Want AI to cite your brand? Topical authority is the one signal ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity all reward. Here’s how to build it and get cited.
April’s State of Search & AI breaks down AI-first discovery, platform fragmentation, and how changing search behavior is impacting visibility.
So far, April has shown a rapid shift in how people discover information, with AI quickly becoming the primary way to get answers across platforms and systems. Google is integrating AI deeper into its search experience, while many users are beginning their journeys entirely outside of traditional search — on social platforms, marketplaces, and specialized AI tools. This trend is making visibility less centralized, less predictable, and no longer tied to a single platform.
March showed that visibility is increasingly determined by infrastructure. Technical SEO acts as the gateway to AI inclusion, traffic is compressing as answers move into the interface, and performance measurement is shifting toward AI presence and citation visibility.
April builds on that shift, but introduces a new layer of complexity: even when you are eligible for visibility, where and how you appear is becoming far less predictable.
April highlights how discovery is expanding across platforms and becoming less stable than traditional search ever was.
Instead of simply listing businesses, Maps now pulls from reviews, photos, and third-party data to recommend where users should go. AI-generated summaries and “Ask” features are being prioritized above traditional local signals.
What this means for marketers: Visibility in Maps (and the data that powers it) is becoming more important than driving users to your site. Reviews, structured data, and local signals directly influence AI recommendations.
A growing share of users — especially Gen Z — start their discovery journey on platforms like TikTok and Instagram, where visual content helps them make decisions quickly. At the same time, Amazon dominates product search, capturing both discovery and purchase intent.
What this means for marketers: Brands need visibility across ecosystems. Social, marketplaces, and AI platforms are all part of discovery, and we can no longer rely solely on search.
Nearly half of users now prefer AI-powered search experiences over traditional engines because they deliver faster, synthesized answers. This marks a shift from AI assisting search to AI replacing the starting point.
What this means for marketers: Optimization strategies must account for AI-first journeys. Brands need to be understood, structured, and cited within AI systems.
Even users actively searching for a specific brand may now get answers directly in the interface before reaching a website. At the same time, Google is increasingly surfacing its own properties within AI responses.
What this means for marketers: Branded traffic is no longer guaranteed. Even high-intent queries are being intercepted, underscoring the importance of visibility within Google’s ecosystem.
Unlike traditional rankings, AI visibility is inconsistent. AI systems may recommend different brands for similar prompts, and there’s often a disconnect between the sources used to generate answers and those actually cited.
Influence, attribution, and traffic are no longer tightly connected.
What this means for marketers: AI performance is harder to track with traditional metrics. Visibility may influence decisions even when it doesn’t lead to a citation or a click.
Google reinforced that before content can appear anywhere — including in AI summaries — it must pass core infrastructure gates like crawlability, rendering, and indexing.
This continues a theme from March: technical SEO determines whether your content is even considered.
What this means for marketers: Without clean, accessible, and well-structured content, brands risk being excluded from AI-driven discovery entirely.
April highlights how visibility is no longer centralized, stable, or guaranteed, even for strong brands.
Discovery happens across more platforms, AI systems are shaping decisions earlier, and the connection between visibility, attribution, and traffic continues to weaken. Google is also pulling more interactions into its own ecosystem, further reducing direct access to users.
For marketers, that means you need to:
Search is increasingly fragmented, and visibility depends on how well your brand shows up across it all.
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