AI search
AI search is searching by asking an AI platform a question and getting a written answer back, instead of a list of links.
AI search is when someone types a question into ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot or Google, and gets a written answer back instead of ten blue links. The answer often names brands, recommends a few, and links to the pages it read.
For a business, that changes who decides whether you're seen. In classic search, the person scans the results and picks. In AI search, the platform reads the pages for them and decides which brands make it into the answer.
How AI search works
Most AI search tools do three things. They read the question, often run a few web searches of their own in the background, and then write an answer from the pages they found and from what the model already knows. Some show the pages they used as links. Others show nothing.
The answer isn't fixed. Ask the same question twice and you can get a different list of brands, because the platform may search differently or word the answer another way.
How it differs from classic search
Think of classic search as a shop window: you see every option on the shelf and choose. AI search is more like asking the shop assistant. You get two or three suggestions, and the rest of the shelf might as well not exist.
That's why being named in the answer matters more than ranking on a page. For example, if a customer asks "What's the best CRM for a small agency?" and the answer names three tools, the tools that aren't named don't get a visit, even if they rank well on Google.
Where people do AI search
The main places today are ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, plus two places inside Google Search: AI Overviews, the summary at the top of some results, and AI Mode, Google's conversational search.
AI search in AnswerOrbit
We ask the AI platforms your customers' questions every day, on all six of those platforms, and show you which brands they name and which pages they read. How we count explains how we ask each one.