Should SA Businesses Optimise
for ChatGPT, Perplexity & Gemini?

The Search Wars Come to South Africa

The disruption of Google by AI has been primarily a Silicon Valley story — covered extensively in US tech media, debated in European marketing circles, and felt most acutely by businesses in markets where ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini adoption is highest. South African marketers have been watching from a distance, wondering how much of this is relevant to their reality.

The honest answer is: more than most realise, and sooner than most expect. Google has already deployed AI Overviews in South Africa. ChatGPT usage is growing among exactly the demographic — urban, professional, under-45 — that most SA B2B and B2C marketers target. And the fundamental question of whether your business will be visible in an AI-search world requires a strategic answer now, not when the shift becomes obvious to everyone.

How AI Search Is Different From Google

Optimising for Google and optimising for AI search are not the same thing. They share some fundamentals — authoritative content, technical correctness, credible sources — but the mechanics of how each system decides what to surface are meaningfully different.

How to Optimise for AI Search in SA

The following principles apply whether you are trying to appear in Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT responses, or Perplexity citations. The underlying signals are similar across platforms.

• Write authoritative, definitive content. AI systems prefer content that makes clear, accurate, verifiable claims. Hedging language, vague generalities, and excessive caveating reduce the likelihood of citation. Write with authority on topics within your genuine expertise.
• Use structured data and schema markup. FAQ schema, article schema, local business schema, and how-to schema all make it easier for AI systems to extract and attribute your content correctly. If your site lacks schema markup, this is a high-priority technical fix.
• Build brand mentions across the web. AI systems are more likely to cite businesses that appear consistently and credibly across multiple sources — news mentions, industry directories, review platforms, and authoritative websites. Link building for AI is less about domain authority and more about genuine brand presence across diverse contexts.
• Maintain a strong Google Business Profile. Local business data from GBP feeds directly into multiple AI systems including Google AI Overviews and Gemini. A complete, accurate, actively reviewed GBP profile is foundational for any SA business targeting local queries.
• Answer questions directly and completely. AI systems are trained to pull the most complete and direct answer to a query. Structure content so that the answer to a likely user question is stated clearly within the first two or three sentences of a section, not buried after a lengthy preamble.

Should You Optimise for Both Google and AI?

Yes — and the good news is that the two are largely complementary rather than conflicting. The fundamentals of great SEO — authoritative content, technical correctness, genuine expertise, strong brand signals — are also the fundamentals of AI citation worthiness. A well-executed SEO strategy does not need to be abandoned in favour of an AI optimisation strategy. It needs to be extended and refined.

The specific additions that AI search requires — structured data, direct answers, consistent brand mentions, FAQ content — are relatively straightforward to layer onto an existing SEO foundation. The businesses that are most exposed are those that built their SEO strategy entirely around informational content and high-volume keyword targeting, without building the underlying brand authority that AI systems respect. For them, the rethink is more significant.