AI search is impacting everything we do as education marketers.
It’s a very fundamental change.
Let’s look at what’s happening from a prospective student’s point of view.
Imagine Jane. She is interested in journalism and is looking for a reputable bachelor programme, preferably in the UK. Total cost, however, is a constraint. She could make it work on her budget, but she’d need to make careful choices.
Pre-2025: keyword-based research
While ChatGPT exists since 2022, it couldn’t retrieve search results at the time. As recently as 2024, we predicted how search would change in the future (Chapter 9 of my book Genuinely Helpful).
Before 2025, this is how Jane would have to go about her research:
Using a search engine like Google, she would do a series of keyword-based searches, visit pages, note the answers and search again.
For example, she might:
- Start with searching “journalism bachelor uk”
- Check some of the results for tuition fees and make a shortlist
- Realise that the programmes of her shortlist are in 3 cities
- Research rents and cost of living in these cities on Google
She needed to do that, because if she’d told Google what she wanted (an affordable journalism education; not just the tuition fees but including cost of living) she would not get useful results from the search engine.
Now the future is there!
Today: Questions to an LLM
Today, Jane could prompt an AI tool (ChatGPT, Perplexity or even Google.com). She could say she is looking for a reputable journalism bachelor degree in the UK, but faces an annual total cost constraint.
The best AI tools will then come up with a bunch of keyword queries and conduct a series of search queries. They will read the top search results and construct an answer based on what they find. The technical term for this is RAG: Retrieval Augmented Generation.
If Jane wants to dig deeper on certain facts, she can still click through the cited sources and check directly. She can also ask follow-up questions.
All of this means that Jane can get her answer more quickly. She will see far fewer original webpages. Although, of course, there is the risk of overthinking.
What this change means for marketers
It’s not that SEO doesn’t matter any more. While more of the search will be done by AI tools on behalf of humans, it’s still the search results that inform AI answers.
The key change for marketers, in my eyes, is that we need to change our focus from keywords to questions whenever we publish something, be it a webpage, blog post or video.
Of course, this can quickly explode into a ton of work. So it’s especially important to get clear about which questions prospective students are asking in each stage of their journey, and make sure they can find the answers.
Many of the answers will already be there. On your website, in forum discussions or elsewhere on the web – so no need to worry about them. Worry about the questions that aren’t properly answered yet.
Focus on the questions that come right before students need to make a decision. Answering the question “what is a bachelor’s degree?” might get you mentioned in an AI answer, but it won’t do you any good in influencing a student’s decision.
Which questions do your ideal students ask? Mine the enquiries you get. Speak to the recruitment people. Ask current students. Check discussions on Reddit and forums.
Where to put the answers? First of all, on your own website, whether on programme pages, as a blog post or elsewhere. Raise the probability of being cited in AI answers by using questions as titles or headings and then answering it.
A brilliant example are University of Edinburgh’s student money diaries – when prospective students ask ChatGPT about cost of living for students in Edinburgh, the University of Edinburgh absolutely dominates the answers as ChatGPT’s source of choice. You’ll see more about it in the video below.
I’m developing a course in AI Search visibility
If you’d like to be kept in the loop, simply click here.
That will add you to the list and you’ll receive updates and will get invited to webinars as I work on developing the course – and of course you’ll be the first to know when the course becomes available.
That’s all for this Field Note
If you’d like to dig deeper into the topic of AI search, have a look at my recent guest post at ICEF Monitor:
AI is changing how students search: What it means for marketing and recruitment
See you in 2 weeks!
This article first appeared as a Field Note
In the Field Notes, I share one practical idea you can try on your site or in your campaigns. Every two weeks. Get it in your inbox by signing up here.
