The Invisible User

The digital information landscape is undergoing its most significant structural shift in decades. “AI Search” has matured from a novelty into a dominant consumer behaviour. By late 2025, the rapid ascent of AI-native platforms has begun to erode legacy search habits, with challengers like ChatGPT now capturing ~9.0% of total global digital query volume.

In a massive defensive transformation, Google has moved to secure its 90% market share by aggressively integrating generative AI into its core results. The search giant now serves AI Overviews in over 50% of all searches and achieves nearly 90% coverage in complex verticals like healthcare and education, effectively declaring the end of the “ten blue links” era.

With this shift, we have a new user type to consider: the AI Agent.

But AI isn’t magic; it interacts with your digital presence in specific, understandable ways. It is largely trying to achieve the same goal your users are! Optimizing for AI isn’t about rebuilding everything; it’s about refining your core digital presence. In short: do well what you should be doing anyway.

Here are the three distinct “modes” in which AI interacts with your business online.

Mode 1: The Scout (Search Index Retrieval)

When a user asks ChatGPT or Gemini a question, the AI rarely actually visits your site. Instead, it queries search indexes (Google or Bing) to find relevant information. This is the same process that powers traditional search engines. A crawler has come ahead of time, indexed your site, and stored that information. In a quick chat, the AI relies entirely on this pre-existing index.  If you are not indexed and ranking well, the AI is unlikely to quote you.

Strategic Implications

• Foundational SEO: You must be indexed to be found. Sitemaps, indexing logic, internal linking, and `robots.txt` are the entry tickets. If the crawler can’t see you, or cant find the right information, the AI wont know anything about you.

• Strong Content: The more high-quality content the crawler can find, the better it can index your page and answer questions about you and your products. Implicit information—like size, color, location, materials, and construction—is often lost if not clearly stated. You must be verbose and explicit with the information on your page.

• Brand Authority & Trust: But also ask yourseld… why should the AI quote *you* anyway? It prioritizes authoritative sources it knows it can trust. If you are not cited by others, don’t have strong reviews from users, and are not engaging on social media, you are not authoritative in the eyes of a search index.

Action Item: Audit your brand’s digital footprint. What can you do better to prove you are a reputable company and brand?  Start by asking yourself “How do I rank for this topic in Bing?” before you question what ChatGPT has to say about you.

Mode 2: The Reader (Direct Text Extraction)

For longer searches and research to answer more complex questions, the AI visits your specific URL to “read” the page. However, it does not render the page in a browser like a human would. It often strips away the design, CSS, and layout, looking only at the raw text. It converts your webpage into a simplified, text-only format—and typically only what is available on the first load.  It does this to browser faster and more efficiently.

Strategic Implications

• Content Visibility: Ensure core content is in the raw HTML, not hidden in images or loaded dynamically via late-loading JavaScript. If it’s not in the initial HTML, the “Reader” might miss it entirely.

• Semantic Structure: Use clear headings and paragraphs. If the text structure is messy, or broken up into too many small chunks or tables, the AI’s understanding will be confused.

• Structured Data (Schema): Think of Schema markup as the “Translator.” It explicitly tells the AI, “This is a Product,” “This is an Event,” or “This is a Price.” This drastically improves comprehension for readers and indexing accuracy for crawlers.

• Access Control (WAFs): This is the “Bouncer” problem. Check your infrastructure (Cloudflare, CDNs). Many security settings block “bots” by default. Ensure you aren’t accidentally blocking legitimate AI agents that are trying to learn about your business.

Action Item: Test your site without JavaScript enabled or in a text-only browser. Does it still make sense and say what you want?

Mode 3: The Agent (Browser Interaction)

This is the most advanced level, seen in tools like Perplexity’s Comet browser or OpenAI’s Operator or Atlus. In this mode, the AI spins up its own full browser instance or has control over one on your PC. It “sees” the page, clicks buttons, and navigates like a human. All images are loaded, and JavaScript is run. The AI interprets visual cues to understand how to use the site.

Strategic Implications

• Human UX = AI UX: If a human can’t figure out where to click, the agent can’t either. Intuitive design is now doubly important.

• Visual Feedback: Agents are, however, less patient than humans. If a button click shows no loading state, the agent might think it failed and leave immediately, humans will wait a few seconds at least.

• Performance: Speed is critical. Slow sites cause timeouts for bots just like they annoy people.

Action Item: Test your critical user flows. Are they intuitive and responsive?

Conclusion: The “No New Work” Paradox

We’ve looked at the three ways AI consumes your digital presence: via Search, via Text, and via Browser.

The key insight is that ** you don’t need a separate “AI Strategy” that distracts from your core business. ** You need to be doing SEO, Content, and UX well—but you should be doing those anyway! This shift is a compelling reminder to tackle the fundamentals and reap the rewards!

The Mandate:

1.  Build a strong brand that is well-indexed in search engines (for the Scout).

2.  Write clear, structured code that serves valuable content in raw HTML (for the Reader).

3.  Design intuitive, fast experiences (for the Agent).

AI models are trained on human data and built to mimic us; they are essentially faster, more literal humans. Treat your existing human users well, and the AI will follow.  But do not be complacent and think what you have now will suffice, because the competition is likely to be putting in more effort than before, in a hope to win over these new… invisible users!