Amongst the clouds of chaos – shines a glimmer of sense.
For the last 3-4 years, marketers and executives in manufacturers of building products have watched a familiar SEO story play out.
Windows, roofing systems, insulation, and manufacturers of almost any other type of product have seen;
- A busier search results retail space
- Rise of zero click
- Favouritism towards commerce based and huge product listing sites
- Unreliable analytics
- Lack of clear search attribution
Questions are raised about the value of SEO. Where’s the ROI? Should we spend on it?
AI roll out
In May 2025, the storm got upgraded to a Category 5 Hurricane.
The wide scale roll of generative and AI results directly into the search engines killed click through almost over night.
SEO (or rather AI search) became topical again!
When the reliable search engine traffic ‘rug’ was pulled from beneath every companies feet, it suddenly became very clear that that the cosy shag pile that kept those feet warm (and the enquiries coming in), was perhaps not appreciated as much as it should have been.
Analytics this time, told no lies: a drop in clicks, traffic reductions, key conversion metrics falling.
We saw 20-30% drop in search traffic being pretty typical – even when search visibility looked to remain unchanged.
“Where’s all our visits gone?”
“What are we doing wrong?”
“How do we increase traffic again?”
Architects, contractors, and homeowners ask a question, Google’s AI Overview answers it on the spot, and the click to your previously successful, hard working category page never happens.
Your blog traffic, that you’d invested blood, sweat and tears into, had been steadily growing and building equity. That content was suddenly dismissed to a greater or lesser degree as being worthy of reference or cited. The very content Google has been advocating you needed to satisfy search intent – although highly irrelevant, no longer attributable to your brand.
Your digital ‘helping hand’ that provided vital, expert, accurate information to your technical specification audiences (or indeed the layman homeowner), had been effectively scraped, amalgamated with 10 other opinions and spat out by an ‘intelligent’ bot.
The speed of roll out was a shock to all.
Since last year, the space has been turbulent to say the least. Constant fluctuations. Constant Google testing. Poor click through. No traceability of citations. Zero non-branded visibility in answer engines.
What are the latest Google SERP updates?
Finally! Amongst the clouds of chaos – shines a glimmer of sense.
And although things will never be ‘back to normal’, the latest Google roll out is at least a positive step in the right direction in restoring ‘value’ to the new Position 0 in search engine results pages.
Google has implemented a set of changes that reverse the slow erosion of first page importance.
For an industry that lives and dies by its technical capability, Expertise, Authority and Trust, this is very welcome news.
A summary of changes
Google announced five small but critical tweaks to how AI Overviews and AI Mode handle and display source attribution.
These changes albeit seemingly minor and very subtle are actually substantial and transformative to a brands ability to be seen and gain recognition for the time, effort and money invested in SEO.
Click has potential once again – as it becomes far easier for someone reading an AI-generated answer to see where that answer came from — and easier for them to act on it by clicking through.
Let’s take a look at a real example using a relatively straight forward long tail query…
“what cavity wall insulation is best for extension”
Previously, this would return an answer collated from several ‘trusted’ sources, construct an answer and spit it out at the very top underneath the question with no prominent reference or citation – and certainly no links.
So whats changed?
1. Inclusion of in-paragraph citations
Instead of being buried in a list at the bottom of the answer, citations are now listed ‘inline’ within the text, directly next to the information they support.
2. Hover previews create better brand recognition
On desktop the new hover previews let users glance at a source page before they commit to clicking.
3. Brand attribution
Clearer publisher and brand attribution, so a named source reads as a recognisable, credible entity rather than a generically described link such as ‘cavity insulation’.
4. Social and Media context
More context on social-sourced and news-sourced content, showing who actually created it. More on this later.
5. People Also Ask
Although ‘People Also Ask’ is not new; suggested follow-up questions are becoming more intelligent and more specific to the original query. These queries feel like a more natural follow on from the original query and in turn they are nudging people to keep researching rather than stop at the first answer. Further questions have also been introduced into Ai chat. Brand visibility is very strong on these typically cited a single source rather than multiples.
