SEO used to have one job: get your website ranking on Google. That is no longer the whole of it.

When someone asks ChatGPT a question, or reads a Google AI Overview, the answer is not pulled from your website alone. It comes from your reviews, your social mentions, press coverage, forums and directories. Anywhere your business shows up.

Authority has always mattered in search. What has changed is where it gets measured. It used to be links and on-site content. Now it is everything written about you across the internet.

Which turns the question around. It is no longer “is our website optimised?” It is “does the internet as a whole back up who we say we are?”.