A strategic re-evaluation is happening inside search optimization, moving beyond conventional search engine optimization to a more advanced and extended search, AI Search Optimization (AISO).
News largely depends on search traffic, and website visitors now contend with the influence of AI entities that summarize content directly, bypassing traditional referrals and direct traffic.
What is AI Search Optimization?
AI Search Optimization makes your content easily understood, extracted, and presented by AI-powered search tools like AI Overviews, Perplexity.ai or ChatGPT.
AI search optimization has created a paradigm shift in how news flows. The initial promise of increased referral traffic from AI platforms proved unrealized for newsrooms.
Forbes highlights that the tug-of-war between news organisations and AI brands continues, with information being overtaken to train algorithms and content being scraped. It states that AI models sent 96% less traffic to news sites than Google.
A key report in the Columbia Journalism Review, utilizing rigorous research by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, carefully assessed eight leading generative search tools capable of live information retrieval.
The core problem, repeatedly highlighted, is that AI search tools often fail to credit or link to original news sources. Instead, they extract the content, condense it into short summaries, and deliver it directly to users, cutting publishers out of the equation.
Generative search tools frequently misattribute sources, often linking to an incorrect article or, even when correctly identifying the source, failing to provide a clear, actionable link to the original publisher.
The current operational state of AI within the information ecosystem makes it unequivocally clear that media entities cannot afford to ignore AI tools.
Generative AI have become the primary gateway for audiences to access information, often cutting publishers out of the journey. This is a growing threat to media outlets' reach and business sustainability.
Publishers should take this opportunity to bring more traffic to their sites. The only way to do this is to work on AI search optimisation to make their content clearly visible and avoid misleading the site.
Our extensive investigation points towards a strategy that extends far beyond traditional SEO and assists you in moving through the complexities of AI-driven search environments.
Traditional search engines centred on individual terms or brief phrases. AI search results, however, operates on the principles of natural language comprehension and conversational inquiries.
Publishers must fundamentally shift their perspective to foresee the complete sentences, intricate multi-part questions, and nuanced intentions users will express to AI.
For instance, if you operate in the financial niche, instead of simply targeting "stock market trends," try using keywords like "Explain the latest stock market trends" or "Summarize the key factors influencing the technology sector's stock performance this quarter."
This involves employing advanced natural language processing (NLP) tools to uncover hidden semantic connections and emerging conversational patterns for the most powerful AI search optimisation.
Describe the mechanism behind not just in titles but naturally within subheadings, opening paragraphs, and dedicated answer sections to boost search capabilities.
Consider implementing "Key Takeaways" or "Brief" sections at the beginning of longer articles, similar to many major news outlets. This would assist AI's ability to quickly grasping an article's core message, which could directly feed into AI-generated summaries and structured excerpts.
While schema markup is foundational for conventional SEO and Google search, its strategic importance for AI search has increased. AI models build intricate knowledge graphs to understand entities (people, organizations, events, concepts) and their interrelationships. Publishers must provide explicit signals.
Imagine you are writing an investigative piece on a political scandal. Beyond the basic news article schema, implement an organization schema for the implicated government body, a person schema for key officials, and potentially an event schema for specific hearings or policy announcements.
Within the news article schema, utilize properties like mentions, about and try to link to other relevant entities and content segments for tailored results.
You can go beyond the basics. Ensure meticulous implementation of particular schema types where applicable: Fact check, Opinion news article, Live blog posting, Review, How-to, etc.
For a journalist's profile, include alumnus of, occupation, knows about, and works for to contribute to a robust author knowledge graph. For an event, detail the start date, end date, location, and performer.
This granular data provides AI with a precise map of your content's informational structure, considerably increasing the likelihood of accurate summarisation and contextualised attribution.
Google's EEAT framework now incorporates "Experience," an even more critical factor in how AI algorithms gauge content credibility. This mandates a transparent and explicit demonstration of the journalistic rigour and verifiable expertise behind each published item for news organizations.
Imagine health-related content for a weekly series or articles on specific subjects. The author's biography should explicitly detail relevant medical background, years covering the field, and affiliations with reputable health organizations.
For an opinion piece, clearly state the contributor's academic qualifications, professional history, and any pertinent accolades, signalling their legitimate authority on AI.
AI search prioritizes helpful results. You can structure your articles to provide immediate, concise answers to potential queries, followed by progressively deeper context and analysis.
The opening paragraph for a breaking news report should succinctly address the "who, what, when, where, and why."
Subsequent sections could elaborate on "how it developed," "reactions," and "future implications." For a "how-to" guide, the initial sub-section could be "The Three Essential Steps," followed by detailed explanations of each step.
Use keyword-rich subheadings that directly address anticipated AI questions. Use bullet points, numbered lists, and bolded key phrases to present crucial facts or procedures concisely.
Consider using HTML elements for collapsible content, allowing users (and AI) to quickly grasp the main points before opting for more detailed information.
AI models construct internal knowledge graphs to understand the relationships between different pieces of information. When an article references a previous political development, instead of just a generic "learn more," link directly to the authoritative article on your site that comprehensively covers that development.
Establish thematic "resource" pages for major ongoing news topics, such as the Global Climate Policy Tracker and associated events. These pages should be central repositories linked to investigative pieces and historical context.
The internal linking strategy should be better than the "click here" button. Write "Dive deeper into the legislative history of the new bill." This semantic linking helps AI understand your content ecosystem's thematic connections and topical authority.
Saying no to AI is not a sustainable long-term approach. Why don't you use the AI opportunity rather than outright disengagement from AI platforms? Publishers should explore avenues for direct communication, potential licensing agreements, and controlled data provision.
Instead of solely combating AI, proactively approach major AI developers (e.g., OpenAI, Google, Anthropic) to discuss direct content licensing arrangements.
While traditional SEO still matters, it’s no longer enough. To stay visible, relevant, and credited in the age of AI summarization, publishers must actively adopt AI Search Optimization strategies.
The custom pages feature helps you create dedicated pages for trending topics or deep dives to boost clustering and visibility across AI platforms.
All articles will have a schema markup in our page builder, meaning necessary schemas will be generated by default. If you want to create more, you will always have the flexibility to do that.
Design content for AI prompts with semantic subheadings, answer-first formats, and structured takeaways.
Tag, relate, and connect stories to build a rich internal knowledge graph for better AI comprehension.
Showcase journalist credentials with author bios and structured data to boost trust and authority.
From AI-ready sitemaps to dynamic metadata, our tools evolve to keep you discoverable on any generative platform.
Rather than resisting change, it’s time to build smarter. By aligning your editorial and technical strategies with how AI thinks, you protect your traffic and amplify it.
Book a free consultation with our team and see how Quintype can help you increase discoverability, safeguard attribution, and future-proof your newsroom for the AI era.