Why This Matters More for Building Manufacturers Than It Might Seem
Building product companies have a specific problem that a lot of consumer brands don’t; the buying journey is long, technical, and split across several audiences — architects specifying a product, contractors comparing installation requirements, QS’s trying to find alternatives for their projects, and homeowners just trying to figure out what on earth a U-value even is.
AI search tools have become a shortcut through a lot of that research.
Someone asks “what’s the R-value difference between open-cell and closed-cell foam” or “does this window meet PassiveHaus Standards,” and increasingly they get an instant answer instead of a list of ten blue links.
That’s exactly the kind of query where a manufacturer’s technical content — spec sheets, installation manuals, comparison charts, code-compliance pages — has always been the authoritative source.
As with pretty much all of the recent changes AI has brought – almost none of it changes how indexing or rankings work.
But Google’s latest changes make it more likely that when your content is the source behind that answer, the person reading it actually sees your brand name and clicks through to confirm the details, check technical information.
“What changes is how visible (and how ‘clickable’) a citation is once your content has already earned a place in the answer.”
Stuart Dinnie, Managing Director
How to help get better citations in search and AI?
The opportunity is ever changing but what we have been saying for years still rings true. Good SEO fundamentals remain. To make sure you are making the most of the opportunity, follow these simple rules…
Unique, authoritative, well structured content WILL win in the end.
Technical depth becomes a visibility asset, not just a support resource. Content that used to live quietly in a resource center — U-value tables, fire ratings, wind load charts, warranty terms — is exactly the material AI systems reach for when they need a precise, defensible answer. The more clearly that information is organised, the better a company is set up for citation.
Purchase intent is important
Even for those who don’t sell directly. Don’t let dealer, distributer locator and installer pages go stale. With clearer attribution and hover previews, a “find a dealer near me” style query has a better shot at surfacing your locator page by name, rather than a generic aggregator. These pages are prime candidates for local and ‘where to buy’ style AI answers — accuracy and freshness matter here as much as on your core product pages.
Brand recognition
Publisher attribution was built with news outlets in mind, but the same principle of showing users which brand is behind the information, benefits any manufacturer whose name becomes familiar through repeated, credible citations across contractor and architect searches. Use guest case studies
Guest content and link building
Brand and product mentions across a more diverse domain profile are even more important. As AI looks for multiple sources, latest information, you need to make sure your brand is being regularly referenced to be in the conversation.
Double down on digital PR and Media
The current economic stagnation of the construction market means reputable media outlets seem to be struggling for sales. Their offer is not weaker right now. Its stronger. If you are not investing in good quality coverage supplied to reputable news outlets you are missing opportunities for citations beyond your own website.
Keep authorship and expertise visible
If a technical document was written or reviewed by a technical expert, product manager, or building science specialist, say so. It strengthens the credibility signals both users and AI systems look for.
- Increase Organic Social activity
‘Social sites’ such as Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn are being heavily cited in answer engines. Ironically, ‘user generated content’ is being seen as important regardless of the individuals knowledge or capability. To leverage, partner with independent writers, bloggers and other industry experts who are both active and happy to talk about your brand or product positively. - YouTubeDo not underestimate the power of YouTube. This platform combines the 2nd largest search engine with genuine user generated content. The perfect combination for ‘non-robot’ created content. Its no wonder a YouTube clip appears in every 1st result page and is being featured as a citation in almost all answer engine queries.
Keep Calm, Carry On
Google is signalling that it wants AI search to be a gateway to trustworthy sources, not a replacement for them.
For manufacturers, that’s good news specifically because your strongest content has always been the technically led, hard-to-make up kind — exactly what AI systems need to reference and exactly what these attribution changes are designed to make more visible.
The fundamentals haven’t changed: original, well-organised, expert-backed content still wins.
What’s changed is that when it wins a citation, more people are likely to actually see your name — and click.
What next?
If you’d like to talk to us about how to increase search rankings and AI visibility, give us a call.
