AI search research
A major UK publisher is building a product to sell AI visibility to brands — but the sites AI assistants quote for your customers' questions may look nothing like your Google rankings, and a short afternoon of checking costs far less than a guess.
What the Daily Mail is testing
According to Digiday, the Daily Mail is running around a dozen GEO tests with brands. GEO stands for generative engine optimisation, the work of getting a brand mentioned and cited in AI answers. The aim of the tests is to work out what works before the Mail turns its AI visibility offering into an official product early next year.
This matters well beyond one publisher. When a large UK media owner builds a product around AI answers, AI search becomes an everyday line in the marketing budget. Many UK business owners will soon hear pitches for AI visibility from publishers, agencies and software firms. A little homework before any of those conversations will help them spend wisely.
How often AI already sits in UK search results
AI answers already show up often in ordinary Google searches. Google showed an AI Overview on 69.4% of the 360 everyday UK searches checked in October 2026 (250 searches), according to Sayu's study. This is a single month's snapshot of a fixed set of searches. Google changes when it shows these panels, so the share for your own searches may be higher or lower.
The type of search makes a big difference. AI Overviews appeared on 97.1% of how-to and question searches (135 of 139) but 9.5% of "near me" searches (7 of 74) in October 2026. These groups are small, so treat the gap as a strong pattern for that month and not as a fixed rule. In plain terms, a business that answers questions online is likely to meet AI answers far more often than a local shop that people find through "near me" searches.
Some UK websites also limit what AI tools can read. 11.7% of the 4,377 most-visited UK (.uk) websites checked block at least one AI crawler from the whole site in robots.txt (October 2026). A robots.txt file states what a site asks crawlers to do. It cannot prove what any AI company actually collects, and smaller sites may behave differently from the most-visited ones. Still, it shows that the pool of pages an AI assistant can quote is shaped by choices website owners make.
All of this points to one practical idea. The sites an AI assistant cites for a question may be different from the sites that rank well on Google for the same words. Each assistant, whether ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude, may also lean on different sources. A business can only know what is true in its own market by checking.
What this means for UK businesses
- AI visibility is now a mainstream budget question. Expect more offers, and judge each one against evidence from your own market.
- Question-style searches meet AI answers most often. If customers ask "how" or "what" before they buy, AI answers deserve your attention now.
- Your Google rankings are only part of the picture. The sources AI assistants quote may differ, and they may differ from one assistant to the next.
- Check your own robots.txt. Make sure it reflects a deliberate choice about which AI crawlers can read your site.
Analysis compiled by Sayu (sayu.co.uk), using Digiday's report and Sayu's published research.
