What are AI agents and how will they change the way customers find you?
What are AI agents? AI agents are autonomous assistants that can plan, reason and complete tasks on your behalf. Think of them as the next step beyond chatbots: instead of answering a single question, an agent can book a holiday, order groceries or research a shortlist of suppliers by breaking the goal into steps and acting on each one. OpenAI Operator, Gemini agents and Claude are the most visible examples, and they change the way customers find businesses.
How AI agents work
An AI agent is given a goal (for instance, "find me three digital marketing agencies in the South West with SEO experience"), then plans the steps to achieve it. It might search the web, compare service pages, read reviews and pricing, check availability, and return a shortlist with reasoning. The agent decides which businesses to recommend based on the information it finds. If your website clearly states what you do, who you serve and what you charge, the agent can present you as a candidate. If your information is vague, out of date or hard to parse, the agent moves on.
How agent-driven discovery differs from traditional search
Traditional search returns a list of links and the customer clicks, reads and decides. An AI agent compresses that entire process. It reads your site on the customer's behalf and presents a summary, not a link. That means your content has to answer the agent's questions, not just attract a human reader's click. Entity information matters more than keywords. A page that says "we are a full-service digital agency in Exeter with SEO from GBP 980 per month" is immediately useful to an agent. A page that says "we are the region's leading digital transformation partner" tells the agent nothing it can use.
What businesses should do now
The same foundations that prepare you for AI Overviews and generative engine optimisation also prepare you for AI agents. Three priorities:
1. Be clear about what you do and who you serve. Every service page should state your offer, your target customer, your pricing (or price range) and your location. An agent that finds a GBP 980 SEO package on your site can include you in a list. An agent that finds no pricing must guess or skip you.
2. Use structured data. Organisation schema, FAQ schema and local business markup give an agent a machine-readable version of your key facts. Victory Digital uses schema across its own site and client sites to help AI engines parse the right information.
3. Create citeable content. Detailed guides, case studies with real numbers (like the Home Instead +251% organic traffic result) and clear answers to common questions give an agent something to quote. A case study is directly usable by an agent comparing agencies. A generic service page is not.
Victory Digital tracks your agent visibility with Metrona, our in-house AI visibility platform. Metrona shows which AI assistants and agents cite your business, and how that changes over time. Your free SEO report at victory.digital also surfaces how well your pages are structured for AI discovery, including entity clarity and schema coverage.
The shift to agent-driven discovery is already under way. AI agents will handle more buying decisions as the technology matures, and the businesses that are easy for agents to understand will be the ones they recommend.
Want to know how your business looks to AI agents right now? Run a free SEO report or talk to the team about your AI visibility strategy. https://victory.digital/generative-ai-optimisation
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