Is your B2B business ready for Google's AI-powered search?

The way your customers find you online has just undergone its most significant transformation in a decade. Google has officially rolled out its AI-powered search experience in the UK, fundamentally changing the search engine results page from a list of blue links into a conversational, answer-driven platform.

For B2B businesses, this isn't just another algorithm update—it's a paradigm shift. Visibility is no longer solely about ranking number one. It’s about becoming a trusted source that AI models rely on to generate direct answers for users. This new reality presents both a challenge and a tremendous opportunity to connect with your audience in a more meaningful way.

This article explains what has changed, what it means for your business, and outlines the strategy you need to adopt to thrive in this new AI-focused future.

The new AI search landscape explained

The shift to AI-powered search, seen in platforms like Google's AI Overviews, is more than just a new feature. It changes the very mechanics of how users interact with information.

• The rise of zero-click searches: AI often delivers summarised answers directly within the search results. This means users can get the information they need without ever clicking through to a website, which is likely to cause a decline in traditional organic click-through rates.

• Search as a conversation: Users are now having conversations with search engines. They are using longer, more detailed queries and asking follow-up questions to refine their search. Your content must now be able to contribute to these ongoing dialogues, not just target isolated keywords.

• Content summarisation by AI: AI models can digest long-form articles and pull key insights from multiple sources to create a single, comprehensive summary. If your content isn't structured correctly or seen as authoritative, it risks being used without attribution, denying you valuable traffic.

As Rich Harper, our Head of Digital Marketing at Brew Digital, explains, the game has changed.

“AI isn’t just changing how people search, it’s changing what they see. With AI-powered search engines delivering hyper-personalised results, no two users will get the same answer. That means traditional keyword rankings matter less than ever. Instead, search success hinges on contextual relevance, trust, and AI-friendly content structures.”

Your strategy for success in an AI-first world

Adapting to this new era doesn't require you to abandon everything you know about SEO. Instead, it demands a strategic evolution—a pivot towards building authority and creating content that is explicitly designed to be understood and valued by AI.

1. Strengthen your technical foundations

Before AI can recommend your content, it needs to be able to find and understand it. Accessibility is paramount.

• Ensure flawless crawlability: AI bots, like traditional search crawlers, need easy access to your content. This means ensuring your site is fast-loading, mobile-friendly, and free from intrusive pop-ups or login walls that block access. It's also wise to minimise reliance on JavaScript-heavy content and implement server-side rendering to make your content more accessible to crawlers.

• Implement structured data: Structured data, or schema markup, is a form of code that helps search engines understand the context of your content. Implementing schemas like Organization, Product, and FAQPage gives AI clear signals about what your business does, what you sell, and what problems you solve, which helps them interpret your content accurately and use it to build more reliable responses.

2. Create content that gets cited

The benchmark for great content has been raised. Your goal is no longer just to rank, but to be cited. This means creating content with such clarity and authority that AI models select it to build their answers.

• Optimise for "AI-friendly" formats: Structure your content in a way that’s easy for AI to digest. Use clear headings, bulleted lists, tables, and concise summary paragraphs placed high on the page. Including dedicated FAQ sections that directly answer common user questions is also highly effective.

• Build topical authority: Demonstrate your expertise by creating content clusters—groups of related articles that cover a core theme in-depth. Use a strong internal linking strategy to connect these pages, showing both users and AI how your expertise is structured.

• Focus on expert-led, helpful content: AI prioritises content that is original, factually accurate, and demonstrates first-hand expertise. Move beyond generic articles and invest in content that features original data, unique case studies, and genuine insights from experts within your organisation.

3. Build unbreakable brand authority

Ultimately, AI is designed to trust reputable sources. The stronger your brand's authority, the more likely you are to be visible in AI-generated answers.

This new environment rewards brands that consistently demonstrate authority, expertise, and engagement. Success now hinges on the quality of your first-party data, the depth of your research, and a content structure that AI can easily interpret.

• Strengthen your E-E-A-T signals: E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust) is crucial. Showcase this by highlighting author bios and credentials, securing backlinks from high-authority domains, and prominently featuring customer reviews, testimonials, and case studies.

• Expand your digital footprint: Your authority isn't just built on your website. You need a multi-channel content strategy that includes publishing on third-party platforms, earning brand mentions across the web, and engaging on social media and video platforms. For example, platforms like Google AI Overviews and Gemini frequently cite blog articles, news sites, and even LinkedIn articles and YouTube videos.

Let Brew Digital guide you through the transition

The shift to AI search is complex, but it’s a journey you don’t have to take alone. At Brew Digital, we are already helping our clients adapt their strategies to thrive in this new environment. We understand what it takes to build the authority, trust, and content excellence that AI rewards.

To help you get started, we are offering a free, no-obligation SEO audit. This audit will assess your current website, content, and authority signals to identify your biggest opportunities for success with AI search.

Our expert team can then work with you to implement a forward-thinking SEO strategy that takes the complexity off your shoulders—from technical optimisation and structured data implementation to creating expert-led content that gets you cited.