Key Takeaways
- Today’s students are AI-native: 93% use it for decision-making, and 50% rely on it as their primary information source.
- The university website is no longer where discovery happens—it’s where validation happens.
- AI-driven search means prospective students often never visit your site until the final decision stage.
- Your site content must serve both human users and AI systems that synthesize brand information.
- Visibility in AI isn’t bought through ads—it’s earned through strategic content and structure.
This content was first presented by Beth Hollenberg, CEO of Everspring, and James Moore, Director of Online Learning at DePaul University, at the 2025 ASU+GSV Summit. The session explored how AI-native students interact with university content—and how institutions can adapt to stand out in an increasingly AI-powered world.
For years, university websites were treated like the front entrance to the brand. The place where first impressions were made, curiosity sparked, and engagement nurtured.
Not anymore.
As Beth Hollenberg, CEO of Everspring, explained during her ASU+GSV Summit session:
“We’re seeing an inversion of the world where the university website used to be the starting point for an investigation—now it’s an ending point. It’s a validation mechanism. An inversion of Old School Search.”
In today’s AI-powered landscape, the website isn’t where prospective students discover you. It’s where they decide whether everything else they’ve already seen and heard checks out.
This is a radical shift—and if institutions don’t adapt, they risk losing relevance before the conversation even begins.
Welcome to the AI-First Funnel
Today’s prospective students don’t start their journey by typing your school’s name into a search bar. They’re asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or a branded AI assistant:
- “Which online MBA programs have the best outcomes for career changers?”
- “What’s the difference between program A and program B?”
- “Which schools have flexible data science degrees with job support?”
These questions are answered long before a single click hits your domain. In fact, many of them are never clicked at all. As Beth noted in the ASU+GSV session:
“AI is zero click.”
That means your traditional top-of-funnel strategies—paid search, homepage design, SEO—are rapidly losing their primacy. Prospective students are engaging with your institution through summaries, snippets, and synthesized AI outputs. By the time they reach your website, they’re not exploring. They’re confirming.
They’re saying: I’ve heard what the internet says about you. Is it true?
The Role of the Website Has Flipped
If your website is still designed to be the place where people learn who you are, it’s already behind. Your audience shows up with a working knowledge of your programs, your price point, your rankings, and your outcomes. They’re not looking for discovery. They’re looking for verification.
The modern university website must now function as a validation layer—the final step in a student’s decision-making process.
That means:
- Your value proposition needs to be unmistakable and repeated throughout the site
- Skill-based outcomes and real-world applications must be front and center
- Page structure and content hierarchy must align with what AI summaries prioritize
- Messaging consistency across all channels is no longer optional—it’s foundational
And none of this can be faked. As Beth emphasized in her presentation: “This can’t be bought. It can only be earned through content and the right structure.”
Why This Matters for Marketing and Enrollment
If AI is the new gatekeeper, your ability to earn visibility—and trust—depends on what it’s pulling from. That means your site content, program pages, FAQs, and even faculty bios aren’t just for human readers anymore. They’re training the algorithms that students consult first.
The good news? Unlike paid ads or search rankings, AI inclusion isn’t transactional. It’s structural. If your content is clear, rich, consistent, and well-organized, AI will find it—and amplify it.
But if your site is vague, bloated, or outdated, no amount of ad spend will fix it. This shift is already underway. As Beth pointed out: “We are seeing 4x the amount of traffic coming through AI sites.” That’s not a small bump. That’s a paradigm shift in how students gather information and make decisions.
Earning Your Way In
So what does it look like to earn that visibility? It means:
- Structuring pages for clarity: Program pages that lead with outcomes, include skill-based language, and reflect actual student questions
- Feeding AI the right signals: Consistent metadata, meaningful headers, structured copy, and embedded proof points that help AI distill value
- Treating content as a strategic asset: Not just words on a page, but an ecosystem of brand, outcomes, and proof that your programs deliver
The goal isn’t to game the system. It’s to serve the system—by creating content that earns trust, educates clearly, and maps to what prospective students are actually asking.
See how Everspring’s AI visibility audit and strategy framework can help you get started.
The Website as a Living Contract
Think of your website not as a brochure, but as a contract—one that AI and students both hold you accountable to.
When a prospective student lands on your site after an AI interaction, they’re looking for congruence. They want to see that what they read elsewhere matches what you say about yourself. If it doesn’t, you lose credibility—and likely the lead.
But when the story matches, when the details align, and when the structure supports discovery? That’s when conversion happens.
Final Thought
The university website is no longer the front door. It’s the final checkpoint. The decisive moment. In a world of AI-native students and AI-shaped discovery, visibility isn’t bought—it’s earned. And in a zero click world, there’s no second place.