
When it comes to choosing a funeral director, most people now start their journey on the Internet, rather than word of mouth. This has been the case for some time.
What is changing though is where people find funeral directors on the Web and how that information is presented to them. The reason for this change is the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) in online search.
Up until very recently, Google controlled pretty much all of the online funeral director search market in the UK. No one else got even close. But things are slowly changing.
ChatGPT, an AI website and app, is starting to make inroads.
Based on February 2025 data, ChatGPT ranks at number 8 in the world’s most visited websites, which is mightily impressive given it only launched in November 2022. Late last year it launched ChatGPT Search, a direct and potentially existential threat to Google’s online search dominance.
All indications so far are that a non-insignificant amount of people are now using ChatGPT to search for funeral directors on the Internet, and that ChatGPT is steadily eating into Google’s market share for key search terms such as "funeral directors [city name]".
Anecdotally, here at Funeral Guide we have seen a surprising number of people this year reach our funeral director listing pages from ChatGPT. The total volume is still dwarfed by Google, but the traffic from ChatGPT is growing every month and can no longer be ignored.
It is therefore our strong advice that funeral directors take a deep dive into ChatGPT and make sure their websites are optimised for the largest AI website in the world.
Because of the threat of ChatGPT, Google have themselves gone all in on AI for their own website, which in turn has had a significant effect on what Google shows to people on its search pages.
At the top of most search results on Google, you will now see an AI snippet of information that relates to your query. The dreaded ‘AI Overview’, so to speak. This snippet is positioned above the organic search results and the paid adverts, and is therefore the most valuable real estate on the page. Often it is now the only thing you will see without having to scroll down the page. And that means a lot of eyeballs.
The AI Overview is just text. There are no links to your website, which means no traffic directly from Google. It is very different from anything Google has done before in its 25-year history as the Internet's gatekeeper of search.
Instead, the AI Overview is simply a summary of information that Google’s artificial agents have collated and digested from scouring the Internet. It is not going away in prominence either. Because of the genuine threat from ChatGPT when it comes to Search, the first Google has ever really faced, its search results will become more AI dominated in the future, not less.
Thus you either optimise for Google and ChatGPT's AI or you become increasingly irrelevant in online search, which as we have already established is the primary method for people choosing funeral directors nowadays.
So how do you play by the new AI search rules as a funeral director? Essentially, you need to get your brand out there more. Spend a little bit less time and money on tweaking your website for old-fashioned search engine optimisation (SEO), and spend a little bit more time and money on expanding your digital voice outside of just Google and Facebook.
Make sure the AI agents can see you on the Internet. Set up your website so that they can easily trawl and categorise all your important information.
Make sure you are recommended by reputable and popular websites in your industry as AI is looking for relevance and trust signals to make their recommendations.
Yes, that means joining Funeral Guide.
We are the largest funeral website in the UK and being associated with Funeral Guide brings many marketing and lead generation benefits for funeral directors, increasingly so with the rise of AI in search.
Join Funeral Guide today, stay ahead of the game and don't fall behind.
Proactively adapt to the changes that are going on in Internet Search. What you do today will pay dividends in the future. The AI is watching.