How AI Search and Google’s AI Overviews Are Changing SEO Strategies in Dubai

Try this before you read any further. Open ChatGPT and type the question your best customer asks before they hire someone like you. “Who’s good for AC maintenance in Dubai Marina?” “How much should a small company in Dubai pay for bookkeeping?” “Best SEO agency in Dubai for an online store?”

Read the answer. Is your business in it?

For most companies we speak to, it isn’t. And they had no idea, because none of this shows up in a rankings report. You can sit at position three on Google for your main keyword and still be missing from every answer an AI tool gives about your industry.

That’s the shift. People in Dubai haven’t stopped using Google, but they no longer only use Google. They ask ChatGPT for a shortlist, check it in Perplexity, and then go to Google to look up the two names that came up. If you weren’t on the shortlist, the Google search never happens.

Your customers now have five search engines, not one

Here’s roughly where people are asking questions now:

• Google, which now writes its own answer at the top of many results (AI Overviews) and has a separate chat-style tab called AI Mode
• ChatGPT, which searches the web live when a question needs current information
• Gemini, Google’s assistant, built into Android phones and Google Workspace
• Perplexity, popular with researchers and B2B buyers because it shows its sources so clearly
• Microsoft Copilot, which sits inside Windows, Edge and Office, so plenty of corporate buyers in Dubai use it without really choosing to

They don’t all work the same way, and that matters more than most SEO advice admits.

Google’s AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini pull from Google’s own index. ChatGPT and Copilot lean much more on Bing. Perplexity runs its own crawler alongside other sources. So a Dubai business that has spent years on Google and never once opened Bing Webmaster Tools or claimed its Bing Places listing is invisible to a good part of the AI world. It’s an odd gap to have in 2026, and it takes an afternoon to fix.

What the AI tools actually reward

Underneath the different brands, the mechanics are similar. The tool breaks your question into a few smaller searches, pulls back a handful of pages, finds passages it can lift cleanly, and writes an answer from them. Sometimes it cites them. Sometimes it just uses them.

What gets lifted? Short, direct, specific answers.

If someone asks “how much does SEO cost in Dubai”, a page that says “Most SEO retainers for small Dubai businesses fall between AED 3,500 and AED 9,000 a month, depending on how competitive the industry is and how much content is included” has a real chance of being quoted. A page that says “We offer affordable packages to suit every budget” has none. There’s nothing in it to quote.

So put the answer first. Every page, and ideally every section under each heading, should open with two or three sentences that answer the question by themselves. Put prices in AED. Name the areas you serve. Use tables when you’re comparing options. Write the way you’d explain it to a client across a desk, not the way a brochure talks.

The second thing they reward is other people talking about you.

When someone asks for “the best” anything in Dubai, AI tools are suspicious of a company describing itself. They look for corroboration: Google reviews, Clutch and GoodFirms profiles, a mention in Gulf News or Khaleej Times, a Reddit thread in r/dubai where someone recommended you without being asked. That’s why a smaller competitor with forty detailed reviews can show up in ChatGPT’s answer while a bigger firm with a beautiful website doesn’t.

And all of those mentions need to agree with each other. Same business name, same address, same phone number format, same one-line description of what you do. If your Instagram bio, LinkedIn page and Google Business Profile each describe you a bit differently, the AI doesn’t get one clear picture of your company. It gets three vague ones, and it won’t recommend a company it can’t describe with confidence.

Check you haven’t locked the door

This one catches people out more than you’d expect.

Plenty of Dubai websites sit behind Cloudflare or a security plugin that now blocks AI crawlers by default. Others have a robots.txt someone wrote years ago that turns away bots it doesn’t recognise. If OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot or Bingbot can’t reach your pages, you can’t be cited. That’s it. It doesn’t matter how good the content is.

Also, many AI crawlers don’t run JavaScript the way a browser does. If your prices, services or FAQs only appear after a script loads, there’s a fair chance the AI tools are reading an empty page. Ask your developer to check what the raw HTML looks like.

