Restaurants that want to stand out on the internet today will have to learn some new tricks.
For a long time, search engine optimization (SEO) has been the name of the game when it comes to jockeying for eyeballs online. Stuff your website with keywords and other content that relates to what prospective customers are likely to be looking for, and watch the orders roll in.
I’m being sarcastic, of course. Google’s algorithm has never been that cut and dry. And it’s only getting more complicated as artificial intelligence introduces a new layer to surfing the web.
Last year, Google launched a feature called AI Overview that digests search results into a brief summary. That means that when you type a question into Google, the first thing you see is often not a list of links, but an AI-generated answer based on those links. AI Overview now appears in more than 55% of search results, according to Advanced Web Ranking, pushing both organic and paid links further down the page.
This change has coincided with a rise in so-called no-click web searches. In May, the number of news searches that resulted in no click-throughs was nearly 69%, up 14 points from a year ago, according to Similarweb, implying that people are searching for something, reading the overview and leaving without clicking on anything.
The same study found that people are increasingly using chatbots as search engines, with ChatGPT news queries surging by 212% over the past 18 months—another trend that could monkey with restaurant web traffic.
Google says AI Overviews help users answer more complicated, multipart queries that might otherwise require multiple searches. For instance, the question “What’s a good vegan Thai restaurant in Milwaukee?” returned the following response, derived from multiple sources:
A couple things to note there: Though Thai-namite gets top billing, the AI doesn't link directly to its website, like it does for the other two restaurants mentioned. Beerline Cafe does not serve Thai food, but gets lumped in anyway for being vegan.
All of this has obvious implications for restaurants. Google is a main thoroughfare for restaurant discovery, with more than 60% of consumers using the search engine to get restaurant information, according to a PYMNTS study from 2023.
That means restaurants wanting to be found online may need to appeal not only to SEO, but also its new AI-powered sibling, answer-engine optimization (AEO), which refers to how businesses can get picked up in AI-generated summaries.
Michelle Abdow has been thinking about AEO a lot. She is the president of Market Mentors, a marketing agency based in Springfield, Massachusetts, that has been embracing AI as a marketing tool.
“Anyone who wants to be found [by AI] really needs to be thinking, ‘What are the questions people are going to ask, and how can I answer that question in such a distinct way where it puts my website as a source?’” Abdow said in an interview.
This is not all that different from the basic principles of SEO. But while SEO prizes keywords and the content around those keywords, AI has a more structured approach when crawling the web. So restaurants’ websites need to be structured accordingly.
That means basic information like menu and hours of location have to be up to date (which is just good practice anyway). But the content and copy on the website may also need to change to fit what AI is looking for.
For instance, Abdow recommended that restaurants format website content in a question and answer format, because that is how users will typically input queries into the search bar. She called this “answer-ready” content.
“Think like what an AI bot would do. What would someone ask about the business? What would they ask about the product?” Abdow said. “Think of it as a different style of writing.”
To use the vegan Thai food example, Abdow suggested that a restaurant might want to include questions on its website such as “What makes your Thai food vegan?” with an answer below.
“Because it's the question that somebody is going to be asking on search, you have a better chance of being found,” she said—“until everybody else starts doing it.”
She emphasized that there is still a lot we don’t know about how AI will affect search long-term, especially given the pace at which AI is developing. Eventually, she said, brands will be able to pay for placement within AI-generated search results, which should help clarify things.
But right now, “it’s the Wild West,” Abdow said. “It’s legitimately the Wild West.”
AI has thrown such a wrench into web search that some marketers are urging restaurants to turn to other digital channels for attention.
“If we can’t get it from Google search anymore, and we don’t really know how to show up in generative AI yet … how can we get in front of them?” said Kyle Drenon, CEO of marketing agency Supper Co., on a recent episode of Restaurant Business’ A Deeper Dive podcast.
To Drenon, the answer is pretty clear: Short-form videos on TikTok, Instagram and other social media sites where modern Americans spend so much of their time.
“People are watching that constantly,” he said. “So to recoup some of the lost traffic that people are seeing from organic Google and Bing searches, spending more time putting messages out on those platforms that have short videos is how it needs to be done.”
He noted that 90% of content on the web is now video, and that 41% of TikTok users use the app as a search engine—just another reason restaurants might want to allocate some of their marketing budget there.
The strategy has delivered some proven winners. In less than seven years, Crumbl parlayed an aggressive TikTok presence into an empire of more than 1,000 cookie shops. And Dave’s Hot Chicken—which recently sold to Roark Capital for $1 billion—started blowing up around the same time after using Instagram to lure local foodies.
Those two brands are social media natives. For larger, older concepts, and especially mom and pops, TikTok and Instagram are still a fairly new language. But there have been some success stories, notably Chili’s viral Triple Dipper platter that yielded same-store sales growth of more than 30% in a single quarter last year.
Drenon’s advice for restaurants: Learn the idiosyncrasies of the different social media apps and abide by them, but maintain your brand’s voice.
Also, keep it short. Drenon’s agency worked with a New England convenience-store chain on a six-second video pushing loyalty signups. “It said join for this reason, and that’s it,” he said. The program grew by 75% in six months.
“Give them a reason to bite on whatever you’re putting out there, and let them get back to what they were doing,” he said.