By Brianna Vetrano, Digital Marketing Consultant, Vetrano Digital Marketing

Yes, place websites still matter in an AI-driven discovery environment. But not in the way many place leaders expect.

To set realistic expectations for your team, it’s important to understand how AI chatbots actually build “best of,” comparison, and recommendation-style answers, and how your website really fits into that process.

The hard truth about “best of” rankings

When someone asks an AI tool about the best places for an industry or a specific type of trip, it does not start by scanning place brand websites. It starts with large, structured datasets. Think World Bank and OECD statistics, national labour and census data, UN tourism data, air connectivity data from IATA, cost-of-living indexes, and similar sources.

AI also leans heavily on top-tier rankings and widely cited publications. These sources help establish scale and credibility and largely determine which places even enter the conversation in the first place.

This is where the longlist is formed. The truth is, you can’t optimise your way into a “best of” answer if the underlying data and existing rankings don’t support it.

How place brand websites actually influence answers

Once AI has identified potential places using data and external sources, it looks for confirmation and context. This is where your website comes into play.

Place brand websites help validate claims, clarify specialisations, fill in gaps, and add depth to the story being told. They help AI understand whether a destination or region actually delivers on what the data suggests and whether it is a fit for what the user is looking for.

In practice, AI is looking to your website for things like:

• Clear signals about priority industries, target visitors, and key audiences, not broad positioning
  
  
• Up-to-date data, examples, and explanations that support statements about strengths, specialisations, or advantages
  
  
• Nuance around industry clusters, quality of life, and visitor experiences
  
  
• Named sectors, institutions, assets, and experiences that can be clearly described
  
  
• Consistent messaging and data across pages, so the story doesn’t change depending on where AI lands
  
  
• Signals that show whether something is emerging, established, or globally competitive
  
  
• Plain-language reasons a location fits a specific business, investment, talent, or travel need
  
  

Data gives your claims substance

For AI systems, data is not a supporting detail. It is the foundation. Clear figures on workforce size, sector concentration, visitor volumes, seasonality, connectivity, costs, and infrastructure allow AI to anchor a place in reality and cross-check it against other sources.

Without data, claims stay abstract and easy to dismiss. With the right data points, even simple statements become credible for both AI and human audiences.

Clarity beats creativity

Clarity matters more than clever language when it comes to AI. Polished slogans and broad positioning statements might sound good in a workshop, but they don’t always help AI understand what your place actually does well.

AI tools are trying to answer practical questions. What is this place known for? Who is it a fit for? How does it compare to other options? Clear, specific language makes those answers possible.

Of course, creativity still plays an important role in telling your brand story and connecting with human audiences, but when it comes to the information AI relies on to describe your place, focus on clarity and simplicity.

Helping AI find and understand your content

Beyond what you say, how your content is organised matters. AI needs to be able to find your most important information quickly and understand how it all fits together.

Clear page structure, readability, optimisation around key themes, schema markup, and internal linking are GEO (generative engine optimisation) practices that help reduce friction. They won’t compensate for weak content or missing data, but they do make it easier for AI to interpret, connect, and accurately reflect your place in its answers.

The bottom line for place marketers

Although you can’t control the top-level datasets that shape “best of” rankings, you can influence how AI talks about your region once it’s in the mix.

That means focusing less on marketing language and more on being clear, specific, and easy to understand. Make your strengths and target audiences obvious. Support your claims with data. Structure your content so AI can find and interpret it without guesswork.

When your website reinforces the signals AI already sees elsewhere and adds meaningful context, it becomes a reliable source for how AI tools describe your region.

Helping place teams strengthen digital strategies

Brianna Vetrano is a digital place marketing consultant helping global place brands strengthen their online visibility through SEO, GEO, digital advertising, and analytics. She works across investment promotion, tourism, economic development and talent attraction to help place teams elevate their regions online and drive digital results that are meaningful and measurable. Learn more at vetranodigital.com.