This July, I spent a day at MozCon 2026 surrounded by some of the brightest minds in SEO and AI search, digital PR, and marketing.
For (many) years, I’ve attended conferences like this because I believe our clients deserve more than yesterday’s best practices. They deserve a partner who is learning directly from the people experimenting on the front lines, the practitioners building the strategies that everyone else will be talking about six months from now.
This year’s event felt different. Not because there was another AI tool or another search update. Because nearly every speaker, regardless of their specialty, arrived at the same conclusion: We’re no longer optimizing for the internet we knew. We’re building for the one that will replace it.
That has enormous implications for every interior designer, home brand, and building product manufacturer we work with at Ultraviolet.
AI Search Is Changing SEO: You’re No Longer Just Ranking, You’re Being Recommended.
For years, success in search meant ranking #1 on Google. Today, that isn’t enough. Amanda Jordan, Senior SEO Specialist at Owner.com, perfectly summed up the shift when she said, “You’re not trying to rank in AI. You’re trying to be recommended.” That single sentence changes everything.
According to data from Similarweb‘s 2026 research, “When an AI Overview shows up on a search, roughly 83% of those searches end without a single click to any website, compared to about 60% for a regular search. And when people do read an AI Overview, research from Pew found that only about 1% click through to the source it pulled from.
Instead of the traditional search journey we’ve all become accustomed to, the game is changing. The answer has now become the destination. The click is optional.
Rather than worrying about how AI is changing search, now is the time to make sure your brand is positioned to be part of the conversation. By building the right foundation today, you increase the likelihood that AI will recognize your expertise and recommend your business when it matters most.
How AI Search Understands and Recommends Brands
This is the piece that stuck with me the most, and it changes how I think about everything from your website copy to your Instagram bio.
AI systems don’t recommend brands the way people do, based on gut feeling or a single great project photo. They recommend brands they can clearly identify: what you do, who you serve, and what makes you different, said consistently in enough places that the AI can connect the dots.
That means the story you tell on your website needs to match the story your bio tells on LinkedIn, which needs to match how a magazine describes you, which needs to match your Google Business Profile. This doesn’t mean you should be using identical copy everywhere, but rather, the same core facts, positioning, and specialty, repeated in your own voice across every platform.
Right now, most interior designers and home brands describe themselves slightly differently across platforms. One place says “residential interiors,” another says “full-service design,” and another says little to nothing. To a person, that reads as normal variation. To an AI bot trying to decide whether you’re the right recommendation for a specific query, it reads as ambiguity, which works against you when trying to get AI to cite and recommend you. Clarity is key for this new search landscape.
We’ve always pushed clients toward a defined brand story and a consistent narrative before touching tactics like SEO or social, and it’s more important now than ever. That groundwork used to be about brand clarity for your human audience. Now, it’s also what determines whether AI can speak to what you do, how well you do it, and whether it recommends you in its search results.
AI and Brand Visibility: Why Reputation and Sentiment Matter
For a long time, the question was simple: Does your brand show up in the results?
The question now has a second half: How does AI describe you when it mentions you?
Being cited isn’t automatically a win. If an AI Overview mentions your brand alongside three competitors with no distinction, or describes you inaccurately, that’s a very different outcome than being named as the clear recommendation for a specific style, region, or type of project. Sentiment, how favorably and how specifically you’re described, is becoming just as important as whether you’re mentioned at all.
This development has shifted what we’re tracking for our clients. It’s no longer only “are we ranking?” It’s “when AI talks about us, does it get us right, and does it make us sound like the obvious choice?” Those are two different problems, and most brands are only solving for the first one, if they’re solving for any at all.
AI Search Looks Beyond Your Website
AI isn’t simply reading your website. It’s reading everything where your brand shows up: industry publications, magazine features, product reviews, award announcements, YouTube videos, podcasts, customer reviews, LinkedIn, Reddit. The conversations happening about your brand across the internet now shape how AI describes you just as much as your own site does.
As Debbie Chew, SEO and Pr consultant, put it, “your website is not the only source of truth.”
For years, we’ve encouraged clients to invest in PR, thought leadership, photography, educational content, and expert positioning. Today, those investments aren’t just brand building. They’re becoming a search strategy, and they’re another place where your story needs to stay consistent. With AI quickly becoming the kingpin of online search habits, brands need to focus on their entire digital ecosystem to maximize positive results.
