Video: Tips to optimize conversational AI search on your website. Captions and transcript available on playback.

Tips to optimize conversational AI search on your website

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Expectations around how we all interact with information online are shifting. Today’s users don’t want to dig through documents or guess at keywords. They expect clear, accurate answers delivered instantly, in their own words, and drawn from trusted content.

That’s where conversational search comes in, and where the Conversational Search advantages really stand out. With governance-first design, marketer-friendly control, and enterprise-grade transparency, it bridges the gap between intelligence and reliability. The line between enterprise vs consumer AI experiences is becoming clear.

But as interest in AI continues to grow, so does the noise. Many organizations are exploring it, but not many know how to implement it well.

In this blog, we'll share 5 best practices for conversational search optimization on your website and how Conversational Search delivers on each of them. But first…

In the enterprise vs consumer AI landscape, conversational search represents the next generation of intelligent discovery, built not for entertainment, but for accuracy, governance, and user trust.

Conversational search enables users to ask questions in their own words and receive instant, accurate answers pulled from your verified content. It's a step beyond traditional keyword search, feeling more intuitive, seamless, and context-aware.

Some of the pain points solved by this intelligent search solution are:

• Low discoverability and information overload: Users struggle to find relevant answers even when the content exists because traditional search relies on links and keywords, not intent.
• High support costs: Staff spend significant time responding to repeat questions and guiding users through complex systems, instead of focusing on higher-value work.
• Fragmented user experiences: Users have to navigate multiple systems or know exactly where to look, which causes frustration and drop-offs.
• Underused content: Valuable content often goes unseen because it’s buried or hard to access with keyword-based search, limiting the ROI of content investments.
• Limited user insight: Keyword analytics don’t reveal true intent. Conversational queries offer deeper visibility into what users actually need, enabling better content and service design.

And unlike generic AI tools, Conversational Search offers you greater control and trust over the outcome of your search agent. It understands questions, maintains context across follow-ups, and only delivers answers that are supported by your approved content. Drastically reduced hallucination risk. Answers grounded in your content. Just clear, trusted responses.

For more detailed information on what Conversational Search is and how it works, check out this blog.

With so much noise in the AI space, it's easy to focus on flashy features and miss what really matters. When evaluating a conversational search tool, these enterprise search tips can help you focus on what drives real value: accuracy, control, content alignment, and long-term performance.

In this section, we outline five must-have capabilities to look for in a conversational search experience (and show how Squiz delivers on each). These best practices are core to realizing the Conversational Search advantages.

Conversational search is powerful, but it's not magic. Early user trust comes from understanding what the tool can and can't do, and what it's designed to deliver.

How Conversational Search delivers on this:

• Verified answers only: Building on the above, you won't get speculative or generic AI responses. Content Intelligence validates your content before anyone asks a question, and guardrails keep responses within your approved content sources, so nothing goes off-script.
• Accurate answers: Conversational Search answers from your approved content, which drastically reduces hallucination risk. If an answer isn't in your content, it won't attempt to respond with potentially inaccurate information. Instead, it will let users know it can't answer the query, using a default response you control.
• Contextual continuity: Users can ask follow-up questions (multi-turn), and Squiz will maintain context throughout the exchange, just like a helpful assistant. This is enabled by session-aware logic that keeps track of prior user inputs within a conversation, allowing Conversational Search to interpret follow-up questions in context and answer from your approved content.

Even the best AI can’t fix bad content. Squiz provides a set of tools to help you get your content ready before launch and to keep it optimized over time.

How Conversational Search delivers on this:

• Private testing: Run common questions, or upload a batch of test questions, to see how well your content supports clear, consistent answers before you publish.
• Controlled access: Approve exactly which topics Conversational Search can use, so it only pulls from approved, trusted, and relevant sources.
• Ongoing content audits: Content Intelligence proactively spots contradictions, gaps and ambiguity, and keeps your content accurate as it evolves.
• Clarity-first content: Clear, well-written content gives the best answers. There's no paragraph-level cleanup or separate FAQ to maintain, because Content Intelligence turns your content into a validated question and answer database.

Ongoing monitoring helps you, as a website owner and content editor, keep your conversational search effective, accurate, and aligned with user needs.

How Conversational Search delivers on this:

• Conversation review: Website owners can access history to evaluate answer quality, identify trends, and spot friction points in real queries (note, conversation history is not available to the end user).
• Blocked question tracking: See which questions were blocked, so nothing slips through unnoticed.
• Performance tracking: Monitor what people are asking and how conversations go over time, and export questions, answers, blocked status and sentiment to CSV.
• Insight-driven improvements: Apply what you learn to refine your content, adjust system behavior, and enhance overall performance.

Consistency builds trust. A conversational search tool should let you tailor the tone, depth, and behavior of responses so the experience feels like a natural extension of your brand. Just as importantly, you need governance controls to ensure those answers stay accurate, appropriate, and aligned with your internal standards.

How Conversational Search delivers on this:

• Tone and language: Customize how Conversational Search communicates, including formal vs. relaxed tone and concise vs. detailed answers.
• Answer guidelines and default responses: Shape how Conversational Search responds, including what it says when it can't answer, to suit your internal governance.
• UI configuration: While initial setup may require support from technical staff, our goal is to make ongoing adjustments like tone, behavior, and output formatting increasingly accessible to a broader range of users. This gives you meaningful control over the search experience, while we handle the complexity behind the scenes.

This governance mindset is one of the elements that help you turn your conversational experience into a truly controlled search environment, safeguarding both brand integrity and factual accuracy.

A best-in-class AI-powered enterprise search tool should meet you where your content lives, not force you to rebuild it. Whether you use multiple CMSs, document systems, or internal knowledge bases, your search solution needs to unify them seamlessly.

How Conversational Search delivers on this:

• Multi-source indexing: Pulls from any system (not just your CMS), including intranets, third-party platforms, and internal repositories.
• Unstructured data handling: Squiz Funnelback’s flexible ingestion pipeline and metadata extraction capabilities allow it to index and analyze content from non-traditional sources (like PDFs, policy documents, and meeting notes) by parsing full text and applying automated tagging, so relevant answers can be surfaced even from inconsistent or loosely formatted content.
• Search package flexibility: Gives you full control over which content sources are included, so you always know what Conversational Search is referencing.

Want to understand how conversational search could transform your user experience?

Let's explore how Conversational Search, a capability of Squiz Funnelback Search can boost engagement, improve satisfaction, and reduce support load while putting proven search experience best practices into action.

Want advice on how to get started with conversational search?

Book a 30-minute chat with a member of our team here.