Google just told us how to show up in AI search. The catch is Google isn't where the growth is

Google has finally spelled out how businesses show up in AI search, and as this breakdown for small businesses covers, the answer is refreshingly boring. No panic, no secret levers, no six-month “AI optimisation” programme. Mostly, it is the work you should already be doing, done properly.

That is worth knowing on its own, because there is a growing industry selling Melbourne businesses expensive answers to this question. Here is what Google actually points to.

1. Content only you could have written

The single biggest lever is content that is not a commodity. Google’s own example is instructive: a piece titled “Why We Waived the Inspection and Saved Money” beats “7 Tips for First-Time Homebuyers” every time. One is lived experience. The other is the same article that exists on ten thousand other websites.

For a Melbourne service business this is genuinely good news, because it plays to the thing you actually have and your competitors cannot copy. The job you did last Tuesday that went sideways and what you learned from it. The question every customer asks that nobody else answers honestly. Generic advice is what an AI can already generate for free. Your specific experience is not.

2. Technical fundamentals, still

The unglamorous half. A fast site, clean URLs, pages that are actually indexed, and something that works properly on a phone. None of this is new, and none of it is optional, because a page that cannot be crawled and read cannot be quoted. This is the same argument as ever: a fast website is not vanity, it is the floor.

3. Your Google Business Profile

For anything local, this one punches above its weight. AI answers lean heavily on business profile data, and it is free, quick, and mostly ignored. If your hours are wrong, your services are half-filled in, or your address is inconsistent, you are handing the answer to whoever filled theirs in properly. This is close to the cheapest win available to a local business.

4. Real photos of real work

Original images and video, of your actual jobs and your actual premises, help you show up in ways plain text does not. A photo of the sink you actually fixed does more work than a polished stock shot of strangers beaming at a laptop. (Yes, we have seen the photo at the top of this page. Do as we say, not as we do.) Again, this favours the business willing to document what it does.

The catch: Google only speaks for Google

Here is the part that gets lost. This is Google’s guidance about Google’s AI search. It is not a rulebook for the whole AI world, and Google is the channel that is quietly shrinking.

Google is folding AI answers in above the traditional links, which means fewer searches ending in a click to your site. Meanwhile the assistants are growing fast. AI referral visits across the web more than tripled in a year, ChatGPT referrals now convert better than Google’s organic results at 7.1%, and Australians are among the heaviest users of Claude on earth. Your customers are increasingly asking an assistant, not a search box.

Those assistants have not published a tidy list of instructions. So taking “Google says you don’t need to worry about X” as “nobody needs to worry about X” is a mistake. It optimises you for the channel that is declining and leaves you guessing at the ones that are growing.

Which is why the fundamentals matter more, not less

The happy accident is that everything on Google’s list is exactly what makes you legible to any assistant, not just theirs. Genuine expertise nobody else has. A site that loads and can be read. Business details that are complete and consistent everywhere. Real evidence of real work.

None of that is a Google trick. It is just your business being clearly and honestly described, which is what every one of these systems is trying to find. Do it because it works everywhere, not because Google published a page about it. We laid out the wider groundwork in getting found in AI search.

The func.digital take

Take Google’s advice, because it is sound and it is free. Just do not mistake it for the whole map. The businesses that will be found in two years are not the ones who bought an AEO package this year. They are the ones who wrote things only they could write, kept their site fast, filled in their details properly, and photographed their own work.

If you would like to know how your business currently looks to the systems doing the answering, and which of these four is worth your next hour, that is exactly what a free digital systems audit is for. Get in touch.