You’ll also hear a lot about llms.txt files. Our view: it’s harmless, but it won’t help you while the basics are broken. Fix crawl access and page structure first.

Arabic is the open field

Dubai searches in two languages, and AI tools mostly answer Arabic questions from Arabic pages. There’s far less well-written Arabic commercial content in the UAE than English content, so the competition for those answers is much lighter.

For healthcare, real estate, education, legal and government-related services, where a lot of searching happens in Arabic, a properly written Arabic version of your key pages is probably the cheapest visibility win available right now. Properly written means by a person, not auto-translated from the English site. Both people and AI tools can tell the difference.

How to tell if any of this is working

This is the messy part. No tool gives you a clean “AI ranking” yet, and Google Search Console counts clicks from AI Overviews together with normal web clicks. So you have to piece it together.

Start in GA4. Visits from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com and copilot.microsoft.com show up as referrals. Set up a custom channel group called “AI tools” so you can see them in one place each month. The numbers will look small at first. Look at how those visitors behave, though. They’ve usually done their research already, and they tend to convert well.

Then keep a simple spreadsheet. Pick 20 to 30 questions your customers really ask. Once a month, run each one through ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google, and note who gets mentioned and which sources are cited. Run each question twice, because the answers shift. It’s tedious. It’s also the only reliable way to know where you stand.

Finally, look at branded search. When people discover you inside an AI answer, many come back later and type your name into Google. A steady rise in branded searches is often the clearest sign the AI work is paying off.

What this means when you hire for SEO services in Dubai

A lot of SEO proposals still look like they did five years ago: a keyword list, a monthly backlink count, a chart of average positions. None of that is wrong. It just covers half of the job now.

When you compare SEO services, Dubai businesses should ask a few extra questions. Will you track whether we’re mentioned in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot, or only on Google? Have you checked that AI crawlers can reach our site? What’s the plan for Bing, our Google Business Profile and our Arabic pages? How will you build our reviews and third-party mentions? And how will you show results if clicks fall but enquiries don’t?

If the agency answers those easily, they’re keeping up. If the conversation keeps drifting back to domain authority and keyword density, you’ve learned something useful too.

The part that hasn’t changed

Your site still has to load quickly. Your content still has to be worth reading. AI tools don’t make up expertise for a business that has nothing specific to say. They repeat what clear, credible sources tell them.

So the job is the same as it always was, really. Know your customers’ questions better than anyone else in Dubai, and answer them clearly and specifically enough that a person, or a machine, would want to repeat the answer.

Frequently asked questions

Which AI tools should a Dubai business optimise for?
Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. Google-based tools use Google’s index, while ChatGPT and Copilot rely more on Bing, so you need a presence in both.

How do I get my business mentioned in ChatGPT?
Make sure ChatGPT’s crawler can reach your site, set up Bing Webmaster Tools and Bing Places, open pages with clear answers, and build consistent third-party mentions such as Google reviews, directory profiles and local press.

Are AI Overviews reducing website traffic in Dubai?
For informational questions, often yes, because the answer appears on the results page. Local, branded and ready-to-buy searches are much less affected, so the impact depends on what your customers search for.

How can I track traffic from AI tools?
In GA4, look for referrals from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com and copilot.microsoft.com, and group them into a custom channel. Pair this with a monthly log of which AI answers mention your business.

What should SEO services in Dubai include in 2026?
Technical and on-page SEO, plus AI crawler access checks, AI mention tracking across the major tools, Bing and Google Business Profile management, Arabic content and a review and third-party mention strategy.

Does Arabic content help with AI search in the UAE?
Yes. AI tools mostly answer Arabic questions using Arabic pages, and there is much less quality Arabic business content in the UAE, so well-written Arabic pages face far less competition.

Mind Digital has run search programmes for UAE brands including Pfizer, Adidas, Tommy Hilfiger, Landmark Group and Virgin Megastore from our DMCC office. If you’d like to know what ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity currently say about your business and who they recommend instead, take a look at our SEO services or get in touch.