Original Content Is Becoming More Valuable in AI Search
One of my favorite sessions was when Paul Norris, Global Senior Director, Organic Media at Journey Further, challenged the assumption that AI means more content. The message was almost the opposite.
The brands that win won’t publish the most content. They’ll publish the most useful, original, experience-driven content: behind-the-scenes stories, original research, real project photography, lessons learned, expert opinions. Content that only your business could create.
That resonates deeply with how we’ve always approached content for our clients. AI can help us work more efficiently, but it is never a replacement for expertise. When utilized properly, AI helps us amplify your unique strengths and insights.
Why Digital PR Is Now Essential for AI SEO
As someone whose agency works closely with PR professionals, writers, editors, and thought leaders throughout the home industry, this tidbit was particularly validating.
Digital PR is no longer separate from SEO. In many ways, it’s becoming one of its strongest drivers. AI doesn’t simply trust what brands say about themselves. It trusts what respected publications, customers, industry experts, and third parties say about them, and it weighs whether all of those sources are telling the same story about you.
That’s exactly why we continue investing in high-quality editorial content, expert interviews, original research, and media relationships for our clients. Authority compounds, but only when it’s consistent.
AI Doesn’t Replace Marketing Strategy – It Rewards It
Despite all the excitement around AI, one message consistently emerged: human expertise matters more than ever.
AI can analyze, organize, draft, summarize, and accelerate. But strategy still belongs to people. Understanding your customer, building a brand, telling a story, creating trust, and knowing when not to follow the algorithm remain profoundly human skills. In short, a clear, consistent narrative has to come from you, the expert, before AI can ever carry it forward.
What AI Search Means for Interior Designers and Home Brands
Whether you’re an interior designer trying to earn more qualified inquiries, a luxury furnishings company launching a new collection, or a building product manufacturer selling through dealers and architects, the opportunity is the same.
The brands that succeed over the next few years won’t necessarily be the loudest. They’ll be the most consistent, the most clearly defined, and the most accurately described everywhere AI is looking. Increasingly, that’s being recognized not just by people, but by AI, or as I call them, “the robots”.
How We’re Helping Clients Prepare for AI Search
We’re not waiting for this shift to fully arrive before we act on it. Narrative consistency is now part of the Master Marketing Deck process for every new client, alongside the brand audit, competitive analysis, and SEO and AEO roadmap we’ve always done. We’re checking whether your positioning, specialty, and story hold up consistently across your website, social bios, press mentions, and listings, because that consistency is exactly what AI uses to decide whether to recommend you.
For current clients, we’re extending that same lens to the content clusters and pillar pages we’ve built for years, and to the conversations we’re having about PR placements and where your brand needs a clearer, more consistent presence beyond your own website.
If you’ve been holding off on a marketing refresh, this is the moment when waiting becomes more expensive, not less. The brands building a clear, consistent story now will be the ones AI is recommending a year from now.
I left MozCon energized about the way SEO is evolving into something much more interesting than it’s been in the past. Rather than being solely algorithm-driven, search is becoming a reflection of reputation, expertise, storytelling, and trust. For the professionals and brands willing to invest in those things today, the opportunities ahead are enormous.
A huge thank you to the speakers who made yesterday’s MozCon so worth the trip: Willow Mack (General Manager, Moz), Tom Capper (Director of Search Product Strategy, Moz), Amanda Jordan (Senior SEO Specialist, Owner.com), Debbie Chew (SEO & Digital PR Consultant), Beth Nunnington (Founder & Global VP Digital PR, Journey Further), Paul Norris (Global Senior Director, Organic Media, Journey Further), Chima Mmeje (Senior Content Marketing Manager, Moz), Mike King (Founder/CEO, iPullRank), Eric Siu (CEO, Single Grain), Josh Blyskal (Special Projects, Profound), and Crystal Carter (Head of AI Search and SEO Communications, Wix).
Every session gave me something to bring back to our clients, and that’s exactly why events like this matter. Grateful for the insight, and already looking forward to putting it into practice.
Frequently Asked Questions About AI Search
AI Search uses artificial intelligence to generate direct answers instead of simply listing websites. Examples include Google AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, and Claude.
SEO helps your website rank in search engines. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) helps your content become the source AI systems reference when generating answers.
Maintain consistent brand messaging across your website, Google Business Profile, social media, press coverage, and industry listings while publishing original, experience-based content.
AI systems rely heavily on trusted third-party sources—including media coverage, reviews, podcasts, and industry publications—to evaluate a company’s authority.
