Hugues Bantigny, co-founder, quoted in OtterlyAI

“What should brands do to win on AI Search in 2026?”

That’s the question Rick Tousseyn, GEO Content Strategist, asked to our co-founder Hugues Bantigny recently. Here is Hugues’ reply:

Since the beginning of the open web, being visible as a brand has always been about getting associated with the right keywords. AI-powered search is changing this paradigm. Today, it’s about plugging yourself to one or multiple customer contexts. We are entering the “context search” area. Search becomes intelligent. What matters is being contextually relevant.

And it’s great news! We are finally turning the web into what it should be: a proper representation of how people and business interact with each other in real life. We don’t shoot out keywords to each other faces. We identify pain points, deduce needs, and design use cases. We look to align our offers and messages with the multiple contexts of our audiences.

AI search is actually much more logical than traditional SEO; winning it is just about understanding your customer base, and aiming to address the right-few instead of the wrong-many. Think about what they want (e.g what is their search context) and how they benchmark it (e.g which questions they ask to sort multiple offers and fine-tune their need). You will then identify areas where your brand relevancy should focus on.