Findability: How to win in AI search

By Numiko

SUMMARY

AI search is changing how audiences find organisations like yours. This report by the agency Numiko is a practical guide to responding. It sets out what's shifting, why it matters for purpose-driven organisations, and the concrete steps that keep you part of the answer.

A Numiko report, 2026. A practical guide for marketing and digital teams in the museum & culture sector.

About this report

AI search is changing how audiences find organisations like yours. This report is a practical guide to responding. It sets out what's shifting, why it matters for purpose-driven organisations, and the concrete steps that keep you part of the answer.

It's written for the people who own findability day to day: marketing, content and digital teams in museums, galleries and cultural institutions.

01. A new gatekeeper

For two decades, getting found online meant playing by Google's rules. That's changed. When someone asks ChatGPT or Claude a question, they often get a direct answer, without ever clicking through to a website.

~60% of searches now end without a click. The answer arrives before the visit does.

Your content might inform the answer, but you won't know if it's been used, or whether you were credited at all.

Why this matters more for purpose-driven organisations

If someone asks an AI about what's on at a museum, gallery or theatre this weekend, the answer they get shapes what they do next.

For organisations with genuine expertise, that raises the stakes. If your organisation should be the authority on a question and isn't part of the answer, that's not a missed marketing opportunity, it's a gap in public knowledge you were meant to fill.

The old goal was ranking first. The new goal is being the trusted source the answer is built from.

Then: Optimise a page to rank top in Google.
Now: Become the source a machine chooses to quote

800M+ people ask ChatGPT a question every week. That's just one of many AI assistants.

These searches are happening right now. AI is answering them with whatever it can find. The only question is whether it's finding you.

02. Start with what you actually want to be known for

Most organisations come at this from the wrong direction. They open their analytics, see what's performing, and optimise from there. The trouble is that most analytics tools were built for e-commerce, not for purpose-driven cultural organisations.

A far better starting point is a question: what do we want to be known for? Not in a brand-strategy sense, but specifically. What do you uniquely know, hold, or offer? The more concrete the answer, the more useful it is.

The more concrete, the better
A theatre: A live experience you can't get anywhere else.
A museum: A captivating day out for all the family.
A gallery: The only place on earth to see a specific artist's work.

From there, map the prompts

Which searches should lead to you? A gallery might want to own "where to see Monet in London". A museum might want to show up for "best place to visit in Manchester in half term".

Then success gets clearer

A gallery might want AI to describe its opening times and access accurately. A museum might want objects in its digital collection to be cited.

03. Good content still matters

AI systems look for the path of least resistance to a trustworthy answer. The organisations that win aren't the ones with the biggest budgets or the cleverest technical tricks - they're the ones whose content is genuinely clear, and who know exactly what they want to be known for.

Four things clear content gets right

Architecture around real journeys: Structure content around the stages people actually go through, not around your internal org chart.

Answers in plain English, up top: Answer the specific question at the top of the page, before any preamble or context-setting.

Visible signs of trust: Named accreditation and clear publication dates let readers (and machines) see the content is current and credible.

Depth that reads as authority: Descriptive titles, terms defined in place, stats surfaced clearly, strong links between related pages.

Note: For long-form or complex work like policy or research, this doesn't mean rewriting everything into FAQs. It means making the depth of your authority legible.

04. In practice: what a findable institution looks like

Take a national institution like the British Museum. When someone asks an AI assistant what to see in London, how to plan a visit, or where to find a particular object, a well-run museum is frequently part of the answer. Not through paid promotion, but because its content is clear, structured, and organised around what visitors actually want to know.

Structured around the visit: Sections like "Visit", "What's on" and "The collection" map to real questions, not internal departments.

Answers stated plainly: Opening hours, admission and accessibility are given clearly and kept current - exactly what an AI needs to answer with confidence.

A collection legible to machines: Object records with consistent titles, dates and descriptions give AI a trustworthy, well-labelled source to draw on.

Events with structured detail: Dates, locations and ticketing described consistently feed directly into how exhibitions surface in answers.

AI looks for the path of least resistance to a trustworthy answer. A well-organised institution makes sure that path leads straight to it.

05. The technical side

AI platforms don't return one ranked result. They synthesise from many sources at once. Being found means being a consistently cited, trusted voice across a range of queries. That depends partly on how well your site is built for machines to read.

Let the right bots in

Check that AI crawlers can actually navigate your site and make sense of its structure. If they can't read it, they can't cite it. You can still block nefarious bots whilst letting search and model crawlers in.

Audit outdated content

AI holds what it has ingested and doesn't refresh automatically. An exhibition that closed two years ago can still shape what an AI says about you today.