What happened

When you search on Google, the top of the results often starts with an answer written by AI, called an AI Overview. The search page also has AI Mode, which works like chatting with AI, and has been available in Traditional Chinese in Taiwan since October last year. On 15 October, Google announced on its official blog that both kinds of AI answer will carry more website links, placed further up; it will also test a section at the very top of AI answers set aside for “official” web addresses.

First, the links. These are words in the AI’s answer that link out: tap one and you’re on that website. Google says it has already made continued and substantial increases to these links, and is now also making them appear nearer the top of answers more often. Google hasn’t given any figures for how many more there are, or since when.

Then, the section. Google’s explanation is that sometimes there are only one or two official places on the web where you can get a particular task done, or find the exact information you need; it will test putting those one or two links in a section at the very top of the AI answer, each followed by a line explaining what it can do for you. In the mock-up Google included, someone asks AI Mode how to get a refund from an airline, and before the answer gets into the steps, two links appear at the top, an online refund form and the refund rules, each with a line of explanation.

The section is still only a test. As of 18 October, Google hasn’t said which countries or languages it will be tested in, or when it will launch properly, and the official documentation it writes for website owners doesn’t mention it yet; all Google says is that it will keep refining these features based on what works best.

Why it matters to you

Google’s example is an airline refund, but carry it over and the same goes for any business: when what a customer wants to do or find out is specifically about your business, the most official place for it is your own website.

Say you run a solid-wood furniture shop in Sanyi, Miaoli. You have your own website and a storefront on an online shopping platform, and a furniture price-comparison site has written about you. A customer who bought a dining table from you two years ago notices a crack in the top, opens AI Mode on Google and asks: “(your shop’s name) solid-wood dining table has split. How do I get it repaired under warranty?” If the section shows up on their screen, the slot at the top should really go to the warranty page on your website, and one tap would bring them straight to you.

But to get in there, Google first has to recognise which address is your website. Google hasn’t said how it decides; as we see it, it at least has to be sure that “this website is this shop itself” before putting it in that slot. If the Sanyi shop’s website says “○○ Woodcraft”, its storefront on the platform is called “○○ Solid Wood Furniture Hall” and the comparison site still lists the address from before the move and an old phone number, Google can’t be as sure that all of these belong to the same shop; and if it can’t tell, the slot won’t go to your website.

The same goes for the links being moved further up. The sentence where AI writes about you might link to your website, or to the comparison site’s page about you; a customer who taps through to the comparison site gets someone else’s account of you, old phone number and all.

What to do about it

It’s worth starting now, while the section is still being tested. As we see it, if it appears on customers’ screens in Taiwan one day, whether Google puts your website in it will depend on whether what the web says about you at that point all matches up; and that information is spread across a lot of places and takes time to sort out.

The direction is not complicated: your website should be the place with the most complete information about your shop, with how to get warranty repairs, whether you do custom sizes, where the showroom is and when it’s open all written clearly; and the shop name, address and phone number on the shopping platform, the comparison site and Google Maps should match your website and link back to the same web address.

The time goes into finding things, not changing them. Most of this information was filled in when you opened or first listed: the platform storefront may have been set up years ago by someone from the platform’s sales team, your Google Maps business listing may have been created by an employee on their own account, and the comparison site’s write-up was written by someone else, so changing it means writing to ask them. Which places have written about you, which account can still log in, and who can actually make the changes is often more than the owner can list in full; and every place you miss keeps speaking for you with the old name and the old phone number.

Finding all of it and bringing it into line is work we can do. With the managed GEO service we offer, our team fixes your site’s content, brings what’s said about you elsewhere into line, and regularly checks how AI engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity describe you. You just review the results. The aim is that wherever AI reads about you, it ends up at the same shop and the same website.

The customer in Sanyi asked Google, but some people put the same question to ChatGPT. To find out where AI sends customers who ask about your business right now, ask one of our consultants for a walkthrough: a session with one of our consultants, who shows you live. The consultant puts your shop’s name into the kind of question a customer asks when they need something done, such as “How do I get a (your shop’s name) dining table repaired under warranty?”, types it into ChatGPT in front of you, and looks at where it tells the customer to go: your website, or someone else’s page. Whether your website itself is clear enough gets looked at in the same session: the consultant opens geoweb.tw’s free website audit, which checks how well AI can understand your site and scores it across 12 areas, and goes through what your website scored in each one with you.

Further reading