Andrew Shaw, Tangerine
The digital landscape has undergone a tectonic shift. We’ve moved from the era of the search engine to the era of the answer engine.
For years, you could pay for Google Ads or a simple SEO strategy and you’d appear in the rankings, boost awareness and generate website visits – job done. But not anymore.
The model has changed. And not moving with it will cost you. Now, AI platforms are acting as answer engines, selecting and recommending brands to the searcher. In fact, 50% of Google searches now have AI summaries at the top, a figure expected to rise to over 75% by 2028. This means you can spend millions on advertising and still remain unretrievable to AI.
Search behaviours are mirroring this. 28% of UK adults now trust information provided by AI as a primary source (rising to 39% amongst under-35s) and 26% stop searching once they’ve got an answer or recommendation from AI (36% for under-35s).
This isn’t just consumers. It goes for B2B buyers too, including those in construction and the built environment. Your target audiences – contractors, developers, specifiers, engineers, surveyors, tradespeople, merchants, whoever – are increasingly using AI to navigate entire markets in a matter of minutes and trusting it to make purchasing decisions. As an example, in a recent survey of tradespeople by Tangerine, we found that 94% are open to using AI to get information or advice for an upcoming job and 47% are already using it regularly.
The brands that will win in the era of AI search are the ones that send the right digital signals to be included in these summaries. The ones that don’t will become invisible.
Sending the right signals
Everything people see across news, search and social is driven by algorithms, which rely on deep interconnected signals to make decisions on what to retrieve. That’s because most AI systems don’t just ‘display’ information the way a results page does; they retrieve what they judge to be most relevant based on a set of signals.
LLMs (in fact all algorithmic environments) rely on signals like perceived expertise, third-party trust, and evidence of genuine audience experience. A huge volume of these signals come from long-term brand-building work and require maintenance and consistency to ensure that brands secure and continually grow their piece of the pie.
You cannot simply spend your way to the top of an AI response; you must earn your way there and maintain your position.
By combining an earned-first approach with complementary digital and social strategies, you build expertise, authority and trust, creating advantages that translate into real business impact. As an example, for one client at Tangerine, our search methodology increased visibility by 150% and enquiries by 11%.
Where to start
So, we’ve established that earned marketing is more important than ever, but where to start? To capitalise on the opportunity, construction brands first need to understand not only how visible they are, but whether they’re being retrieved, understood and recommended.
That’s why we’ve launched Retriva, a new tool that enables brands to see how they measure up in the sector. Through a bespoke audit into AI brand health, we examine how retrievable a brand is compared to competitors for certain search queries, which factors are influencing this, and exactly what they need to do to come out on top.
Once a brand benchmarks their retrievability and understands what’s driving it, they can then set a clear marketing roadmap that strengthens their position over time – ensuring they show up in the AI era while other brands fade away.
For more information, Tangerine’s latest report, Unretrievable: Why Global Brands Are Vanishing from the Answer Economy, explores the rise of retrievability, the commercial implications of AI-powered discovery, and what communications and marketing leaders need to do now to stay visible. Download the report here.