AI assistants do not browse the whole web when they answer a question. They retrieve a short list of pages from a search index, read a few of them, and quote what is easiest to lift. Three things follow, and they are all fixable.
First, index coverage decides whether you are a candidate. If a page is not in the index the assistant retrieves from, no amount of good writing will get it quoted. Each assistant leans on a different index, so a page can be visible in one and invisible in another.
Second, position matters more than people expect. Assistants typically read the top three or four results, so ranking fifth is close to being absent for this purpose.
Third, quotability wins. Between two pages that answer the same question, the one that gets used states the answer plainly near the top, gives numbers, and attributes them to a named organisation.
What to change on the page
Answer the question in the first hundred words, in the words the buyer used. Put a short summary above the detail. Use headings that read like questions. Give figures with the publishing organisation named beside them, and the year. Keep tables and lists simple enough to be extracted intact.
Vague claims never get quoted. A sentence promising faster growth has nothing an assistant can attribute. A sentence stating a salary range and naming the salary guide it came from does.
What has not changed
Statcounter put Google at roughly 91% of global search share in mid 2026. Assistant traffic is growing and it converts well because the reader arrives with the decision half made, but conventional search is still where most of the volume sits. The same structural work serves both, which is why this is one job rather than two.
How to tell whether it is working
Ask the assistants the questions your buyers ask, with web search turned on, and record which sources they quote. Answers vary between sessions, so one absence is not evidence. A pattern across repeated checks is. Watching which third-party pages get quoted is just as useful, because directories and industry listings are often what an assistant names when asked to recommend a supplier.
Where to go next
For the full method, see AI search visibility and how to get your business into AI answers. The wider AI conversation is covered in AI for business, and if you want this run as part of a marketing plan rather than as a standalone project, that sits inside fractional CMO services.