Aided by AI, internet searches don't just show you a list of links anymore. Using advanced language models, AI search tools interpret users’ questions and deliver synthesized answers, often drawing from several sources all at once. There are two main ways these tools are changing results—both within and separate from traditional search engines.

AI Overviews

While the past decade has been a difficult one for public education, it has also been one of rapid change in the tech space. In that time, engineers developed Search Engine Results Page (SERP) features like “People Also Ask” boxes or snippets to help internet users fine-tune their searches, get results faster and augment those results. The AI overviews starting to appear at the top of search results pages are just the next generation of SERP features. 

According to a July 2025 survey by digital marketing firm WebFX, AI overviews now appear in one of every four U.S. searches. “We are getting more generative responses from any search platform that we go to,” says content marketing expert Brian Piper, who helps B2B, B2C and higher education clients increase their discoverability online. “They started off as experiments, but now it feels like every query has generative search results. Underneath those are links and sponsored ads that you have to filter through to find helpful information.” So it makes sense that people aren’t going to the trouble of scrolling down the page to click links. “More and more people are just using the generative results to answer their questions,” says Piper. In trying to be helpful, web engineers have cut out the middlemen—your websites.

Chatbots as Search Engines

The other major advancement shifting how people search—and by extension, what results they get—is where those searches actually take place. Now, chatbots can search the internet on behalf of users. “A lot more people are using ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and other tools to actually do their searches, so they are replacing Google with those in a lot of ways,” says Piper. 

And unlike AI overviews, chatbot answers may not include any links or citations. That means a chatbot search might not drive any traffic to your website, even if it scraped your pages for information. How negatively these changes impact your conversion rate—for instance, the number of website visitors who mash that enrollment button—depends a lot on what users are trying to find.

According to Andy Crestodina, cofounder and chief marketing officer of digital marketing agency Orbit Media, people usually want one of two things when they search the internet—to find the answer to their question or to get a recommendation. “The searches for which the user is satisfied with an AI summary tend to be the informational queries,” he says. It’s no surprise, then, that organic search traffic to news sites like HuffPost and the Washington Post has fallen by nearly 50% over the past three years. The good news is that school websites are in a different category entirely. “When a parent is looking for a school, they're in consideration mode,” Crestodina tells SchoolCEO. 

People who turn to a search engine for help deciding where to enroll their kids probably don’t stop with the overview. “These are long-term investments that people are making in the future of their children,” says Piper. “This is not an e-commerce decision where you just search, make a decision and buy something.” However, families do use the AI overview as a jumping-off point—clicking on the results that an AI overview links to. For example, if someone is searching for the best school district in a given area, a select few results might be “recommended” by AI because they have established very positive, very loud brand sentiment online.

Within chatbots such as ChatGPT or Claude, parents are asking deeper follow-up questions to help them make the smartest choice. “They're more likely to have a longer conversation with an AI and talk to it about their considerations, their decision criteria and what they care about—whether that’s location, tuition, acceptance rates or requirements,” says Crestodina. “So you're not just looking to be visible; you want to be recommended.”

How do school districts improve the likelihood that AI will recommend them? They pay attention to how users talk and how AI listens. 

Focus on conversation, not keywords.

Traditional SEO was built around the keywords users were likely to type into search engines. As we’ve discussed, modern users aren’t just searching keywords and short phrases; they’re often using full sentences. This means content strategies have to adapt. Instead of optimizing for keyword phrases, organizations should optimize for natural language questions and context-rich answers.

“Keywords still matter, but I tell people now: Instead of targeting individual keywords, try targeting the questions your audience is asking,” says Piper. How do you know what those questions are? There are a lot of different ways to figure that out. “Google Analytics and your Google Search Console are free tools that will tell you what keywords people are searching and what questions they’re asking to find your content. Those are great places to start,” he says. Also, pay attention to how people in your school community really talk. If you were asking a neighbor about local schools, how would you word your question? 

And don’t forget those SERP features that predated AI overviews—because they’re still in play. “Google has these featured snippets, these ‘People Also Ask’ questions that show up in their search results,” adds Piper. “Look at those questions, see who is showing up in the answers, and then figure out what content you could create to help you take over that top spot.” 

Provide supporting evidence. 

It’s simple, really. The more people recommend your district online, the more AI will. School comms pros already know the importance of cultivating brand ambassadors, but it’s becoming even more important in the age of AI. “Start looking for ways to encourage influencers or advocates from within your own population,” says Piper. Posting student, family and staff testimonials directly on your website signals to AI that you’re trustworthy and well-liked. “Include more case studies, more reviews, success stories, any happy messages from teachers, anything that provides any kind of evidence,” says Crestodina. “We need to fill our pages with more evidence than we used to. All of those proof points get ingested and improve the likelihood that your school gets chosen by AI.” 

AI isn’t just combing your website for clues about your strengths and weaknesses, either. It’s looking at the entire internet, so what third-party websites say about your schools really matters. For instance, if local news outlets are spotlighting your district in a positive way—which we hope they are—that will improve your visibility with AI. (If they’re not covering you, consider reaching out to them.) You should also link those stories on your website. And while AI doesn’t pull information from most social media, bots do look at how often and how positively your brand is mentioned on those platforms. Building positive sentiment on social media, then, increases your visibility with AI.

Structure for summaries.

While website structure matters for both SEO and AIO, SEO favors clear hierarchies and crawlable links for search engines. AIO favors structured, well-labeled content that helps AI models understand and summarize your site easily. Does this mean SEO is no longer important? Not quite. A strong SEO strategy still matters—it’s the foundation upon which you’ll build AIO. Crestodina recommends using precise, punchy wording and clear structure, such as bullet points and Q&A formats, to optimize your website. The key is making your content as easy as possible to read and regurgitate to increase your chance of being included in AI-generated answers. 

So again, to optimize your website for AI, focus on answering real community questions like, “What makes this district different?” or “How do I enroll?” Include first-person content to build trust. This doesn’t just apply to stakeholder testimonials, either—writing first-person website copy, like you might find in a blog, also sends trust signals to AI. Finally, make sure your content is clearly written and structured so that AI tools can easily interpret it.