By Marcus Goh, Director, PULSE Digital
To optimise a website for AI search, you write the answer to your customer’s exact question in the first two sentences of the page, name your service and your location plainly, and structure everything after that so a fact can be lifted on its own. AI does not reward a well-written page, it rewards a page that gives up its best line without making the reader work for it.
This follows on from what we sent out this week: our own campaign report showed ChatGPT and similar tools visiting the site, reading a couple of lines, and moving on. That is not a bug. That is how these tools are built to behave, and once you understand it, you can write for it.
How do you optimise a website for AI search?
You optimise for AI search by treating your homepage and service pages like a quotation, not a brochure. A quotation states the job, the price range, and the timeline in the first few lines because that is what the customer is scanning for. AI tools scan the same way.
Most Singapore service business websites do the opposite. They open with a tagline about passion or quality, bury the actual service three paragraphs down, and never state the town or region they cover. A tool like ChatGPT or Perplexity has no patience for that structure, because it is not reading for enjoyment, it is retrieving a fact to answer someone’s question.
Why does ChatGPT only read two lines of your homepage?
Because AI answer engines use retrieval, not full comprehension. When someone asks ChatGPT "which aircon servicing company in Tampines does chemical wash", the tool does not read your whole site. It pulls the shortest, clearest passage that answers that exact question and ignores the rest.
This is different from how Google’s own crawler works. Google indexes the entire page, weighs backlinks, checks how long people stay, and ranks the page as a whole. An AI answer engine works passage by passage. It can quote line four of your page and never touch line forty, even if line forty has better information.
This is why a one-man aircon outfit in Toa Payoh with a plainly written first paragraph can get quoted ahead of a ten-branch chain whose homepage opens with a stock photo and a slogan. The chain has more domain authority. It does not have a better first two lines.
What should the first two lines of your website actually say?
They should state what you do, who you do it for, and where you operate, without adjectives doing the work that facts should be doing. “We are passionate about clean homes” tells an AI nothing. “We provide weekly office cleaning for SMEs in the Central Business District and Tanjong Pagar” tells it everything it needs to answer a real question.
The same logic applies whether you run a pest control outfit registered with NEA, a renovation firm that handles HDB permit applications, or a tuition centre registered with MOE. State the registration, the area, and the service in plain language early, because that is the combination someone is actually typing into a search bar or asking ChatGPT.
How is this different from ranking on Google?
Google ranking still depends on the whole page and the whole site: backlinks, page speed, how long visitors stay, whether other sites reference you. AI answer engines care less about all of that and more about whether one passage on your page cleanly answers one specific question.
That means a smaller site with sharper writing can outperform a bigger site with vaguer writing in an AI answer, even if the bigger site still outranks it on a traditional Google results page. The two systems are judging different things, and most businesses are only optimising for one of them.
What does an AI-ready service page look like?
Here is the same information written two ways. Only one version gives an AI tool something it can quote directly.
| Industry | Weak opening line | AI-readable opening line |
|---|---|---|
| Aircon servicing | "We care about your comfort every day." | "We provide aircon chemical wash and servicing for HDB flats and condos in the East, with same-week booking." |
| Renovation | "Turning your dream home into reality." | "We handle HDB renovation permits and full reno packages for 4-room and 5-room flats in the North-East." |
| Pest control | "Your trusted pest solution partner." | "We are an NEA-licensed pest control operator handling termite and rodent treatment for landed homes in Bukit Timah." |
| Tuition centre | "Nurturing every child’s potential." | "We offer MOE-aligned Secondary Mathematics tuition in small groups of six, based in Bishan." |
| Law firm | "Committed to excellence in legal service." | "We handle HDB resale conveyancing and simple wills for individuals in Singapore, with fixed-fee quotes upfront." |
The right-hand column has a name, a location, a licence or regulator where relevant, and a service. That is what gets lifted into an answer.
How do you fix this in the next week?
None of this requires a rebuild. It requires rewriting the first two lines of every page you already have.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does fixing this replace normal SEO?
Do I need schema markup for AI search to work?
Which AI tools should I actually check my site on?
Does fixing this replace normal SEO?
Do I need schema markup for AI search to work?
Which AI tools should I actually check my site on?
About the author :
Marcus is the Founder and Director of PULSE Digital, a Singapore performance-marketing agency that helps businesses win visibility across Google Ads, Meta, SEO and AI search (AEO/GEO). PULSE works with clients across e-commerce, professional services and regulated, high-trust industries, with a particular specialisation in advertising compliance.
