Good AI Brand Strategy Starts With Your Boring Website

Is it time to rethink brand websites? Ask any AI search bot— ChatGPT, Meta AI, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, or any other engine— and the answer is a resounding YES.

Having co-founded the first interactive marketing team at Proctor and Gamble and later spearheaded Digital Worldwide for Nestlé, Pete Blackshaw, founder and CEO of BrandRank.AI, says he’s witnessed firsthand the fluctuating fortunes of websites in the hierarchy of brand assets. Except for e-commerce or direct-to-consumer brands, websites are often the neglected stepchild within organizations, even though they are within easy consumer reach.

However, the emergence of AI search engines and chatbots should end this silly back and forth. Gartner reports that by 2028, AI-powered search will reduce brands’ organic site traffic by 50% or more, and that 70% of consumers show a good to strong level of trust in Generative AI search results.  It’s time to finally embrace one unmistakable point of leverage AI search tools respect: the brand website.

With their algorithmic bias for brand-owned media assets, AI search engines present an unparalleled opportunity for brands to directly and responsibly shape search outcomes. Yet, this potential largely remains untapped; most sites are clunky, devoid of “interactivity,” and largely ignore consumer queries. 

What Does Generative AI Change About Search?

BrandRank.AI has audited countless brands via AI search to better understand “algorithmic anchors.“ These are attributes that wield significant influence over your visibility in generative AI answers. While at Nestle, Wikipedia was a major algorithmic anchor for the brand’s search result rankings in Google search– at times, outranking the brand itself in organic search results. However, in this new model of generative AI search, search 2.0, and early search evidence indicates that brand websites are becoming more pivotal with time.

For CMOs and brand stewards, this carries significant implications.  Brands today obsess with paid and earned media (e.g. social), and the occasional (mostly unsuccessful) app, but pay less attention to their domain content. Going forward, owned media, especially digital assets connected to self-representation of content, will benefit from richness, searchability, and technical optimization— content qualities that are now imperative to influence search 2.0 outcomes.

AI-driven search is transforming interactions with brands, moving from traditional SEO tactics toward concise, accurate answers. We are entering what we call the “Prompted Moment of Truth,” where a single AI-generated response can significantly influence a consumer’s purchasing decision. AI effectively streamlines the traditional shopper journey, making it more fluid and responsive, and providing immediate, reliable recommendations without extensive research. 

In a one-response search environments, brands must work to ensure the AI search response maps their desired narrative. For nearly all AI search engines, from Meta AI to Claude and ChatGPT, brand websites disproportionately feed search bots.

Reimagining Brand Websites for the AI Era

To thrive in this new environment, brands must reconsider their approach to site content, utility, simplicity of information gathering, and even the “boring” stuff like customer service. The objective? Ensuring “content liquidity“— making information not only accessible but also engaging, interactive, easily discoverable by AI search engine crawlers, and optimized for mobile users.

Critical content that is locked away in PDF downloads (a huge mistake by brand teams touting sustainability achievements) will be less visible to generative AI engines, and will not accrue to a brand’s search capital.

Here are a few areas every CMO should take a fresh look at:

• Enhanced FAQs: The potential to inform and entertain through FAQs is enormous. By addressing consumer queries comprehensively and engagingly, brands cater to their audience’s needs while enriching their content landscape for favorable AI search indexing.

• Open Door R&D Data: Brands should also consider opening the door to more data typically not shared on websites. R&D departments ought to collaborate more closely with brand and corporate website owners to ensure brands receive full recognition for product performance or sustainability advancements. Many major AI search engines excel at compiling detailed environmental impact or “carbon footprint” scores and narratives. Unfortunately, brands often withhold this crucial information or confine it to PDF reports.

• Elevated Customer Service: Transform customer service from a mere support function into a strategic asset. Proactivity, predictability, and exceptional responsiveness mirror the efficiency of AI search engines, enhancing the brand’s value for both consumers and AI algorithms.

• Optimized Site Search Functionality: Deploy smarter search solutions and judiciously integrate technologies like chatbots to enhance user experience and content discoverability.  Don’t settle for site search engines that fire back “blanks” — unless you want the consumer to defect to AI engines exclusively for brand content.
  

The Path Forward

AI search isn’t just reshaping how consumers discover and engage with brands— it mandates a clear reimagination of digital presence. This serves as a call to action for brand managers, digital strategists, and content creators to prioritize websites as dynamic, content-rich platforms tailored for the AI era: now is the time to think like an algorithm.

Brands rising to this challenge will not only excel in AI search, but also set new benchmarks for digital engagement and brand visibility. Let’s not wait for the future to dictate our actions; this is the time to act. One easy step forward begins with a renewed focus on brand websites.