The Secret to AI Search

The rules of search have fundamentally changed, and businesses that don't adapt risk becoming invisible online. Gone are the days when keyword optimization alone could propel your website to the top of search results. Today, AI-powered search has revolutionized how potential clients find and evaluate businesses.

When someone searches for information related to your services, they're likely to encounter an AI-generated overview that summarizes key points without ever needing to click through to a website. Our research shows a staggering statistic: when these AI answer boxes appear, traditional links get clicked only about 8% of the time. With two-thirds of Google queries now resulting in "zero-click" searches, your visibility strategy must evolve.

What powers these AI overviews? Large language models prioritize information from sources they algorithmically trust—especially media publications with established credibility. This is where PR becomes your secret weapon. When your business earns mentions in respected outlets, particularly regional or niche publications relevant to your audience, you gain a powerful advantage in AI search. One strategic media placement can surface across hundreds of different AI queries, functioning as a multiplier for your online presence.

Even traditional press releases have found renewed importance in this landscape. Their structured format—with headlines, quotes, and factual information—aligns perfectly with how AI systems process information. For design professionals and remodelers, this means incorporating targeted media outreach into your marketing strategy isn't just beneficial—it's essential for being discovered by potential clients.

Ready to leverage this powerful approach? Our Designer Discussions Academy teaches proven methods for securing media coverage that boosts your visibility in the AI search era. Visit designerdiscussions.com to learn how we can help position your design business at the forefront of this new search landscape.

If you would like to get the links and show notes for this episode, click on the link below:​

• https://www.designerdiscussions.com/episodes/episode-147-The-Secret-To-AI-Search

Transform your marketing with Designer Discussions Academy. In weekly face-to-face sessions, we equip busy business owners with cutting-edge PR strategies, marketing insights, and time-saving tools to not just work in your business, but on your business. Join us to outshine competitors and elevate your business.

Join us for our weekly live sessions and workshops: https://www.designerdiscussionsmarketing.studio/pages/academy

Designer Discussions is an educational interior design podcast on marketing, PR and related business topics. We also provide in-depth, actionable products in the Marketing Studio including time-saving templates and guides to help design professionals grow their businesses.

Download our FREE Client Avatar Guide https://designerdiscussionsmarketing.studio/store.

Designer Discussions is a partnership of three experts: Jason Lockhart, CEO of KABMS; Maria Martin, founder of DesignAppy; and Mirjam Lippuner, founder of Get Ink DIY

Episode Transcript

Maria Martin (00:00):
Hello and welcome to Designer Discussions with
Jason, miriam and Maria.
Today we're talking about thesecret to AI search.
Welcome to the DesignerDiscussions podcast with Jason
Miriam and Maria, where we talkabout marketing, pr and business
advice for design professionalsbusiness advice for design

(00:28):
professionals.

Jason Lockhart (00:28):
So this is an interesting episode because
normally, when we talk aboutsearch and SEO and all of this,
I'll be the one talking.
But I'm not going to be the onedoing the most talking on this
episode, because we're going totalk about the secret to AI
search.
One of the main things in thatis in the PR realm, and so
that's why Miriam will betalking a lot about this,

(00:49):
because it's all about yourreputation.
So I'm going to hand it over toMiriam so she could talk a
little bit about the secret toAI search, which is a part of PR
.

Mirjam Lippuner (01:00):
Thank you, jason.
I may be calling on you fromtime to time as I go through
this, but it's, yeah, thingsreally have changed, because SEO
and PR used to be basically twocompletely different things and
they're still different.
And okay, now there's SEO andGEO and AEO, but whatever

(01:24):
acronym you use, it's really allabout search, right, and way
long time ago, when you know,basically all it took was for
you to put, like, best kitchenremodel ideas into a blog on
your website and it wouldcatapult you like to the tippy

(01:44):
top of Google search, you know.
But things have changeddramatically and today 2 billion
people a month get not just aregular Google search, but they
get the AI overview before theyever see any of the Google links
.
And I'm sure all of you haveexperienced that too.

(02:05):
But that's why the rules ofsearch really have changed and
the role of PR and the role ofpress releases and regional
media coverage has becomedramatically more important and,
in all likelihood, will onlyget to be more important over

(02:29):
time.
But let's just go back a littlebit to what Jason talked about
and I just learned this from himright before we started this
podcast recording.
But I didn't know that AEO,artificial what is it?

Jason Lockhart (02:47):
Yeah, so you have AEO answer engine
optimization and GEO generativeengine optimization.
So both of them have that.
I knew, yes, yeah, both of themhave an aspect of AI in them.

