AI is fundamentally transforming internet search, along with entire industries, workplaces, and education systems.
For years, Google dominated internet search. Most people relied on Google as their primary research tool for information about companies, people, and products. Companies like mine built their reputation management strategies around content creation and search engine optimization (SEO) to build, curate, reboot, and amplify clients’ online presence.
Now, AI overviews appear at the top of 47% of Google search results—often replacing direct links to your website.
As Bain & Company explains in their recent analysis:
“For years, marketers have worked to master search algorithms and position their companies well in search results to generate sales. Some invested in rich content and thoughtful optimizations, while others chased quick fixes like keyword stuffing. Now, the rise of AI search engines and generative summaries has upended traditional search behavior, delivering answers directly on results pages and removing the need for users to click through to another site.”
Our AI-First Research Approach
At Reputation Communications, we spent much of this summer expanding our AI toolkit beyond our preferred platforms—Perplexity and Microsoft’s Copilot—to include a range of others. Each AI platform delivers different results. The more you experiment with, the better you will find which suits your needs.
We also conducted two key analyses:
First, we reviewed search results for past clients to determine whether our previous strategies remain effective. Our central question: Is the content we created still ranking highly on Google, and does it appear in AI summaries about our clients?
Second, we compared current client campaign performance with historical results to identify what’s different about operating in an AI-driven search environment—and how we need to adjust our strategies accordingly.
Key Findings: What Works in the AI Era
1. Quality Content Still Dominates
The majority of articles, blogs, websites, profiles, social media content, and videos we created for previous clients continue to populate top search results when those clients are searched. This confirms that well-written, authoritative content is recognized and valued by AI systems.
Google’s own guidance supports this finding. The company advises content creators to focus on producing original, high-quality material that demonstrates E-E-A-T: expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness—regardless of whether content is human or AI-generated.
As Google Search’s official guidance states:
“We recommend that you focus on creating people-first content to be successful with Google Search, rather than search engine-first content made primarily to gain search engine rankings.”
2. AI Systems Actively Source Quality Content
Much of the content we’ve created for clients now appears directly in their AI-powered search results and summaries (on Google, what is identified as “AI Mode”). This represents a significant opportunity: rather than losing visibility, high-quality content is being amplified through AI systems.
3. Reputation Repair Faces New Challenges
Displacing negative media articles, old legal notices, and other problematic content now takes significantly longer. AI systems prioritize the credibility of established news sources and official documents, keeping them prominently ranked in search results.
The bottom line: Reputation repair campaigns are now more difficult, time-intensive, and expensive to execute successfully.
Strategic Implications
While AI serves as an excellent editing and proofreading tool, our research suggests that using AI to generate mass-produced content is unlikely to be effective for achieving top search rankings. The algorithms still reward authentic, well-researched, expertly crafted content over quantity-focused approaches.
The most successful reputation management strategies in the AI era will likely combine human expertise in content creation with AI tools for optimization and refinement—focusing on quality, authority, and genuine value to readers rather than attempting to game the system.
