Part Three in our AI Search series | Practical steps to make your freight forwarding expertise easier for AI to find, understand and reference

Over the first two parts of our AI Search series, we’ve looked at two big changes.

First, customers are increasingly getting answers directly from AI rather than clicking through multiple websites.

Second, that creates an opportunity for freight forwarders with genuine expertise. Useful market insight, customer stories, original research and specialist knowledge can all help establish what your business knows and why it should be trusted.

But there’s another piece of the puzzle.

You can create brilliant content, but it won’t achieve much if search engines and AI struggle to find or understand it.

Fortunately, improving that doesn’t necessarily require a website rebuild or an enormous technical project.

There are some practical things every freight forwarder can start checking now.

1. Find out whether AI is already finding you

Google Search Console is a free tool that shows businesses how their website is performing in Google.

And it has just become much more interesting.

In June 2026, Google introduced a dedicated Generative AI performance report, showing how often links to a website appear within Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode.

The report can show which pages are appearing, how visibility changes over time and where those appearances are coming from. Google is rolling it out gradually, so it isn’t available to every website yet.

For forwarders, this creates a new measure of marketing visibility.

You’re no longer just asking:

How many people visited our website?

You can increasingly start asking:

Which of our content is AI choosing to surface?

If your market reports consistently appear while your service pages don’t, that’s useful intelligence.

If articles about automotive logistics perform particularly well, that tells you something about the authority you’re building.

And if nothing appears, that gives you a reason to investigate.

You don’t need to become a Search Console expert. But whoever manages your website or marketing should be reviewing this information.

2. Make important information easy to find

Look at your website from a customer’s perspective.

Can someone quickly understand what you do, where you operate and which sectors you specialise in?

Can they find your market insight and customer stories?

Does your automotive page actually demonstrate automotive expertise, or does it contain three generic paragraphs that could appear on almost any forwarder’s website?

The same principles that make a website easier for customers to understand also help search engines.

Google specifically recommends making important content available as text and ensuring useful pages can be found through links from other pages on your website.

That means your best expertise shouldn’t be buried.

If you’ve written a strong healthcare logistics case study, link to it from your healthcare page.

If you’ve published a detailed analysis of a customs change, connect it to relevant service content.

If you have ten excellent articles demonstrating fashion expertise, make it easy for someone exploring your fashion capability to discover them.

Think of your website as a connected body of knowledge, not a collection of isolated pages.

3. Give your content a clear structure

AI needs to understand what a page is about.

So do customers.

Fortunately, both benefit from many of the same things.

Use a clear headline.

Break longer articles into logical sections.

Use headings that describe what each section covers.

Answer questions directly.

Avoid unnecessary jargon.

Make it obvious who wrote the content and why they’re qualified to discuss the subject.

Google’s latest guidance for generative AI search specifically recommends well-organised content using paragraphs, sections and clear headings.

This isn’t about writing for a machine.

It’s about removing ambiguity.

If you’ve produced an authoritative article explaining how new customs rules affect UK importers, make that purpose unmistakable.

4. Check what is hidden

Modern websites often use tabs, interactive features and other design devices to keep pages looking clean.

That’s fine when used sensibly.

But don’t allow clever design to make your most valuable information difficult to access.

Google recommends ensuring important content is available in textual form and that pages can be properly accessed and indexed.

That means reviewing where your key information actually sits.

Are important service details clearly available on the page?

Can your case studies be accessed without filling in a form?

Is valuable information contained only inside a PDF?

Are essential messages presented entirely through graphics?

Could somebody reading the page on a mobile easily understand your proposition?

If information matters commercially, make it straightforward to access.

5. Help machines understand what they’re looking at

This is where we need to introduce a slightly technical term:

Structured data.

Fortunately, the principle is simple.

Structured data is information added behind the scenes of your website that gives search engines clearer clues about what a page contains.

It can help identify that something is an article, an organisation, a person, an event or another defined type of information.

Think of it as adding labels to your content.

The customer doesn’t necessarily see those labels, but they help machines understand what they’re looking at.

Google says structured data can provide explicit clues about the meaning of a page and recommends that the information contained within it accurately reflects what visitors can see on the page.

There is an important qualification.

You do not need some new special “AI schema” to appear in Google’s AI results. Google explicitly says there is no special structured data required for AI Overviews or AI Mode.

The practical action is simply to ask whoever manages your website:

Are we using appropriate structured data, is it accurate and is it up to date?

If the answer is “I don’t know”, it’s worth reviewing.

6. Make sure your website isn’t accidentally shutting AI out

Sometimes the problem isn’t content at all.

It’s access.

Search engines need to be able to visit your pages before they can understand them.

Website settings, security systems or instructions within the site can sometimes prevent that.

Google says pages need to be crawlable, indexed and eligible to appear in conventional Google Search before they can appear as supporting links in AI Overviews or AI Mode.

Again, you don’t need to understand the technical detail yourself.

Ask your website provider to confirm:

Can Google access and index all the pages we want customers to find?

That simple question could uncover problems that have been quietly limiting your visibility for years.

7. Don’t forget the customer

There is a danger with all this talk about AI that businesses start making websites for machines.

Don’t.

Google’s own advice remains firmly focused on useful, original content created for people. It also stresses the importance of websites that work well across devices and make their main information easy to identify.

That makes commercial sense too.

Imagine AI references your expertise and somebody subsequently visits your website.

What happens next?

Do they immediately understand why your business is relevant?

Is the page easy to read on their phone?

Can they find supporting evidence?

Is there a clear route to contact you?

Does the website reinforce the expertise that brought them there?

Getting referenced by AI has little commercial value if the subsequent experience undermines confidence in your business.

Start with seven questions

You don’t need to understand the technology behind AI search to start preparing for it.

Ask whoever looks after your marketing and website:

1. Do we have Google Search Console installed and are we reviewing it?

2. Can we see whether our content is appearing in Google’s AI results?

3. Can search engines easily access and index our important pages?

4. Is our most valuable expertise clearly visible as text on the website?

5. Do our specialist pages connect to relevant articles, case studies and other evidence?

6. Are we using appropriate and accurate structured data?

7. Does our website make it immediately clear what we’re particularly good at?

You may already be doing many of these things.

But if several answers are “no” or “we don’t know”, there is work to do.

There is no magic AI button

Perhaps the most reassuring conclusion to this series is that there isn’t a completely new rulebook.

Google says there are no additional technical requirements for appearing in AI Overviews or AI Mode and no special AI markup businesses need to add. The fundamentals still matter.

Create genuinely useful content.

Demonstrate real expertise.

Make that knowledge easy to find.

Structure it clearly.

Help search engines understand it.

Provide a good experience when customers arrive.

The technology surrounding search may be changing dramatically.

The principle behind successful marketing hasn’t.

Be useful enough to deserve attention and make it easy for customers – and the technology they use – to recognise why your business is worth considering.

From being found to being understood

Across this series, we’ve moved through three stages.

In Part One, we looked at how AI is changing the traditional journey from search to website.

In Part Two, we explored why original expertise, thought leadership, customer insight and case studies can help forwarders become trusted sources.

And now we’ve looked at the practical steps that help make that expertise accessible and understandable.

There will undoubtedly be more changes. AI search is developing too quickly for anyone to claim the rules are settled.

But freight forwarders don’t need to wait.

You already possess the most important ingredient: the expertise your customers need.

The opportunity now is to make sure the next generation of search can find it.