Getting named
by AI.

Roy Morgan's survey of 14,646 Australians for January to March 2026 found 66% of 14 to 17 year olds and 72% of 35 to 49 year olds used AI tools in an average four weeks. That's the student, and for most schools, the parent. ChatGPT was the most used tool in every age group up to 49, and Google Gemini reached 27% of 14 to 17 year olds.

International students are further along. IDP's 2025 survey of nearly 8,000 students found 54% of prospective students planned to use ChatGPT to choose an institution; a year earlier, 35% said they'd use AI tools in general. But AI hasn't replaced people. UAC's survey of more than 20,000 Year 12s found teachers and careers advisers (49%) and open days (45%) were where students went for course information, and one in five hadn't used an AI tool at all in the past month. AI is a new stop on the path, not the whole path.

Google AI Overviews and AI Mode: Google says AI Mode uses a query fan-out technique, breaking your question into subtopics and searching for each. It launched in Australia on 8 October 2025, and Google said early testers asked questions nearly three times as long as normal searches. A parent typing 'best school near Erina for a shy kid who loves music' is really asking five questions at once.

ChatGPT: when it searches the web, OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, apart from navigational links. Some security plugins and hosting settings block it without anyone in marketing knowing.

Gemini: Google's Gemini apps can ground answers in Google's search index. Google's Google-Extended setting controls whether your content is used for Gemini training and grounding, and Google says it does not affect inclusion or ranking in Google Search.

Meltwater ran one prompt, 'I am a student in [country]. Which universities in Australia should I consider?', through nine AI tools in seven markets from 4 August to 4 September 2026. Of the top 100 cited domains, study abroad agents and advisory sites supplied 67.6%, rankings and editorial media 12.2%, universities and sector bodies 6.9% and government 5.5%. No university or government site made the top three in any market.

The sources also moved fast: seven of the top ten changed between the first and second half of the month. Each tool had favourites. ChatGPT leaned on Study Australia and Home Affairs, Google's AI Overviews on Instagram and YouTube, and Google AI Mode on YouTube and IDP.

That was one question about universities, asked for overseas students. The lesson still carries to a primary school in Penrith or an RTO in Newcastle: the answer is mostly built from what others publish about you. Directories, review sites, admissions centre listings, agents, YouTube and local news count as much as your own pages.

Google's guide to its generative AI features, updated in July 2026, is blunt: optimising for them is still SEO. Pages must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. Structured data isn't required and there's no special markup. Google Search ignores llms.txt files. And you don't need to chop pages into small chunks or write in a special way for AI.

It also warns against making lots of pages to chase every follow-up question, which can breach its scaled content abuse policy. So the job is one strong page per course or year level that answers the follow-ups itself: cost, entry, timetable, outcomes and who it suits.

Run the eight questions below in ChatGPT and Google AI Mode, in a private window, and tick what you see. Four are general questions where you'd hope to be named. Four are about you by name, where the facts need to be right. Answers change from day to day, so run it monthly and keep a note of the date.

None of this is new. It's the same work that helps a parent comparing three schools on a Sunday night. AI just exposes the gaps faster, because it fills them with someone else's version.

• Facts on the page as text: fees all in, entry, duration, start dates and codes. The SEO page has a course page check.
• A plain line on who each course or year level suits, and who it doesn't. 'Best for' questions need something to match.
• Third-party listings that agree with you: Your Career for VET, admissions centres for uni, school directories, Google Business Profile and agent pages.
• Reviews, and real student or parent video posted with consent, on the sites AI tools already cite, such as YouTube.
• Local and sector news: open day coverage, results, new partnerships. Earned mentions, not paid lists.