3 keys to ensuring AI search success.

Tory Brunker

10-13-2025

AI analyzing how a coffee website is being ranked highly on search: mentions by Youtube influencers, features in articles, and customer reviews.

With AI-powered shopping skyrocketing by 4,700% and travel sites experiencing a 3,500% surge in AI-driven traffic in just the past year, it’s hard to ignore how quickly the landscape of digital discovery is evolving. Customers are now looking to AI tools for recommendations, answers, and inspiration — and what shows up in those results can make or break your brand’s visibility.

Suddenly, every marketer is competing for attention in AI-generated answers, where the rules of engagement are in constant flux. Today’s challenge is not just about being present — it’s about being visible and credible. To achieve this, your teams must go beyond creating engaging content and place additional focus on how agents can read and interpret your content effectively, all while evolving how you measure success in this new context.

This blog lays out three key areas of focus for AI search optimization. With the right feedback and systems in place, your brand can transform AI-driven discovery from a challenge into an opportunity, connecting with customers where it matters most.

1. Identify gaps in your AI visibility.

The first step toward establishing a strong presence is understanding where your brand stands today — and where it’s falling short. Start with an AI search visibility audit, examining not just your own digital assets, but how your brand is referenced across the web. Are your product catalogs fully detailed, with all the identifiers and rich media that AI engines crave? Is your site’s content well-structured and up to date, from FAQs to support docs? More importantly, does your brand earn citations from trusted third-party sources, like expert forums and respected publications? These external references are what AI models look for when deciding who gets surfaced in answers.

Once you’ve pinpointed where your brand isn’t showing up — or isn’t showing up correctly — it’s time to get tactical and implement fixes.

2. Leverage AI to turn insights into optimizations.

Optimization in the agentic era is about working smarter, not harder. Rather than making blanket content revisions, teams should focus on precise, high-impact updates. These could include filling in missing specs, correcting identifiers, refreshing authority references, or even updating pricing. The key is to ensure every change is designed to help AI agents find, understand, and present your brand accurately.

Take a systematic approach by connecting your monitoring efforts directly to internal analytics, so you can see how quickly updates are reflected in AI-generated responses. Use tools like Adobe LLM Optimizer to automate cross-channel monitoring, spot additional optimization opportunities, and benchmark your brand against competitors. Document winning tactics and scale them across product lines. The goal is to make AI optimization part of the operational DNA, not a one-off project. For marketing leaders, this means empowering teams to act quickly, iterate, and double down on proven strategies without getting bogged down in endless guesswork.

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Overlay of GEO metrics indicating brand presence on Google AI and Chat GPT.

3. Build a continuous feedback loop.

Metadata and content optimizations alone won’t ensure continued visibility for your brand. As AI search continues to evolve, marketing leaders will need to understand precisely which levers to pull and which blind spots to address first, in order to stay ahead.

A continuous feedback loop will be essential for identifying and acting on these levers quickly. Consider focusing on these areas:

The brands that thrive will be those that treat measurement as an ongoing discipline, continually refining their approach to maximize visibility, credibility, and competitive displacement in the AI-driven search landscape.

Act now, win later.

The era of AI-powered discovery is truly here, reshaping how visibility, authority, and influence are earned online. Staying competitive means more than just keeping up — it’s about being proactive, measuring impact, and refining your approach with every insight gained. By establishing repeatable processes, sharing key operational metrics, and coordinating across teams, your brand remains agile and ready to seize new opportunities.

While the landscape may feel complex, the right tools make all the difference. LLM Optimizer offers practical support, helping your marketing team automate the heavy lifting and focus on strategic improvements that matter. Forward-thinking brands that embrace these changes will be positioned for sustainable growth and lasting relevance.

Learn more about LLM Optimizer or discover how it works in a guided product tour.

Questions about AI search? We have answers.

What is the Adobe LLM Optimizer, and how does it help marketers?

The Adobe LLM Optimizer is a solution designed to make your content easier for AI agents and large language models to understand, surface, and attribute. It helps marketers structure and label content so brands show up more accurately and consistently when customers ask AI tools questions across the buyer journey.

What are common gaps in AI search visibility, and how can they be addressed?

Common gaps include content that isn’t machine-readable, missing or inconsistent metadata, and a lack of clear brand or product signals that AI models can recognize. These can be addressed by organizing content around customer intents, improving data quality and structure, and continuously monitoring how AI systems reference your brand to refine content over time.

How does AI search optimization vary by geographic location?

AI search optimization can vary by region because people use different languages, cultural references, and local search intents when interacting with AI tools. Marketers should localize content, examples, and metadata—while respecting regional regulations and norms—so AI models can provide answers that feel relevant and trustworthy in each market.

What are the benefits of acting early in AI search optimization?

Acting early helps brands become the “default answer” a model associates with specific questions or categories, which can be difficult to displace later. It also gives marketers more time to learn how different AI systems interpret their content, refine strategies, and build responsible safeguards before competitors catch up.

How does AI search optimization compare to traditional SEO strategies?

Traditional SEO focuses on ranking in web search results, while AI search optimization focuses on how conversational models interpret, summarize, and cite your content in answers. The foundations are similar—high-quality, authoritative, well-structured content—but AI search also requires clearer semantic signals, richer context, and attention to how information is used in dialogue rather than just on a results page.

What are the challenges marketers face when implementing AI search optimization?

Key challenges include limited visibility into how individual AI models work, fast-evolving platform behaviors, and aligning legal, privacy, and brand-safety requirements with new optimization tactics. Marketers also need new skills, measurement frameworks, and cross-functional collaboration to safely test, learn, and scale AI search efforts without overpromising or misrepresenting what AI can do.

Tory is the Senior Director, Web Marketing for Adobe for Business. With over 20 years of experience in B2B marketing within Fortune 250 companies, Tory is a seasoned leader known for driving revenue and margin growth. She currently leads the Adobe for Business web team, overseeing web experience, journeys, SEO and web analytics with her global team across North America, EMEA and APAC regions. Her expertise lies in crafting innovative strategies and operational plans that align marketing, product, and sales teams, ensuring seamless cross-channel execution. Passionate about technology, she has a keen interest in understanding and leveraging AI capabilities in all aspects of the website and her team's work. She is especially keen on unpacking the AI based search space to evolve the SEO practice to include improving visibility in AI search engines and LLMs.

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