The return is strongest for informational and research-heavy topics, where people ask AI tools directly and a citation puts your brand in the answer. For purely transactional local business, traditional search still does most of the heavy lifting.
The pragmatic approach is not to build a separate AI strategy but to make your content genuinely useful, clearly structured, and quotable, then measure whether AI tools mention you. That serves every search surface at once, which is why the effort is rarely wasted.
Updated July 2026
Go deeper