The Case for AI Search on Public Sector Websites
Why government and higher ed sites need to rethink the search bar
Most of our clients have lived with the same site search for a decade or more: a keyword match against a content index, returning a list of pages ranked by some opaque relevance score. It worked well enough that nobody complained, and not well enough that anyone praised it.
That time is ending. Over the last two years, AI-based search and chatbots have changed how people look for information on the web, and the expectations users carry into a government or higher ed site now come from Google AI Summaries and tools like ChatGPT. Dismissing those expectations puts both our clients and the people they serve at a disadvantage.
You may feel overwhelmed by the prospect of incorporating AI into your search functions—especially if you have a ton of content on your site.
But incorporating AI into your search experience is less disruptive than it sounds. Here’s why we think it's worth starting now.
Google changed what people expect from search. People aren’t typing keywords anymore — they type questions, the way they’d ask a person.
A constituent looking for permit information doesn't type “permit renewal.” They type “how do I renew my business permit before the deadline?” A prospective student doesn't search “financial aid.” They ask “when does FAFSA verification close for spring semester?” They expect autocomplete to know what they mean before they finish typing, even when the query is misspelled or full of abbreviations.
AI overviews on Google take it further. For question-based queries, a summary appears at the top of the results and many users never scroll past it. Our clients aren’t Google — but their users will increasingly expect site search to behave like Google. That means direct answers, not a list of pages to sort through.
Most users don’t know exactly what they're looking for when they hit the search bar. They have a question, and they want an answer. What they usually get is a long list of pages that may contain the answer somewhere.
A resident searching “State Street construction” on a city website doesn’t want press releases and zoning documents — they want the current project status.
A prospective student searching “housing” on a university site doesn't want every page that mentions the word. They want to know whether on-campus housing is still available for the fall.
Traditional keyword search lacks the context to make that distinction. AI search doesn’t.
AI search delivers the most value on large, complex sites — which describes most of the government and higher ed sites we work on. State agency websites routinely run into the thousands of pages. University sites often go further.
AI search can understand context: what answer makes the most sense right now, given what a user is asking and where they’ve already been.
Instead of returning 50 pages about “State Street” and leaving the user to sort through them, AI search can recognize that most visitors want a construction update, not a historical overview or a zoning document. Instead of surfacing every financial aid page on a university site, it can route a student to the specific deadline or form they need.
The larger and more complex the site, the more that advantage compounds.
If you manage content for a large agency or institutional site, this can sound like another unfunded mandate on top of everything else. Keyword search has worked well enough, and a full search overhaul isn’t in the budget.
It doesn’t have to be. AI search can be added incrementally. We can identify the content areas where AI results would add the most value and start there, rather than rebuilding everything at once.
AI-suggested filters and tags can be layered into an existing search tool. AI results can appear alongside traditional keyword results, giving users the option to choose.
Implementing AI search on your website isn’t just about keeping up with buzz-worthy technology trends. It’s about ensuring equitable access to government services. AI is becoming an essential part of how we all work and live.
Dan Moriarty is the co-founder, CEO and chief strategist with Electric Citizen.