Mirjam Lippuner (03:01):
Perfect, yes, so we're just going to call it
search and I don't know.
I feel like a lot of peoplestill refer to it as SEO and
everybody kind of knows what youmean.
But yes, so whatever it is,it's all about search and the
dramatic change is that now mostsearch goes through AI, so the

(03:23):
large language models, and notthrough either Google or Bing or
whatever search engine we usedbefore.
And what has changed and Imentioned it briefly before but
it's like when you look, whenyou put something in Google and
it shows up, it looks different,right, Google?

(03:47):
And it shows up.
It looks different, right,Because now there's the AI
overview and there's whateverco-pilot or perplexity or
whatever different largelanguage models feed into that.
It sits above the ad and itjust features these like kind of
snippets of information.
It's often bullet points andthen there's often a resource

(04:12):
link right next to it, but itreally summarizes most queries
to a level that I, honestly,nowadays I rarely read further,
further.
It's rare that I would actuallygo down and click on one of the
actual links to open up awebsite to get more information,
because it's all alreadysummarized for me and that's

(04:33):
definitely the trend.
So that's where there's talkabout that zero click is the
norm because you don't.
After you Google it, you don'teven have to click on anything
anymore and you already have allthe information.
So when I did a little researchfor this episode, it said when

(04:53):
an AI answer, when an AI answerbox appears, traditional links
get clicked only about 8% of thetime.
So over 90% of the time it's azero-click search.
They say that zero-clicksearches roughly are now and
this is the month of August 2025, it's roughly about two-thirds

(05:19):
of Google queries are zero-clickqueries, which that's kind of
shocking.
But that's the research right.
So how does that informationget to that AI answer window
that you see on top of yourGoogle results?

(05:40):
The large language models thatpull this information.
They really pull chunks ofinformation from sources that
they algorithmically trust.
So that's interesting websiteswith strong domain authority,
structured data and they lovepress coverage because that has

(06:05):
all that credibility built intoit.
It's like you used to be able.
Keyword density and backlinksthey still matter, but they
matter a lot less than they usedto in the past, and I also
found some research that saidthat even news sites report

(06:30):
traffic drops of 40 to 50percent when an AI overview
appears on the same query, and Imean news sites are media sites
, right, but if there's a sortof a summary of different
sources of information pulledtogether, people don't even
click on that anymore.

(06:50):
So that's really interestingtoo.
It also said that even brandsthat are cited in the summary
gain only a fraction of thelinks they once earned from a
classic link on Google.
So you can still be mentioned,but there's not going to be a
link directly sending peopleback to your website.

(07:13):
Google indicates its AI snapshotcould cover up to 90% of all
queries.
That's their prediction, right.
And voice search acceleratesthe shift because the spoken
response is the answer box above.
So the way we're searching andthe way we're consuming search

(07:34):
really is shifting dramatically.
I'm like I found thisinteresting kind of tip to think
about.
It's like so what if wecompared a national glossy
magazine like ArchitecturalDigest to a respected local

(07:54):
outlet like, let's say, AtlantaHome and Remodel magazine?
I'm not even sure that's a realmagazine, but, unlike any of
the local magazines, so ifsomebody put in Google search,
if somebody searched for bestAtlanta kitchen trends, you know
today, with the AI search, AIsearch, probably the regional

(08:26):
magazine would show up beforeArchitectural Digest, because AI
prioritizes local information,which that's a huge, huge shift
from the way things would pop upbefore.
But so that leads me to reallythe PR topic in all of this, and
it's like why earned media isthe secret weapon of search

(08:53):
today.
And there's a number of reasons, but authority transfer is one
of them.
It's like the publications, andit's what I just said before.
Publications already vetted byAI become proxy endorsements for
your brand.
So when you get and this hasalways been, honestly, it's

(09:14):
basically third partycredibility is what I used to
call it, decredibility is what Iused to call it it's like if
you get picked up by media in apiece of earned coverage, it
carries so much more weight thanyou saying something about
yourself or you paying on aplatform to say something for
yourself.
That's the inherent power of PR,of PR In terms of AI search.

(09:48):
It's also important because itcan act like a multiplier, so
like one article that shows upin the right place, it can
surface across hundreds ofdifferent AI queries and all the
large language models.
They crawl slightly differentsources.
I am not an expert in this, butI just know that they go out
and they gather information fromall over the interwebs and they

(10:10):
pull it together, and the moreoften you can show up on a
respected media site, the betterfor you, because that is
weighted very favorably by allof them.
That's the part that we allneed to remember that showing up

(10:30):
in the media, getting publishedonline, really has become even
more valuable than it ever wasbefore, and especially if it's a
unique article.
But in the world of PR, we writealso press releases, right, and

(10:50):
a lot of smaller or mid-sizedbusinesses.
They really haven't been doingthat a lot, but I think, and
actually I would recommend, thatthat changes, because the press
release format is really agreat fit for the way that AI

(11:12):
searches and it's because it'svery structured.
A press release typicallyconsists of it's like a headline
, a dateline, it has a quote init, it has it's very factual,
you know.
It often has bullet points orsome kinds of data in it that AI

(11:33):
search really really loves.
You can further like, enhancethat or augment that by putting
it on a press wire, which I usedto call that the lazy way of
doing PR, but now it actuallycarries a lot more importance
than it ever did, because it isa way for you to get out on a

(11:58):
lot of different smallerwebsites.
You know that may not get a tonof traffic, but it's just
having the visibility and thenumber of appearances all
throughout the Internet that isimportant and can help you show
up in these AI searches.
And I know for a lot of peoplewriting press releases or

(12:21):
putting them on a wire it's likea foreign language and it is.
I get it, but it's really notthat hard.
It's actually one of the thingsthat we're going to teach in
our new curriculum in theDesigner Discussions Academy,
which is our group coachingprogram for design and
remodeling businesses.
So if that's of interest to you, definitely check the show

(12:43):
notes for a link for more info.
Being said, so, what I want youto remember, you know, just
maybe go take a look and seewhere your brand or your product
shows up on the internet and ifthere's not a lot that comes up
, maybe think about ways you canimprove that.

(13:08):
You know how can you be presentin more different places, more
different platforms on theinternet?
And if you haven't thoughtabout PR, I think this would be
your cue to start thinking aboutit, because it is going to
become a lot more important, andI can already tell from my

(13:29):
personal work with clients thatSEO agencies are starting to
look to work with more PR firms,because it's going to be the
synergies that all thesespecialists together can create
that are really going to bedriving the results.
It's going to very much be aunified effort as opposed to

(13:52):
what it used to be and, withinthe media coverage, the
publicity that you can get,really prioritize a regional and
niche, like trade outlets thatyour buyers trust, because that
is what's most likely going toshow up if they put in a search

(14:14):
that might refer to your company.
And if you do PR, if you reachout to journalists, definitely
keep the regional aspect in mind.
You know and offer them thingsthat are helpful for you to when

(14:37):
the content is ultimatelypublished, offer them things
that are helpful, sort of blocksof information for you to show
up more prominently in AI search, and what I mean by that is
regional information that'srelevant for your audience in
the area where you want to showup and search.
You know like, have quotes init and have facts.

(15:00):
Any kind of fact or statisticis always helpful.
Visuals as well, but definitelykeep it Well, but definitely
keep it.
Don't make like blanketstatements, but keep it focused.
Don't say you know the top 2025kitchen and bath trends.

(15:21):
Say the top 25 kitchen and bathtrends in your specific area.
That's what I mean by that.
That's what I mean by that.

(15:53):
Yeah, when you look atmeasuring, just maybe do a test
and see how you show up when youGoogle for something that one
of your customers might do, andmaybe what you'll see is that a
competitor of yours shows upthat has more media coverage
than you.
So that would be like a superclear indicator of the power of
PR.
So the bottom line is PR reallygetting NPR?
It sounds so like cryptic, butit's like being published.
You know, having your name showup in media is, I would say, is
a must if you are serious aboutshowing up in AI search All

(16:19):
those different, if you want tobe found on the internet.
Today, you cannot discount PR,even if you are a smaller
business, and there's easy waysto do that.
Like I mentioned before, in ourcoaching program, we teach not
just how to write press releases, but we also teach how to get

(16:43):
other types of media coverage ina quick and simple way, and we
know it works.
So if that's of interest to you, way, and we know it works.
So if that's of interest to you, definitely check out the link
in the show notes to theDesigner Discussions Academy.
And that's all I have.
I am thrilled that PR is.
You know, it's like PR is onthe up and up, it's like Jason's

(17:08):
good thing.
Him and I already work closelytogether, so it'll work out for
both of us.
But yes, that's it for todayand we hope to see you back here
again in two weeks for designerdiscussions did you know that
your client learns 80 percent ofwhat they will know about you
before they ever contact you?

Maria Martin (17:29):
now imagine when your potential client searches
for the perfect kitchen remodel.
Will they find you or yourcompetition?
We can help you make sure it'syou.
Our Designer DiscussionsAcademy membership with your
favorite podcast hosts provideweekly steps to simplify your
marketing and boost yourbusiness.
Sign up atdesignerdiscussionscom or follow

(17:51):
the link in the show notes.
We hope you've enjoyed thisepisode of designer discussions
and all of the helpfulinformation.
Subscribe to our podcast, leaveus a review and share it with
your friends.
We look forward to having youback next week.
For more information on thepodcast and the marketing studio
, visit designer discussionscomand follow us on social media.