When I set up my website and social media presence, I didn’t think about how they’d look in AI search summaries. When I finally did search for my business using Google AI, I was alarmed by what came up.
It named people I’d chatted with on Bluesky as points of contact for my business. It said I offered specialist services that I didn’t actually offer. Worst of all, it picked up a few things I’d written on my website and Bluesky and used them to build up inaccurate generalisations.
Finding out the reason for these problems taught me a lot about how to optimise an online presence for AI search.
The main issue was that I hadn’t put enough concrete information online for the AI’s bots to find. This meant it had a very weak picture of me. It filled in the gaps with patterns that are generally true for many people.
Adding clarity to my website for AI search
I dealt with the point-of-contact issue by explicitly stating that business enquiries should go through the contact page on the Tide and Canute Editorial website. I put this notice in several places and named the website each time.
I also took a similar approach for the specialist services issue. There’s now an extra notice in the footer of this website and at the bottom of each blog post.
Within 24 hours, the changes on my website started to have a positive impact on my AI search results. I’m sure it’ll take time for the old problems to disappear completely, but overall I’m very pleased.
Adding clarity to my Bluesky for AI search
My Bluesky presence also needed clearer signalling. I hadn’t been using hashtags, I didn’t have a pinned post at the top, and my profile was a little vague.
The clearest information that the AI bots had about me was that I’d had fleeting conversations with two popular accounts. These were used to characterise my entire activity on Bluesky. As a result, summaries described me as a political commentator who engaged with academics.
In one chat, I’d simply wanted to know about the precise words a senior politician had used. I hadn’t even expressed an opinion. A couple of other people in the thread did state quite strong views. In the other chat, I’d had a few thoughts about the benefits of oral vivas.
I wrote a clearer profile, put in a pinned post, and vowed to steer clear of Bluesky threads that risked turning controversial. I also had more conversations on topics that I don’t mind being characterised by in AI summaries.
It will take time, but less than 24 hours later the Google AI summary for my Bluesky activity has already started to improve. The last time I checked, it had dropped the mention of politics.
My takeaway lesson
This is just my story of what worked for me at this point in time. AI search technology will continue to develop and I’m sure I’ll keep making mistakes.
The big thing I’ve learnt is that it’s a good idea to google your own business from time to time. And look yourself up on ChatGPT, on Bing, and in all the other places.
Tide and Canute Editorial provides editing and proofreading services for documents used in education and by organisations. This sole trader business operates from the UK and can be messaged through the contact page on the Tide and Canute Editorial website.
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