Words: Beth Moore & Megan Jones

Google has just published its own guide to how it handles AI search, and the headline is reassuring: thankfully, there’s no secret new system to learn. 

AI Overviews and AI Mode pull from the same index as normal search results. Essentially, that means that if your website already does a good job for customers, it’s already doing the job for AI too.

Plenty of agencies are currently pitching “AI SEO” packages, special file formats, and bits of code that supposedly get businesses cited in ChatGPT or Google’s AI answers.

However, Google’s own guidance now says most of that does absolutely nothing. So before you spend money chasing it, know that you probably don’t need to.

What actually matters hasn’t changed, but it has become more important. AI tools are trying to work out who to trust, in exactly the same way a customer standing in your showroom is.

And the businesses winning that trust are the ones who sound like real experts, not like every other kitchen website. In fact, it’s increasingly rare for an answer to say something Google hasn’t already seen.

What stands out is content from someone with genuine, specific expertise. That means answers written by someone who actually knows the product, not copied product blurb. A genuine explanation of why one worktop suits a busy family kitchen and another doesn’t. Real reviews from real customers, not polished quotes that could belong to anyone.

Think about the questions you get asked in the showroom every week; about maintenance, about what actually lasts, about what’s worth the extra spend. Those answers, written in your own words on your website, are exactly what AI search is now looking for. They’re also exactly what a generic catalogue page can’t offer.

Retailers have always won business on the shop floor by knowing more than the customer and being straight with them about it. Google’s guide is really just confirming that the same thing now decides who gets found online. Clients hear all this noise and assume they need to do something completely different.

Most of the time, they’re already doing the right things – they just do not realise it counts just as much. Reassuringly for retailers, the expertise you’ve built over years in the showroom is exactly what AI search is now looking for too.