In 2026, the digital landscape continues to shift beneath our feet. We are moving rapidly from SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) to what industry experts are calling GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) or Agentic Optimisation.
The stakes have changed. Your website is no longer just a marketing tool; it is the primary grounding data that AI agents use to represent your brand to the world.
Hallucinations can cost you
We used to work hard on SEO to optimise your site to get it listed on page one of search results. Today we are optimising your site for the LLM’s (Large Language Model) internal world model because AI doesn’t just list you – it summarises you. By ensuring your website is the ‘source of truth,’ you prevent AI from ‘hallucinating’ about your brand – a polite way of saying the machine is making things up because it couldn’t find the facts. A hallucination isn’t just a glitch, it’s a brand liability.
If your website lacks a clear, structured narrative, the AI uses RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) to fill the gaps using third-party data – which you don’t control and are often inaccurate.
In a 2024 landmark case, Air Canada was held legally liable because its chatbot “hallucinated” about a refund policy that didn’t exist. The airline tried to argue the AI was a separate entity, but the courts ruled that a company is responsible for the accuracy of its digital representations, regardless of the tech delivering them.
The lesson is simple, if you leave a narrative vacuum, the AI will fill it. And it might be an expensive mistake.
Clarity in code means clarity in the AI’s description of you
AI models will look for a general consensus about your business across the web. So if your official site says one thing, but old reviews, outdated directories, or forum threads say another, the AI may prioritise the crowd over your corporate voice. Or if the site is outdated and not built for the shift to GEO but the reviews are recent, the AI may decide the reviews are more relevant.
AI crawlers need structured data (schema, clean HTML, semantic headers) to digest your content accurately, so a website delivered with technical excellence becomes extremely important. If your site is a ‘div-soup’ of messy code, the AI doesn’t just skim – it guesses. And in business, you never want an AI to guess your value proposition.
A high-authority, technically structured website acts as a narrative anchor, forcing AI models to weight your official stance more heavily than random internet commentary.
Racing towards the era of the Agentic Buyer
AI agents are already doing our window shopping. We ask it for recommendations on consumer electronics, fashion/apparel, home goods, and routine, everyday items.
But consumers and businesses also use AI for product research, deal-finding, and comparing products and services across multiple brands eg. a B2B buyer might tell their AI, “Find me three reliable vendors in APAC who specialise in X and have a sustainable supply chain.”
If that specific proof isn’t explicitly and clearly on your site, you are invisible to the agent.
You aren’t just losing a click, you’re being excluded from the consideration set entirely. And you didn’t lose the deal to a competitor – you lost it to a lack of data.
Are you going to feed the AI, or let it scavenge?
In a world where AI is the primary interface for your customers, being ‘machine-readable’ is now a matter of survival. Work with a digital partner that builds a strategic asset defining you to the machines.
Control your narrative, or the machines will piece one together for you.
