What North Hertfordshire Businesses Need to Know About AI Search in 2026
Right, let's talk about what's actually happening with AI search
I've been running workshops in Hitchin and Letchworth for the last few months, and the question that keeps coming up from local business owners is some version of "What the hell do I do about ChatGPT showing up in search results?"
Fair question. Because if you've been checking your analytics lately, you've probably noticed something odd. Traffic's doing weird things. Some pages are getting hammered, others have dropped off. And meanwhile your mate down the pub is telling you his nephew just asked ChatGPT to find him a plumber in Stevenage and didn't even open Google.
So here's where we actually are in March 2026. Not where the LinkedIn gurus told you we'd be. Where we actually are.
The search behaviour shift nobody's tracking properly
Your customers aren't searching the way they used to. I know, revolutionary insight there. But it's not just that they're using ChatGPT or Perplexity instead of Google sometimes.
It's that they're asking completely different questions.
Used to be someone would search "accountant Baldock" and you'd fight over that keyword with every other accountancy firm in a 10-mile radius. SEO was... well, it was a thing you could kind of understand. Get some links, write some content about accountancy services, stick Baldock in your title tags. Job done.
Now? Someone's having a conversation with an AI. "I've just started a limited company in North Hertfordshire, I'm doing about £60k revenue, what kind of accountant do I actually need and what should I expect to pay?"
And the AI gives them an answer. Right there. With recommendations. Sometimes with specific businesses mentioned. Sometimes not.
You're not competing for a keyword anymore. You're competing to be the answer to a question you don't even know someone's asking.
What these AI systems are actually doing with your business
Let me tell you what I saw last week. Client in Royston, does commercial electrical work. Good business, been around 15 years. He asked ChatGPT "Who should I call for electrical work on a commercial property in Royston?"
It gave him three competitors. Not him. Three other businesses.
We went through why. His website says what he does. It's got his location. He's got reviews. On paper, he should show up.
But the AI couldn't figure out his area of expertise from his website. It couldn't work out what kind of projects he takes on. The content was written for Google in 2019, not for AI systems in 2026 that are trying to actually understand what makes him different from the spark who does domestic consumer unit changes.
The AI systems, all of them, they're not looking for keywords. They're building understanding. They're reading your website, your reviews, your social content, and they're forming a model of what you actually do and who you're for.
If that model is fuzzy, you don't show up. Simple as that.
The AEO thing everyone keeps getting wrong
AEO, answer engine optimisation, whatever you want to call it. There's a lot of nonsense being sold about this right now.
"Just add FAQ schema and you'll rank in AI!" Nope.
"AI loves long-form content!" Not really.
"You need to stuff your content with question phrases!" Absolutely not.
Look, I've been testing this stuff properly for three years now. Running experiments, tracking what actually moves the needle. And the annoying truth is that it's both simpler and harder than people want it to be.
Simpler because the core principle is just: be clear about what you do, who you serve, and why someone should pick you. AI systems are good at understanding clarity. They're terrible at parsing through marketing waffle.
Harder because you can't game it. You can't trick an LLM the way you could trick Google's algorithm in 2015. The system is actually reading your content and making judgements about usefulness and authority.
What works is:
- Answering actual questions your customers ask, in the language they use
- Being specific about your service area and what you're good at
- Having content that demonstrates you know what you're talking about
- Getting mentioned in context by other sources
What doesn't work is writing "content" that you think AI systems want to read. They can smell that a mile off. Well, they can't smell. But you know what I mean.
The local business advantage nobody's using yet
Here's the thing that's actually kind of exciting about all this, if you run a local business in North Hertfordshire.
The big national companies are struggling with this more than you are. They've got thousands of pages of SEO content that's now basically useless. They've got brand guidelines that stop them being specific. They've got legal teams that water down everything until it says nothing.
You can just... say what you do.
You can write a page about the specific problem you solve for businesses in Stevenage. You can talk about the kinds of projects you take on and the ones you turn down. You can mention the industrial estate you work on twice a week, or the fact that you specialise in Victorian terraces in Hitchin town centre.
AI systems love that specificity. Because when someone asks a specific question, they can give a specific answer.
I've got a client doing building surveys. He wrote one page about survey issues he commonly finds in 1930s houses in Letchworth Garden City. Just stuff he deals with all the time. That page has become his biggest AI search driver. Because when someone in Letchworth asks an AI about getting a survey on a 1930s house, there's his page, being extremely specifically useful.
That's not a trick. That's not a hack. It's just being genuinely helpful about the thing you know about.
What you actually need to do this month
Not this year. This month. Because this is moving fast and your competitors are waking up to it.
First, ask an AI about your business. ChatGPT, Perplexity, whatever. Ask it the questions your customers ask. See what it says. See if you show up. That's your baseline.
Then look at your website through the lens of "Could an AI system read this and confidently explain what I do and who I'm for?" Not "Does this have the right keywords?" but "Is this actually clear?"
Most business websites I look at in North Herts fail that test. They're written in that weird business language that says everything and nothing. "We provide innovative solutions for your business needs." What does that mean? The AI doesn't know either.
Write like you're explaining your business to someone in the pub. What do you do? Who do you do it for? What makes you good at it? Why would someone pick you over the other options?
Then, and this is the bit people skip, make sure that information is actually on your website in a way that's easy to find and understand. Not buried in a PDF. Not hidden in image text. Just there, on a page, in clear English.
The bit where I tell you what we do
We spend most of our time now on AEO work with businesses across Hertfordshire. Getting them visible in AI search results. It's not magic, but it is a process.
If you want to know where you stand and what needs fixing, book a call and we'll have a proper conversation about it. Or if you want to see what we're doing specifically for North Hertfordshire businesses, have a look at our AEO in North Hertfordshire page.
Either way, sort this out soon. March 2026 is late enough already.