In the last article, I walked through why AI Search Optimization matters and how it builds on traditional SEO rather than replacing it. This time I want to open the hood a little further. When someone asks an AI tool “who should I call for this,” what actually happens between that question and the answer they get back? Understanding the mechanics changes how you think about the work.
It Starts With a Decision You Never See
Not every question triggers a web search. When you ask ChatGPT something like “what is a CRM,” it usually just answers from what it already knows, no search involved. But ask something like “best WordPress support in Edmonton,” and a different process kicks in: the AI decides your question needs current, real-world information, and it goes looking for it.
That’s the part people miss. AI tools aren’t reasoning purely from memory when they recommend a business. For anything time sensitive or locally specific, they’re running an actual search behind the scenes, then reading what comes back, then writing you an answer based on that. If your business isn’t in what comes back, it can’t get recommended, no matter how good your website is.
Different AI Tools, Different Search Engines
This is the part that surprises a lot of business owners: not every AI tool searches the same way.
Google’s Gemini and AI Overviews pull directly from Google’s own search index, the same one your traditional SEO, and your Local SEO work specifically, has always been built around. That’s a straight line: if you’re visible in Google, you’re already in the running here.
ChatGPT’s search has a more complicated story. It was originally built on a partnership with Microsoft, and Bing’s index has historically been the backbone of what ChatGPT finds when it searches the web. That part is well documented. What’s less settled is the full current picture. Through 2026, reporting has suggested OpenAI may be blending in other sources or building its own infrastructure, none of it officially confirmed. The honest, useful takeaway for a business owner isn’t a precise technical diagram, it’s this: don’t assume Google visibility alone covers you for ChatGPT. Bing still matters here, possibly more than most Edmonton businesses realize, since almost nobody optimizes for Bing on purpose.
Perplexity runs its own search index. Microsoft’s Copilot leans on Bing directly. The practical implication is the same one from the last article, just sharper: being visible to AI isn’t one job, it’s several related jobs, because there isn’t one AI search engine, there are several, and they don’t all see the same web.
Google Just Started Measuring This Properly
Here’s something genuinely new, and it tells you how early this space still is. In June 2026, Google added a dedicated Generative AI performance report inside Search Console, the free tool most website owners already use to check how they’re doing in regular search. For the first time, site owners can see how often their pages actually show up inside AI Overviews and AI Mode, broken out from regular search traffic.
It’s still an early version. Right now it only shows impressions, meaning how often you showed up, not clicks, not which questions triggered it. But the fact that Google felt the need to build this at all tells you something: AI visibility has become a real, trackable channel, not a theory. Bing has confirmed similar reporting is coming to its own Webmaster Tools. When two of the biggest players in search both ship dedicated AI-visibility measurement in the same window, that’s a strong signal this isn’t a passing trend.
What Actually Gets You Picked, Once You’re Found
Being findable is step one. Being chosen is a different problem, and it comes down to a few real factors we’ve seen play out consistently.
Specificity. We covered this in the last article, and it’s worth repeating here because it applies directly to the retrieval step too. When an AI tool pulls several candidate pages and has to pick what to actually cite, a page that speaks precisely to the situation being asked about beats a page that speaks broadly to the general topic.
Structure the AI can actually parse. Clear headings, direct answers near the top, content organized around real questions rather than buried in long unbroken paragraphs. AI systems are extracting specific claims to cite, and a well structured page makes that extraction easier and more accurate.
Being crawlable in the first place, everywhere that matters. This is where the multi-engine reality really bites. A site that’s perfectly optimized for Google but has never been submitted to Bing Webmaster Tools is invisible to a meaningful slice of ChatGPT’s search behavior. Most businesses have literally never touched Bing Webmaster Tools. Most of their competitors haven’t either. That’s a real, currently underused opportunity. If you’re not sure how solid your technical foundation is across the board, that’s exactly what an SEO Audit is for.
Genuine trust signals. Reviews, case studies from real clients, consistent business information across the web. Same point from the last article: this isn’t a separate AI trust system, it’s the same reputation signals search engines have always cared about, just being read by a new kind of reader.
Checking This for Your Own Business
You don’t need special tools to get a rough sense of where you stand. Go to ChatGPT or Perplexity and ask the kind of question a real customer would actually ask, not your company name, the problem you solve. “Who does WordPress support in Edmonton” is a good example. Read what comes back. Notice who gets mentioned and who doesn’t.
We did a version of this ourselves while researching this piece, checking our own visibility for WordPress support related searches, and it’s a genuinely useful exercise precisely because the answer isn’t always what you’d guess. Sometimes you’re more visible than you think. Sometimes a competitor you’ve never worried about in Google shows up first in an AI answer, because they’re strong on a search engine you never optimized for.
That gap between where you rank in Google and where you show up in an AI answer is exactly the kind of thing worth checking before you assume you already know your own visibility.
Where This Goes From Here
The mechanics here are still moving. Google’s new reporting is weeks old as I write this. The exact relationship between ChatGPT and its search sources has shifted more than once in the past year and will likely shift again. That’s not a reason to wait it out. It’s the reason to start now, while most businesses in Edmonton haven’t even checked whether they’re visible on Bing, let alone thought about how ChatGPT actually decides who to recommend.
If you want a real answer for your own business rather than a guess, that’s exactly what our AI Search Optimization service is built to find out.
Sayem Shahid is the founder of SelexWeb, an Edmonton-based web design and SEO agency.
