The Bots Will Read You Now

How to make public websites clear, trustworthy, accessible, and ready for AI

People are already asking AI about government services. The answer they receive may come from an AI-powered search summary, a chatbot, or even an agent acting on their behalf. In each case, the quality of the answer depends on the quality of the information the system can find, interpret, and trust.

This creates a new responsibility for public websites. We must continue serving the people who visit our pages while also making those pages legible to the systems that increasingly mediate access to government information. The encouraging news is that this does not require a separate, AI-only content strategy. AI readiness is mostly the result of doing the fundamentals well: clear writing, accessible design, structured information, strong governance, and current content.

.Gov Websites Begin With an Advantage

A .gov domain carries inherent authority. Search engines and users recognize it as an official source, and state agencies hold the definitive information for their areas of responsibility: policies, public services, deadlines, eligibility rules, forms, and official data.

But authority alone does not guarantee an accurate AI answer. An AI system does not inherently know which source is best. It predicts and assembles an answer from the material it can retrieve and interpret. If an agency page is outdated, unclear, buried inside a PDF, or contradicted by duplicate content elsewhere, the system may reach for a third-party explanation – or fill the gaps itself. This opens the door for hallucinations, which are where an AI model generates a response that sounds like it could be factual but isn’t.

Our advantage, then, comes with a duty of stewardship. Government sites should make the official answer easy to identify, easy to understand, and easy to verify. In the shift from traditional SEO to GEO/AEO (generative- and answer-engine optimization), accuracy and clarity matter more than cleverness.

Accessibility Is The Foundation of AI Readiness

The practices that help people using assistive technology also help machines interpret a page.

• Logical heading structure gives content a clear outline.
• Descriptive link text explains destinations.
• Alternative text makes the meaning of images available outside the image itself.
• Captions and transcripts expose information in audio and video.
• Properly labeled forms tell users and automated systems what each field requires.

This matters because AI does not experience photos, charts, diagrams, or videos the way a person does. Without text alternatives, labels, captions, transcripts, and accessible tables, important information may be lost to both AI systems and people with disabilities. If information matters, make it available as text.

The need is practical, not theoretical. A 2026 Siteimprove review of 98 State of Georgia websites found low-contrast text on 83.9% of pages, missing image alt text on 53.1%, missing form labels on 51%, and empty links on 46.3%. Addressing issues like these improves today’s user experience and builds the machine readability needed for tomorrow.

Search Is Now an Answer, Not Just a List of Links

Traditional search encouraged people to click through to a website. AI-powered search often presents a synthesized answer before the user visits any source. That can reduce traffic, but it does not reduce the public’s reliance on government information. It raises the stakes for making official content retrievable and quotable.

People are already asking AI about agencies and services. A model may retrieve the current service page, a 5-year-old PDF, an unofficial third-party page, or nothing at all. When the answer is wrong, constituents are unlikely to distinguish between a model failure and an agency failure. They experience one broken interaction with government.

That is why public agencies should focus on three outcomes:

1. Own the answer: Write in plain language, lead with the facts, and use questions when they match the way people naturally search.
2. Protect the trust: Assign content owners, review pages regularly, remove outdated material, and show visible revision dates when facts change.
3. Reach more people: Use clear headings, short paragraphs, lists, and structured content that can be retrieved, summarized, and cited accurately.

Build the Right Pages

AI readiness begins with Information Architecture. An agency’s essential pages should explain what the organization does, who it serves, and how people can complete important tasks. At minimum, that usually means a useful homepage; clear About and Contact pages; a dedicated page for each service or program; and well-maintained answers to common questions.

Supporting content may include glossaries, policy pages, news, careers, reports, and other resources.

Give Every Service or Program Its Own Page

Service pages should anticipate what people need to know: eligibility, deadlines, required documents, costs, steps, processing times, and what happens next. Do not make users reconstruct a process from scattered announcements, PDFs, and organizational pages.

Use FAQs as a Format, Not a Catch-All

Question-and-answer writing is valuable because it mirrors natural language queries, but every answer does not need to live on one giant FAQ page. Place relevant questions on the service or program page where they belong. Use a central FAQ only when it genuinely improves navigation.

Define the Language Your Agency Uses

A glossary can clarify acronyms, industry terms, and ordinary words that carry a special meaning in your agency’s context. Definitions help constituents, search engines, and AI systems connect related concepts without guessing.

Write Pages for Retrieval and Understanding

A strong government page makes its purpose obvious at a glance. It uses a clear hierarchy, plain language, an answer-first structure, and content types suited to the information. It also reinforces credibility with consistent names, descriptive internal links, ownership, and freshness signals.

In practice, that means:

• Write the way people ask: Use a heading such as “How do I renew my car registration?” instead of “Vehicle Registration Renewal Information.”
• Lead with the answer: Start with “Yes, you can renew online. Here’s how” rather than several paragraphs of background.
• Use clear file naming conventions: Benefits-application-form.pdf is machine readable, whereas Final_v3_REVISED.pdf doesn’t make sense to anyone but you.
• Put data in accessible tables: A text-based table of deadlines can be searched and extracted; a deadline infographic often cannot.
• Use descriptive links: Replace “click here” with link text that names the destination or action.
• Signal trust: Identify the responsible agency or author, state when the page was reviewed, and keep terminology consistent across all channels.

Do This, Not That

Some common publishing habits make information harder for everyone to use. Avoid the following:

• Placing key information only in PDFs or image,

• Using images as text,

• Duplicating content across multiple pages,

• Burying the most important fact, and 

• Leading with vague language.

Specific headings outperform slogans. Public-service content should tell people where they are, what they can do, and what to expect. Here are few examples:

• “Get a driver’s license” is more useful than “Your Journey Starts Here.” 

• “Apply for the Workforce Training Program” tells people more than “Empowering Georgia’s Future.” 

• “Financial Assistance Programs” is clearer than “Resources to Help You Thrive.” 

Prepare Now For Agents That Can Take Action

The next change will not be limited to how people find answers. AI agents may soon help constituents renew licenses, screen eligibility across benefit programs, pre-fill appeals, submit documents, and book inspections or hearings. Those tasks depend on more than readable prose. They require accessible forms, consistent labels, predictable workflows, well-structured data, and clear boundaries around what a system may and may not do.

A good government chatbot or agent also begins with content governance: approved sources, current information, clear ownership, regular reviews, and guardrails for questions the system should not answer. Technology cannot compensate for an unreliable source of truth.

Don’t Go Chasing Chatbots

Fix what you’ve got before introducing something new. To recap:

• Give important services and programs a clear, dedicated page.
• Lead with the answer and write in plain, direct language.
• Use a logical heading hierarchy and descriptive links.
• Provide alt text, captions, transcripts, labels, and accessible tables.
• Move essential information out of PDFs and images when possible.
• Remove duplicate or obsolete content and show when pages were reviewed.
• Assign an accountable owner to every high-value page.

The core principle is simple: design for people first, and machines will benefit from the same clarity. Georgia’s .gov websites already have authority and public trust. By pairing that foundation with accessibility and disciplined content strategy, agencies can help ensure that the answers people receive – wherever they ask for them – are accurate, useful, and unmistakably official.

This blog was adapted from a presentation given at GovTalks on June 11, 2026.

Related to: 

• Artificial Intelligence