An AI assistant can now find a business that fits a customer’s needs and book the job without the customer ever visiting that business’s homepage. In that case, the website’s main job is to give AI systems accurate information they can act on, and attracting visitors becomes secondary.

Sachin Puri, CEO of Newfold Digital, Bluehost’s parent company, joined me on the SEJ podcast to discuss that shift. Puri explained that a website remains the authoritative source of business information, even when the customer journey happens somewhere else.

“AI is actually not making websites irrelevant; it’s just changing its job.”

Rankings and clicks no longer show the full picture. The work now includes making sure an AI system understands a business well enough to describe it accurately and help a customer book or buy.

Puri illustrated the change with a hypothetical customer who asks an agent to find an electrician available tomorrow afternoon who charges less than $300 and has strong reviews, and then to book the appointment.

The customer might never visit the electrician’s website, but the agent still has to answer the same questions a person would. It has to find out where the business operates, whether it is licensed, what it charges, how customers rate it, and whether it has an opening tomorrow.

To find those answers, the agent may read the electrician’s website directly, including the structured data in its schema markup. It may also check the business’s Google Business Profile , its Yelp listing, and reviews on other sites.

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