The AI Search Questions We’re Solving for Global Brands

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The internet is always changing, but ChatGPT accelerated that change when it launched in November 2022. That acceleration is reflected in the conversations we’re having with our clients. We’ve seen how AI’s impact on search is driving a lot of excitement — and valid concern.

The terminology varies across verticals, company sizes, and executive roles. Some call it AI, some use ChatGPT as a catch-all, and others just refer to the strategy to influence it — generative engine optimization (GEO). 

Whatever they call it, the question facing every brand executive is the same: AI has changed search and the digital landscape. Now how do we win?

As a Sr. Digital Content Specialist at Terakeet, I work every day to help answer that question. And I’m privileged to do that alongside brilliant, passionate people across disciplines who bring deep expertise and different perspectives to the same challenge. 

I spoke with several experts across Terakeet’s teams to learn which AI evolution questions keep Fortune 500 leaders up at night, how our expertise guides them, and how we engineer brand stability.  

Top AI visibility concerns, as asked by Terakeet clients

In my conversations with the team, a few client questions came up repeatedly. 

Two things struck me: First, I’d heard all of them before. Second, the same questions surfaced across brands with very different businesses, priorities, and challenges. 

Here’s what we’re hearing and how we’re advising top brands seeking AI visibility wins.

Client question: Is AI information about us accurate?

For brands, this is fundamentally a reputation question. Users are asking questions about them. Are they getting the truth?

“We’ve seen third-party and partner sites cited even when their content about our client is limited or outdated, so there’s a real concern around ensuring the broader digital ecosystem presents accurate, consistent information.” — Terakeet Content Manager

Outdated and limited information creates an obvious reputational risk for brands. But there are more nuanced extensions of this frequent concern, like: 

• Is the information complete?
• Is the information favorable? 
• Does it reflect our brand messaging?

Clients want to know that the answers users see are accurate, favorable, and reflective of their brand story. That’s a clear, intuitive goal. 

Terakeet’s take: 

AI response accuracy begins upstream. Brands need to understand which sources are shaping their brand-specific AI responses, then strengthen the broader digital ecosystem with accurate, consistent, authoritative material. 

You cannot directly control every AI answer, but you can exert far more influence over the information AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and other platforms have to work with.

Client question: What sources are influencing AI search citations?

AI search experiences increasingly use information from the web to generate answers to user queries. Many also cite or link to sources, giving users additional visibility into where that information comes from.

Naturally, clients want to know what sources are being cited. The answer varies by entity, vertical, size, notoriety, and more. There are also trends we’ll cover later. 

Regardless of what the list looks like for a particular brand, the more important question is usually the next one: Can you influence what the sources say?

Our recent case study offers a useful example of what that can look like in practice.

Terakeet’s take: 

There is no universal source list because each brand’s landscape is unique. We map the sources actually appearing for a brand’s priority prompts, determine which carry the most influence, and identify where the brand can strengthen, correct, or expand its presence. The citation landscape itself becomes part of the strategy.

Client question: How do we show up in more AI search citations?

Each client I’ve worked with this year is extremely invested in achieving more visibility in citations. Team discussions only reinforced how universal that goal is across our portfolio.

“Whether a strategy is structured around an individual executive or a company, all of the clients I talk to are asking how to increase their AI market share. How do we show up in more results? They instinctively understand that the more places they can influence results, the stronger the digital exposure and insulation for their brand.” — Terakeet Client Success Director

Search market share isn’t a new concern. But as search continues to evolve, what winning market share looks like has shifted. Here’s what matters now:

• How do we stack up against competitors in the LLM space?
• Can we show up higher when we are cited?
• How do we update information in ChatGPT? (Or other specific AI platforms)

Terakeet’s take: 

Build more authoritative places for AI platforms and LLMs to find and validate your brand. That means expanding beyond the corporate website and creating a consistent narrative across owned assets, third-party profiles, earned media, digital PR, and other trusted sources. Greater AI citation visibility is the product of a stronger digital ecosystem.

Once clients realize that AI search and AI platform answers can be influenced, they understandably want to talk about scale and metrics. That brings us to another top concern echoing across Zoom calls.

Client question: How can we measure our efforts? 

For our teams, everything comes down to results. It’s also the foremost topic and ultimate goal for our clients. Our clients want to win. Can we show them we’re helping them move the scoreboard? Here are the questions we’re getting:

• How do we know if the strategy is working?
• How do we know where our AI landscape gaps are?
• Can we measure gains and how?
• Can we calculate the ROI on these gains?

“Our clients are asking for insights that help them understand what’s happening now, where the opportunities are, and where to act next. The signals shaping how brands are discovered and understood continue to evolve and get more complex across search, AI, and the broader digital ecosystem. We’ve invested heavily in our technology and asset-first approach to help our teams and clients do that together, continuously measuring what’s changing, acting on it, and learning from the impact.” — Terakeet Product Marketing Manager

Terakeet’s take: 

Measure the landscape over time with multiple KPIs, not a single visibility score. Specifically, Terakeet’s proprietary reporting tracks brand presence, sentiment, citation control, competitive visibility, and other signals across each client’s unique set of priority prompts. This reveals where a brand is gaining ground, where gaps remain, and what to do next. Leverage always-on monitoring for maximum insight. 

This level of analysis and transparency is a skill Terakeet has honed for decades, from early SEO to the bleeding edge of the AI transformation. It allows us to not just show results but to actually do something about the reputational hurdles brands face.

