Getting Into the AI Answer: How Trade Schools Show Up in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews

Your next medical assistant student is asking ChatGPT for school recommendations right now. Is your name in the answer?In just twelve months, the share of adult learners using AI tools to research programs jumped from 4% to 20%, a five-fold increase, according to Search Influence's 2026 higher ed benchmarks. Half of prospects now use AI weekly, and 79% read Google's AI Overviews before clicking a single link. Education sector organic traffic is down roughly 17% year over year as a result.Translation for trade school directors: the old SEO playbook is not enough. Ranking on page one of Google means less when prospects never scroll to the blue links.On this week's episode of Enrollment Playbook by CMP, Michael Gonzalez and Andrea Gonzalez walk through the three-move playbook every career college needs right now:1. Structure your program pages so AI models can pull clean answers2. Build third-party signal on the directories AI cites3. Test the prompts yourself and reverse-engineer what's missing#EnrollmentPlaybook #TradeSchoolMarketing #CareerCollegeMarketing #VocationalEducation #AlliedHealth #EnrollmentStrategy #CollegeMarketingPros #AISearch #GenerativeEngineOptimization #HigherEdMarketing