At the March Austin Technology Council Roundtable Breakfast, we tackled a topic that is changing faster than most companies are ready for: how AI is impacting search, visibility, and the way organizations are found online.
A big thank you to our panelists: Dilshad Shahid, Senior Manager, Accenture. Kathleen Lucente, CEO, Red Fan Communications. Tommy Landry, President, Return on Now. And thank you to our moderator: Carina Alderete, Marketing Transformation Program Executive, Accenture Song.
This was one of those conversations where you could feel the room leaning in.
Why? Because this is no longer a niche marketing issue. It is not just a question for SEO people. It is not something that only matters to agencies or content teams. It is now a business issue. Boards are asking about it. CEOs are asking about it. Sales teams are asking about it. And many marketing leaders are still trying to figure out how to answer the question: what is our AI brand strategy?
The old playbook is changing.
For years, most people understood search in a fairly simple way. You tried to rank on Google. You focused on keywords. You built pages. You worked on backlinks. You hoped that when someone searched for your company, your product, or your expertise, you would show up in those familiar blue links.
That world is not entirely gone. But it is no longer the whole story.
Today, more and more discovery happens through AI generated responses. People are asking questions in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and other tools. Instead of clicking through a list of links, they are getting synthesized answers. That shift is changing what it means to be visible.
The panel offered a lot of gold, but five big ideas stood out.
1. AI search is not traditional SEO
This was probably the most important message of the morning.
Too many companies are treating AI discovery as if it is just SEO with a little extra technology layered on top. It is not. The panel pointed out that old assumptions about authority do not hold up the same way anymore. In the traditional world, strong domain authority and lots of relevant inbound links could go a long way. In the AI world, those things may still help, but they are no longer enough.
What matters more now is topical authority.
That means your company has to be clearly known for something. Not vaguely associated with a category. Not sort of adjacent to a topic. Known.
The panelists made the case that AI systems are more likely to surface brands that have depth, consistency, and a point of view. If your content sounds like everyone else’s content, you may get temporary traction, but you are not building durable authority. This is one more reason why generic AI generated marketing content is not the answer. More content is not the goal. Better content is.
2. It is not enough to show up. How you show up matters.
That line hit the room.
One of the mistakes companies are making is assuming visibility alone is the win. But in this new environment, being mentioned is only part of the story. The real question is: what does the machine think you are? What themes does it associate with your brand? What level of authority does it assign to you? What context surrounds your name when it appears in an answer?
That is where brand narrative becomes essential.
If your story is muddy, if your differentiation is weak, if your messaging is all over the place, AI systems are not going to magically clarify it for you. They are going to reflect the confusion.
The panel talked about the need for organizations to get very clear on their positioning, their value proposition, and the specific space they want to own. That sounds simple, but it is hard work. It requires discipline. It also requires leadership. One of the smartest observations from the morning was that internal silos are making this harder. PR, content, marketing, and sales often treat visibility as separate functions. In an AI driven search environment, that separation is becoming a liability.
3. Website structure now plays a bigger role than most companies realize
This part of the conversation was especially practical.
The panelists talked about how websites need to be built in ways that are easier for AI tools to interpret. That includes clear funnel progression, strong pillar content, clusters of related material, schema markup, interlinking, and pages that are structured for scanning rather than buried in giant walls of text.
In plain English, companies need to stop making their expertise hard to find.
If a page is trying to say five things at once, AI may miss the point. If your best ideas are buried halfway down a long block of prose, you make it harder for both people and machines to understand what matters. If your site lacks clear summaries, strong subheads, and logical page relationships, you are forcing AI tools to do more interpretive work than they should have to do.
A really smart suggestion from the panel was to add short summary blocks near the top of in-depth pages. Think of it as giving both the reader and the AI a clear overview of what the page is about before they dive deeper.
That is not dumbing things down. That is smart communication.
4. Consistency is becoming a trust signal
Another major takeaway was that companies need alignment everywhere.
Not just on the homepage. Not just in a few blog posts. Everywhere.
Your homepage should clearly explain what you do and why someone should care. Your service pages should support that same message. Your About page now matters more than many people think because it helps establish the identity of the brand. Your LinkedIn presence matters. Review platforms matter. For local companies, your local listings, directories, and basic business data matter.
Why? Because AI systems are trying to verify that you are who you say you are.
If your messaging is inconsistent across those channels, trust weakens. If your company describes itself one way on the website, another way on LinkedIn, and a third way in third party listings, that confusion can ripple into how you appear in AI generated answers.
This is where a lot of organizations need to slow down and clean house. Before chasing the newest tool, they should audit whether their core message is consistent across all the places AI is likely to pull from.
5. People still matter, maybe more than ever
This was, not surprisingly, my favorite part of the conversation.
In a world where AI is aggregating and synthesizing information, human credibility still matters. In fact, it may matter more.
The panel talked about the importance of subject matter experts inside a company. Not random executives posting once in a while. Not one-off thought leadership. Real people with real expertise showing up consistently over time.
Speaking on panels. Doing interviews. Writing articles. Appearing on podcasts. Posting on LinkedIn. Contributing to trade media. Repeating clear themes. Building a visible body of work.
That consistency teaches the market who you are. It also teaches the machines.
One especially interesting point was the role LinkedIn now appears to be playing in AI visibility. That should be a wake-up call for companies that still treat LinkedIn as an afterthought. If your leaders have expertise, and if your company has something real to say, LinkedIn is not just a social platform. It is part of your discoverability strategy.
So where does this leave us?
It leaves us in a moment where search is changing, but the deeper lesson is not really about algorithms. It is about clarity.
- Can you clearly say what your company does?
- Can you clearly show why it matters?
- Can you clearly organize your expertise so others can find it?
- Can you clearly align your message across channels?
- Can you clearly put forward real humans who are known for something valuable?
The companies that answer yes to those questions will have an advantage.
At ATC, these are exactly the kinds of conversations we need to be having. Technology is moving fast. AI is reshaping how information is surfaced, summarized, and trusted. But the goal is not to panic. The goal is to pay attention, learn quickly, and adapt with intention.
Because being found online is no longer just about ranking.
- It is about relevance.
- It is about trust.
- It is about authority.
- And increasingly, it is about whether the digital world understands who you are before a human ever lands on your website.
That is why this conversation mattered.
And it is why more companies need to stop treating AI and search as a side issue. This is now central to brand strategy, business development, and long-term visibility.
The rules are changing.
The question is whether we are willing to change with them.
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The Austin Technology Council exists to help Austin’s fast growing tech community stay connected, collaborative, and engaged. As the ecosystem gets bigger and more complex, ATC creates space for the conversations and relationships that help people find their place in the bigger story of Austin tech. We believe strong communities do not happen by accident, they are built through trust, shared ideas, and leaders who show up. That is the role ATC continues to play as Austin’s tech future unfolds.