For years, businesses have obsessed over how they show up on search engines. Entire industries have grown up around SEO, PPC and digital PR – all designed to help influence what happens when someone types a query into a search bar. 

But suddenly, the way people search is being turned on its head. We aren’t scrolling through a list of links and going back to the Search results. Instead, we are asking AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Google AI search to do all the heavy lifting for us. So instead of a list of sources to weigh up, we get a single answer back, neatly packaged – like the Tesco meal deal of information. 

This poses quite the question for brands: when AI only gives one voice back, whose voice is it? 

Trust has moved upstream

In traditional search, it’s up to the user to make the judgment call. They clicked on a few different links, compared information, read reviews, and checked pricing. The responsibility for deciding who to trust sat with the human.

With AI, the judgment is happening upstream. The system itself decides what’s credible, authoritative, and worth including in its answer.

If your brand doesn’t look like a trusted source, you won’t just slip down the rankings as you would on a search results page – you just won’t be seen at all.

Brand Reputation in the era of AEO

Unlike traditional SEO, where you tend to optimise your website for chosen terms, AI doesn’t optimise for keywords. It optimises for confidence. That means:

• Authority signals: Are you being mentioned in industry press? Do high-authority sites link to you?
  
• Sentiment: What do reviews, ratings and media coverage say? Is the general tone positive or negative?
  
• Consistency: Is your brand story and expertise aligned across your website, socials, PR, and beyond?

Look at Pret, for instance. Consistently mentioned in business and lifestyle press, their reputation is not really about sandwiches –  it leans on  customer experience, workplace culture, and sustainability.

Compare that with Ryanair: constantly trending for customer service horror stories, yet still part of the conversation because they own their narrative (and lean into the humour of it).

The point? AI pulls from the reputation you’ve built. And that’s not just for household names. If you’re a local solicitor in Guildford or a boutique fitness studio in Manchester, AI is still scraping reviews, press mentions and digital footprints to decide if you’re credible enough to surface in an answer.

The risks of neglecting reputation

The stakes are higher because AI doesn’t give the user a long list of options. If your competitor has stronger reputation signals, their name is the one that will surface in the answer — not yours.

And if your reputation is patchy? Brace yourself. AI has no shame in resurfacing the two-star reviews on a random site that you thought were buried, or the customer blog post from five years ago complaining about poor service. It’s the digital equivalent of Facebook Memories dragging up that ill-advised 1990s clubbing photo — and your mate gleefully tagging you in it every single year.

And unlike in traditional search, right now you can’t pay your way back in with ads. There’s no “sponsored slot” in ChatGPT’s brain. Reputation is your only ticket.

Building and safeguarding brand reputation in the AI era

Invest in digital PR
Securing coverage in relevant, reputable outlets doesn’t just build human trust — it creates authoritative signals AI models latch onto. And this isn’t only about The Times or the BBC. For many businesses, a mention in local press, trade media, or a respected industry blog carries real weight.

Own your narrative
Publishing consistent, high-quality content shows your expertise. A law firm publishing practical guides or a café sharing sustainability successes creates the kind of digital footprint AI can reference confidently. Think of it as your Taylor Swift moment — if you don’t tell your own story (and keep telling it), someone else will, and you might not like their version.

Manage reviews proactively
Encouraging genuine, positive reviews from customers is essential. These feed directly into the data sets AI uses, and they carry just as much weight for a hair salon in Leeds as they do for John Lewis.

Tidy your digital footprint.
Auditing your brand online is a must. Outdated listings, contradictory messaging or old blog posts left to gather dust all increase the risk of AI pulling in the wrong material.

Have a crisis plan
Don’t assume yesterday’s news will vanish quietly. AI tools can surface issues long after you think they’ve gone — a bit like Facebook Memories dragging up that ill-advised 1990s clubbing photo, and your mate gleefully tagging you in it every single year.

Reputation is your moat

For years, brand reputation has been treated as a soft metric — nice to have, but hard to measure. In the age of AI search, it becomes the moat that protects your business.

When algorithms are interpreting your brand on behalf of the customer, reputation isn’t just what people think of you. It’s what the machines say about you.

And that makes it more than PR. It’s core to your SEO, your digital marketing, and ultimately your growth.