or content is cited as a source.
Sentiment analysis. Whether AI models describe your brand positively.

These metrics are difficult to track manually at scale. If you are serious about AI search optimisation, investing in a purpose-built tracking tool will save significant time and provide more reliable data. We built RivalScope specifically to solve this problem for UK businesses.

For a closer look at the tools available, read our guide to AI SEO tools.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Ignoring AI search entirely. The most common mistake is assuming that traditional SEO is sufficient. It is not -- not any more.
Optimising for one platform only. Each AI platform has different characteristics. A strategy that works for Perplexity may not work for ChatGPT.
Focusing on quantity over quality. Publishing large volumes of thin content does not help with AI visibility. AI models favour depth and authority.
Neglecting your offline reputation. AI models learn from the entire web, including reviews, news coverage, and social media. A strong offline reputation translates into better AI visibility.
Treating it as a one-off project. AI search optimisation requires ongoing attention, just as SEO does.

Looking Ahead

AI search is not a passing trend. It is a fundamental shift in how people discover and evaluate businesses. UK businesses that invest in AI search optimisation now will be better positioned as this shift accelerates.

The good news is that much of what makes for good AI search optimisation also makes for good business practice: creating helpful content, building genuine authority, and maintaining a strong brand presence. The businesses that do these things well will thrive in both traditional and AI-powered search.

Want to see where your business stands in AI search? Try RivalScope free and get actionable insights across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews.