Making sure your brand gets mentioned in AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews is very much on everyone’s mind today.
In Chapter 9 of Genuinely Helpful, we predicted that as LLMs get better, people will increasingly use AI tools to get answers instead of visiting multiple websites – and technically, this works really well now, especially if you have a paid account.
Is AI search really a game changer, and if so, how do you make sure you remain visible?
How important is AI visibility today?
- Web analytics understates AI Search in multiple ways. In GA4, for example, you may see some traffic coming from chatGPT and Perplexity, but when people click a link in the app, it will most likely show up as direct traffic. Beyond that, your school may get mentioned (or not) but people never click through. A (favourable or unfavourable) mention has the power to sway decisions.
- AI platforms see growing use. According to a panel study of US users by SEMRush and Datos, AI tools gain adoption rapidly. In January 2023, 8% of Americans used an AI tool at least once a month. By June 2025, that number had grown to close to 40%.
- Prospective students are early adopters. One of the fun things about education marketing is that prospective students are often the first to adopt new platforms and approaches. Visitors to stanford.edu are 4x more likely than average Americans to use Perplexity, and (as shown in below screenshot from SparkToro) ChatGPT use alone was already above 65% by June 2025.
- “Traditional” Search is not dying. The same SEMRush / Datos study shows search engines like Google are still seeing the same amount of search queries. Interestingly, when people start to use ChatGPT, their use of Google increases, which suggests that people use AI tools for different use cases.
So while Google/Bing remains important, we have another job coming up for us – to make sure our school gets mentioned when people are exploring their options in an AI tool.
What to do?
- First of all, don’t panic and don’t make drastic changes to what you are doing today. “Traditional” Search and social media will continue to be important for discovery in the foreseeable future. Besides, there’s a lot of overlap. If you do SEO and social media well, that helps your AI discoverability, too.
- Figure out which prompts are important for your school. They should be explicitly related to programmes you offer or be about comparing options – and they should be questions people actually ask, not just questions you make up. A tool I use to find commonly asked questions is alsoasked.com
- Start tracking your visibility on selected prompts. You can start small: once you keep track of whether you are mentioned on 10-20 prompts across Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity and see what gets cited, you’ll start to see opportunities across everything you do in online marketing. I personally use peec.ai to track mentions.
This article first appeared as a Field Note
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