The way people discover information online is changing fast. Search engines like Google used to be the main way audiences found information. But today, that’s only part of the story.

More people are turning to AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Google AI Overviews to get instant answers. Many of these answers appear without needing the user to ever click through to a website. At the same time, social platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok have become major channels where people search for ideas, learn new skills, and make decisions.

These shifts mean organizations now have two equally important audiences to serve. The first is humans who are exploring, searching, and discovering through both traditional search and social channels. The second is AI systems themselves, tools that read, summarize, and sometimes act on behalf of users.

Beyond SEO: The New Digital Front Door

A few years ago, a solid digital strategy focused on accessibility, engaging content, and SEO. These remain critical, but they’re no longer enough on their own.

Today, we have to ask a new question: Will your organization’s information appear in AI-generated responses or social discovery feeds?

If your content isn’t structured for AI tools to find, parse, and trust, or if it’s missing the signals that humans and machines look for when deciding what to surface, you risk being invisible in the places where people are now getting their answers.

How Forum One is Responding

At Forum One, we’re working with mission-driven organizations to ensure they remain visible and authoritative wherever discovery happens. We call this approach AI Optimized Digital Reach.

Here’s what we’re helping clients do:

• Structure data and content for people and machines. We ensure that content is machine-readable, allowing AI systems to extract and present it accurately, while maintaining its engaging nature for human users.
• Build authority and credibility. We align content and communications with trust signals that both human audiences and AI systems recognize.
• Activate first-party data. We help organizations build personalized experiences as audiences fragment across channels.
• Optimize technical infrastructure. We build websites considering site performance, structure, and internal search to make it easier for both humans and AI tools to access and understand your content.
• Evolve measurement strategies. We design metrics that go beyond traffic to capture true influence across AI surfaces, social media, and traditional web analytics.

We’re also experimenting with emerging technologies like Microsoft’s NLWeb, which allows organizations to make their structured content available directly to AI systems for fast, semantically rich querying. While tools like this are still developing, they’re a sign of how the internet is evolving to support not just human users, but the machines working on their behalf.

AI Discoverability is Just the Start

Making your content discoverable by AI is only the first step. The future of digital engagement goes further.

We’re heading toward a web where AI agents don’t just answer questions but act on behalf of users, negotiating, transacting, and making decisions independently. At the same time, social channels are becoming “search engines” in their own right, where human users seek trusted information outside the traditional web.

Another layer of complexity is emerging around the economics of AI visibility. Cloudflare recently announced its new Pay-Per-Crawl feature. This means that in the near future, certain bots, including AI models, may have to pay to access your website’s content. Organizations will need to make smart decisions about how much crawling they want, and from which bots, to ensure their budgets support their visibility goals without unexpected costs. It’s an important reminder that digital strategy isn’t just about technology; it’s about sustainability and value for mission-driven organizations.

As the digital landscape evolves, preparing your website for both human discovery and machine-driven channels remains critical. The future belongs to those who plan for both.