Will Scott Shares Higher Education AI Search Research in Search Engine Land Article
March 4th, 2026 by
Search behavior has evolved. Most SEO strategies haven’t.
AI Overviews appear before organic listings. LLM answers shape early trust. Citations determine which brands make it onto a user’s shortlist at all.
New AI search research makes that shift impossible to ignore.
In a recent article published in Search Engine Land, “What higher ed data shows about SEO visibility and AI search,” Will Scott breaks down findings from the 2025 AI Search in Higher Education Research Study, conducted in partnership with UPCEA.
The message is clear: ranking alone is no longer the finish line.
You now have to win twice — the ranking and the citation.
AI Is Already Influencing Early Trust
The AI Search Research Study surveyed 760 prospective adult learners to understand how AI tools influence program discovery and evaluation. The findings confirm what many marketers are beginning to see in their own analytics.
AI is no longer peripheral. It’s embedded in research behavior.
- 79% read Google’s AI Overviews when they appear
- 50% use AI tools at least weekly
- 56% are more likely to trust a brand cited by AI
Trust is forming earlier. Consideration is being shaped before traditional comparison begins.
Brands aren’t losing visibility because they slipped a few ranking positions. They’re losing it because they were never cited in the AI answer at all.
Discovery No Longer Happens in One Place
Search is now multi-surface.
Prospective students move fluidly between:
- Traditional search engines
- AI tools
- YouTube
- Brand-owned websites
- Third-party publishers
What they see in an AI summary influences how they read a search result. A YouTube video can establish credibility before a website earns a click.
AI visibility is cumulative. It’s built anywhere your brand appears, not just on the pages you control.
If your strategy treats channels in isolation, your visibility will fragment in the same way.
Awareness Is High. Execution Is Lagging.
To understand the organizational side of the equation, a companion snap poll of 30 UPCEA member institutions examined how teams are adapting.
Most teams recognize that AI search matters. Far fewer have formalized their higher education AI search strategy.
- 60% are still in early exploration
- 30% report having a formal AI search strategy
- 10% have not started
The most common barriers are familiar: limited bandwidth, competing priorities, and unclear ROI.
AI search may be on the roadmap, but it often lacks clear ownership, defined processes, and measurable accountability.
What Actually Gets Cited
In his article, Will outlines what separates content that ranks from content that gets cited.
AI systems favor optimized content that can be lifted cleanly and reused without interpretation. That typically means content that:
- Leads with direct answers
- Uses headings aligned to search intent
- Separates ideas into self-contained sections
- Includes comparison and decision-stage clarity
Higher education offers a useful lens here. Universities bring authority, depth, and long-standing brand recognition. Yet even established institutions are excluded from AI summaries when their content doesn’t match how users ask questions.
Authority alone does not guarantee inclusion.
Clarity increasingly determines visibility.
Where Things Stand
AI search hasn’t replaced SEO.
It has expanded the battlefield.
Discovery is happening earlier. Trust is assigned sooner. Visibility is often shaped before rankings ever come into play.
The brands that adapt now will shape how they’re represented.
The ones that wait may find themselves summarized by someone else.
→ Read Will’s full article on Search Engine Land today.
Want to go deeper? Will Scott will expand on these findings in a Generative Engine Optimization Master Class with Search Engine Land on April 14, 2026. The online training covers AI visibility strategy, entity optimization, and measurement techniques for evolving search environments. View session details.
