Akamai launches AI brand presence tool for websites

Akamai has launched AI Brand Presence, a product for companies that want to improve how AI search tools and autonomous agents read their content.

The launch comes as AI bot traffic has risen by more than 300% over the past year, while a growing share of online searches now end without a click through to a website.

The product combines two functions: it converts website information into a format designed to be easier for large language models and AI agents to interpret, and it provides a dashboard showing which AI models are visiting a site and what content they consume.

Operating at the edge, the service lets companies adjust content delivery without changing back-end systems or altering the experience for human visitors. The dashboard also tracks whether AI interactions lead to traffic and customer engagement.

The shift reflects a broader change in online discovery. Instead of reaching brands through conventional search results, consumers are increasingly encountering companies through AI-generated answers. That means bots, rather than people, are often the first to access a website.

This has implications for marketing teams and website operators. If AI systems summarise or retrieve outdated, incomplete or poorly structured information, brands risk losing visibility in searches where users may never visit the original source.

Patrick Sullivan, Chief Technology Officer of Security Strategy at Akamai, described the development as a break from established digital strategy.

"The assumptions underpinning 20 years of digital strategy are breaking down in real time. We're witnessing one of the most significant shifts in digital history, a move from human-driven search to machine-mediated discovery," he said.

He added: "Businesses face the risk of digital invisibility. If you're not the primary source of truth for the AI models your customers trust, you effectively don't exist."

Internal testing

Before launch, Akamai used the product on its own website. By serving an AI-ready version of its site alongside the standard version for human visitors, it said it reduced data loads for machine reading by 99%.

According to Akamai, the test led to an 85% increase in citations and a 364% rise in brand presence in general searches where the company was not named directly. It also reported a 133% increase in presence in ChatGPT compared with competitors.

Those figures point to the growing importance of what parts of the technology sector call generative engine optimisation, or GEO. The term refers to efforts to shape how AI systems retrieve, interpret and present content, much as search engine optimisation was designed to influence rankings in conventional web search.

The product is also intended to give companies more control over how content appears across AI services. Businesses can use it to understand how AI systems interact with content, adjust content strategies based on observed consumption patterns and manage where information is surfaced.

Kim Salem-Jackson, Chief Marketing Officer at Akamai, said the issue was as much about brand control as web traffic.

"As marketers, we can't afford to be passive observers of the AI shift; we must drive the change we want to see. We spent years building our brand, but if we don't guide how AI models find and share our content, we're essentially giving up control over our own reputation," she said.

She continued: "By testing this technology on our own site first, we proved that brands can reclaim their narrative. The criteria for a great website have changed. In addition to providing an exceptional human user experience, you need to optimize your site for AI comprehension and retrieval so that you're the source that AI trusts for its answers. With the launch of AI Brand Presence, we're giving marketers the keys to their digital identity again, making sure their brand shows up correctly every time."

Market shift

The launch underlines how infrastructure and security companies are adapting to the spread of AI-generated search and agent-based browsing. As autonomous tools increasingly search, compare and act on behalf of users, companies are under pressure to make their content accessible not only to customers but also to machines acting as intermediaries.

For Akamai, the product extends its position at the edge of the network into a new category tied to visibility rather than only speed or security. By focusing on how websites are interpreted by AI models, the company is moving into an area that touches search, analytics, content management and digital marketing.

The service will be introduced through a phased rollout with limited availability for select customers in North America.