The way we get discovered has changed — and it’s gone full circle

The old way of getting found was simple: Google something, click through a handful of websites, build a shortlist, decide who to contact.

Now, increasingly, people ask an AI tool the question first. The AI gives an answer, and often a shortlist, before the person ever visits a website. Buyers are researching inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity before they get to company websites at all. Some marketers call this “zero-click” search — people get their answer from the AI and never click through.

I don’t think that fully applies to service businesses the way it might to e-commerce. People still go beyond the AI answer when they genuinely want to know more about you — I still get real traffic to my own website. But the AI answer is now the front door, and if you’re not showing up there, you’re not getting shortlisted.

This whole shift was prompted by an article LinkedIn published in August, citing research from 6sense: 94% of B2B buyers are now using generative AI for research — mainly ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. Ninety-four percent. That’s not a niche behaviour anymore, that’s the default.

And here’s the bit I find genuinely interesting: this is not new. It’s a return to something old. Back in 2004, when I started my first business selling craft supplies on eBay, the websites that ranked well on Google were the ones with well-written blogs and genuine discussion links. Keeping a website “fresh” with new blog content was literally how you climbed the rankings. I built a chunk of my early success on weekly YouTube videos embedded into blog posts on my website.

We’re back there. Getting found by AI in 2026 rewards exactly the same thing: long, good, well-researched, well-written, long-form content that isn’t written by AI. LinkedIn articles and posts are now one of the top ways to be found in an AI search.

Your profile, your content, and your activity all need to line up

If you want to grow on LinkedIn in 2026, here’s the shape of it: your profile needs to be completely clear on what you do. Your content needs to be clearly connected to that. And your activity — who you comment on, who you engage with — needs to reinforce the same thing.

Say, for example, you’re a leadership coach for women, based in a specific town, and your content is themed around women in leadership and local events. If someone clicks your profile, that should be obvious. Your engagement should be with people in that same world.

It sounds almost backwards. You’d think growing your network means casting the net wide and having interesting conversations about all sorts of things. But if you want to be found in the age of AI, you actually need to narrow in. The more niche your network and your content, the more the algorithm understands exactly who to show you to, and the faster you grow within that niche.

You’ll know if you’ve gone too narrow — you’ll feel it and can loosen up. But this is the direction: profile, content and activity, all pointed at the same target.

Original content is what AI is hungry for

Let me be really clear about something: this isn’t a webinar (or an article) about getting AI to write your content for you. A year or so ago, people using AI to churn out LinkedIn posts were doing well. LinkedIn even offered to “polish” your posts with AI. Then the algorithm — and the audience — cottoned on, because AI-generated content all starts to sound the same, and people on LinkedIn don’t want to read it.

If you write, podcast, or make video with your own original thinking, you will do well. I got a slightly fear-mongering email recently from someone selling an IP course, claiming “the AIs are hungry for humans with IP” — like some kind of content zombie apocalypse. Dramatic, yes. But I’ve heard the underlying point from multiple sources: so much content is now AI-generated that there’s proportionally less original human thinking out there, and AI systems can’t train themselves on their own regurgitated output. Original content — yours, in your voice — is increasingly valuable precisely because it’s becoming rarer.

What is AI actually looking for?

Here’s the checklist I use, and I’d encourage you to grab a pen and work through it against your own profile:

• Clarity — What are you an expert in? Is it obvious, both to a human reading your profile and to an algorithm parsing it?
• Consistency — Do you repeatedly talk about the same thing? If your topics jump all over the place, the algorithm doesn’t know who to show your content to.
• Credibility — Do you have signals of credibility? Testimonials, qualifications, recognised experience.
• Depth — Have you gone deep on the topic, or just skimmed it? It’s easy to record a great podcast episode and then write five lines of show notes. If you want to be properly recognised — by your network and by AI — take the time to write the full 1,200–2,000 word article that actually explains the subject.
• Corroboration — Do other sources associate you with this? Guest speaking slots, being listed as a contributor, other organisations naming you as an expert — this all adds weight.
• Repetition — Repeat, repeat, repeat. Once you land on something that works and that people respond to, keep going. Find the handful of core topics you want to own, and say them again and again in different formats. That’s genuinely how visibility compounds.

LinkedIn’s own advice, from their August article, backs this up: reinforce the same theme across your owned content, your social platforms, and third-party sources.