What Happened
HubSpot published guidance on optimising websites for AI search on 9 September 2026, citing research from Wix showing monthly unique visitors to the major answer engines climbed from 634 million in Q1 2025 to 904 million in Q1 2026, an increase of more than 40% in a year. HubSpot’s argument is that this is now one of the most in-demand marketing skills because the audience has reached a size that changes discovery behaviour.
That growth rate is the useful number, not the total. A 40% year-on-year rise in users of ai search tools means the share of research journeys that never touch a traditional results page is expanding while most UK websites are still optimised entirely for blue links.
For UK readers there are two overlapping surfaces. Answer engines such as ChatGPT and Perplexity are one, and Google’s own AI Overviews are the other, appearing on UK results and summarising answers above the organic listings. The mechanics differ, but the outcome is similar to the featured snippet shift of the late 2010s: your page can be the source of the answer and still lose the visit.
Getting your pages quoted rather than just crawled
Make each page answer one question plainly, near the top, in a form that can be lifted without distortion. Answer engines extract passages, so a clear definition or a direct two-sentence answer followed by supporting detail performs better than a long build-up. Add the specifics that make a passage worth citing: dates, figures with sources, locations and named people.
Keep the technical basics working. If a page is rendered only in JavaScript, blocked in robots.txt, or buried behind an interstitial, it will not be used as a source. Structured data, clean internal linking and accurate business information help engines connect your pages to the right entity, which is why we treat AI visibility as part of ordinary digital marketing services rather than a separate discipline with its own budget line.
Then measure it. Referrals from answer engines appear in GA4 as their own referral sources, so build a segment for them and track sessions, pages entered and conversions. Also run a fixed set of prompts your customers would realistically type into ai search tools each month and record whether your brand appears and what is said about it. That gives you a visibility baseline that does not depend on any single vendor’s dashboard.
The one habit that matters most
Consistency of facts across the web drives citation more than page-level tricks. If your address, services, pricing model and founding date differ between your site, your Google Business Profile and third-party directories, engines have no confident version of your business to repeat.
What AI search visibility work involves with us
We audit how your business is currently described by answer engines before recommending anything, because the fix for being invisible is different from the fix for being described inaccurately. From there the work is unglamorous: content restructured to answer real questions, entity and schema clean-up, and off-site consistency.
We do not promise citations in any given engine, and nobody credibly can, since these systems change their sourcing without notice. What we will commit to is a measurement baseline, monthly prompt tracking and clear reporting on movement, typically with a meaningful picture forming across a few months rather than a few weeks.
Questions about visibility in ai search tools
Can we actually track traffic from AI search?
Partly. Referral traffic from ChatGPT and similar tools is visible in GA4, but citations that generate no click are not, which is why manual prompt tracking is worth the effort.
Do we need separate pages for AI search?
No. The same pages work better when they answer questions directly and carry sourced specifics; duplicate AI-only pages create more problems than they solve.
Should we block AI crawlers?
Only if you have a commercial reason to withhold your content. Blocking removes you from being cited, so treat it as a strategic choice rather than a default security setting.
Book a conversation about AI search visibility
If you want to know how your business currently shows up when someone asks an answer engine about your sector, that is a reasonable place to start. Get in touch and we will walk through what we find with you before proposing any work.
Written by the London Marketing Company team.
Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/optimize-website-ai-search