The trends confirm these are the right questions

The data proves our clients are asking the right questions and that Terakeet is laser-focused on the moment’s most important reputation priorities. Here’s what the data shows:

• More than 50% of traffic on the Internet is now non-human. (Cloudflare)
• Human traffic declined across every major industry — a 35% to 40% drop between June 2025 and April 2026. (Cloudflare)
• More than one-third of consumers (37%) said they begin their searches with AI tools rather than traditional search engines. (Search Engine Land)
• Google says queries are at an all-time high because of AI Mode. (Google)
• In 2026, less than one-third of Google searches still send a click. (SparkToro)

These trends tell a story: More searches, less traffic. People get answers from AI and often stop there. This shift has made AI search visibility instrumental to managing brand reputation. And brands are feeling the impact:

“Another big thing right now is the zero-click trend as we see more AI Overviews. Big brands have to worry that even if they maintain No. 1 organic rankings, the AI summary pushes traditional blue links below the fold.” — Terakeet Client Success Director

AI represents a fundamental change in how consumers discover brands, how information about those brands reaches them, and what it means to be visible today.

Here’s what you can do about AI visibility

Knowing that AI visibility matters and knowing what to do about it are two very different things.

“Everyone recognizes this as a priority, but many brands are unsure where to even begin.” — Terakeet Content Manager

So, how can brands, executives, and notable individuals attack the problem? We’ve got a few answers.

1. Audit your presence on third-party sites

Third-party sources play a major role in shaping what AI tells billions of users. While AI relies on memory for simple searches, complex brand-focused research requires sources. Trusted, authoritative sites make up a large percentage of citations. Sites like:

• Reddit (One of the biggest third-party sources for brand-related answers)
• Wikipedia
• Glassdoor
• Trustpilot

These relationships are constantly evolving, which means the sources shaping your brand’s AI visibility evolve with them. For example, Yelp recently announced they’re partnering with ChatGPT. As a result, ChatGPT will retrieve Yelp reviews, ratings, photos, and other business details as part of responses to user queries. This can have a massive impact on brand perception.

As the landscape continues to evolve, brands need to be nimble to anticipate potential risks and mitigate them where they can. What’s clear: Brands don’t control what third parties say about them. Information can be outdated, incomplete, inaccurate, unfavorable — or, in some cases, deliberately misleading.

When assessing third-party site brand presence, focus on:

• Factual accuracy of your Wikipedia page
• Third-party profile freshness
• Sharing your authentic story before, during, and after brand scrutiny

In today’s world, if you aren’t protecting your brand’s story, others will tell it for you. Tracking this requires consistently monitoring these major platforms for reputational risks.

2. Look beyond your website

AI tools have decentralized how narratives are built. But diluted control doesn’t mean abandoning your brand’s narrative. Your content can influence AI results. It’s a core value that our programs focus on.

“The mistake is treating generative engine optimization like SEO with a new acronym. The opportunity is much bigger: understanding where your audience gets information, which sources influence AI responses, and building a credible brand presence across that entire ecosystem.” — Terakeet Strategy Director

The strategy: Build a constellation of cohesive brand narrative sources for LLMs to pull from. This includes corporate sites, bios, social profiles, third-party profiles, ally pages, blog content, product pages, digital PR efforts, and more.

The rise of zero-click searches doesn’t diminish the importance of your content. It means you need to spread the word in more places, because content is no longer just a destination. It’s an input for the systems answering the questions users are asking.

That dynamic requires a coordinated strategy for the assets you control across channels. You can’t predict every query, but you can build a comprehensive, consistent body of content that’s AI-friendly, which encourages LLMs to use that content as source material.

3. Monitor digital landscape trends over time

There are three foundational metrics Terakeet uses for generative search analysis:

1. Brand presence: Whether a brand appears in the results
2. Brand sentiment: How a brand is represented
3. Citation control: AI citations lead back to brand-owned content

The results on any given day provide a snapshot in time, but the deeper strategic value comes from looking at longer-term trends. Those help you understand which prompt types present opportunities for greater brand visibility and how the digital ecosystem surrounding those searches is evolving.

The goal isn’t chasing a single AI visibility metric. It’s to understand how your visibility is changing, why it’s changing, and how those insights should inform your strategy moving forward.

“There’s no ‘one metric to rule them all’ or as clean a buyer’s journey to which SEO professionals are long accustomed. Keywords and queries don’t directly translate to prompts, and the changing way that people actually search should be top priority before you start worrying about how to optimize your brand content for specific prompts.” — Terakeet Director of Product Integration

What comes next?

Your audiences are still searching for answers. That has not changed. But the method and venues have. 

Whether audiences are digging for comparisons in Google’s AI Mode or chatting with Claude or ChatGPT, they’re increasingly finding answers in AI-powered experiences — not just Google links or owned content. And as this trend continues, queries will become more contextual, complex, and difficult for brands to predict. 

Winning in search now means understanding, optimizing, and monitoring your brand’s broader ecosystem and all of the sources shaping what users see. You can’t predict the next transformational change, nor control every prompt and answer. But you can build a consistent brand narrative across the sources AI systems draw from, monitor how your brand shows up, and use those insights to improve over time. 

That’s the brand visibility and enterprise value opportunity we’re helping our clients navigate every day at Terakeet.