For most of the last twenty years, SEO meant one thing: get your website onto page one of Google. In 2026 that’s still true. But it’s no longer the whole job.

A growing share of searches now end with an AI-written answer at the top of the page. That answer is built from what Google — or ChatGPT, or Perplexity — believes about your firm. And a lot of what it believes comes from places other than your website.

So SEO now has two halves. One happens on your site. The other happens everywhere else. That second half is where PR comes in.

What’s actually changed this year

Three things, mostly.

• AI answers are everywhere, including for your name. Ahrefs reported this month that AI Overviews now appear for 83% of branded searches. When a referred client types your firm’s name into Google, there’s a good chance they read an AI summary of you before they reach your website.
• Fewer people click through. A randomised study of 1,100 Google users found that AI search features reduced visits to external websites. People get their answer and move on.
• You can see the impressions, but not the clicks. Google Search Console has started showing how often sites appear in AI results. It doesn’t yet show how many of those appearances turn into visits.

Put simply: you can be found more often and visited less. That changes what “good SEO” has to deliver.

What hasn’t changed

People still search before they hire an accountant, a solicitor or an adviser. They still visit your website before they pick up the phone. And they still decide in seconds whether you look like the right firm.

If anything, the basics matter more. When fewer people click through, every visitor is worth more. A clear service page, a fast mobile site and one obvious next step aren’t nice-to-haves. They’re how you turn the smaller number of visits into the same number of enquiries.

Why PR is now part of SEO

Here’s the part most SEO advice skips. AI tools don’t just read your website. They read what other people say about you — trade press, local news, directories, reviews, professional bodies — and weigh it heavily.

That makes sense. Your website is your claim. Coverage is the evidence. If Accountancy Age quotes your managing partner on a tax change, that’s an independent signal that you know what you’re talking about. Search engines treat it that way, and so do the AI systems built on top of them.

Earned coverage also brings something that’s become very hard to fake: links and mentions from respected publications. You can’t buy them, which is exactly why they count.

Our sister agency, Get Results PR, has written about this in more depth: Is PR still relevant in the social media and AI era?

What this means for a professional services firm

On your website

• One page per service, and one per sector. “Tax advice for landlords” and “marketing for law firms” are different questions. Each deserves its own clear answer.
• Answer the question near the top. AI tools pull out short passages. If the answer is buried in paragraph six, it’s less likely to be the one that gets quoted.
• Use plain English. Write how clients ask, not how the profession talks.
• Keep your details consistent. The same name, address, phone number and services on your site, your Google Business Profile and every directory listing.
• Add structured data. It tells search engines exactly who you are, what you do and where.
• Make it fast on a phone. Most first visits happen on mobile.

Off your website

• Get quoted in the trade press your clients read. A comment on a relevant news story often does more than another blog post.
• Collect Google reviews steadily. They feed both local search and AI summaries.
• Keep professional listings up to date. Law Society, ICAEW, unbiased.co.uk, industry directories — wherever clients and AI look for confirmation.
• Put your experts forward. Podcasts, panels and bylined articles all build the picture of who you are.

Measure enquiries, not just traffic

Here’s the uncomfortable bit. You could do all of the above and still see website traffic dip, simply because more people get their answer without clicking.

That’s not necessarily bad news. The question that matters is whether enquiries are going up. So track them. Ask every new client how they found you — and don’t be surprised when “I asked ChatGPT” becomes one of the answers.

The short version

SEO in 2026 isn’t a choice between ranking on Google and being cited by AI. It’s both. The firms that do best will stop treating their website and their reputation as separate projects, and start treating them as one system: a site that answers clearly and converts well, backed by evidence from the rest of the internet that they’re worth choosing.

That’s exactly how we work. Fresh Brands handles SEO and AI search optimisation, and our sister agency Get Results PR earns the coverage that backs it up.

• Ahrefs, “AI Overviews currently appear for 83% of branded searches”, October 2026.
• Randomised field experiment of 1,100 Google users on AI search and website referrals, reported in MarketingProfs, 2 October 2026.
• Google Search Console AI impression reporting, summarised in Seafoam Media, October 2026.