More than 375 higher education marketing and enrollment professionals gathered in Orlando last week for the 2026 eduWeb Summit to exchange ideas, share strategies, and learn from peers across the industry. While sessions covered everything from storytelling and student experience to communications and enrollment strategy, one topic consistently surfaced throughout the conference: the growing influence of AI on how prospective students discover and evaluate colleges.
Multiple sessions pointed to new research showing how quickly AI search is influencing college decision-making. Findings presented by Manaferra during the conference focused on how one-third of undergraduate students now use AI search, and nearly six in 10 said they considered a college less when it failed to appear in AI-generated results. Speakers also noted that AI increasingly influences which institutions make a student’s shortlist, encouraging marketers to treat SEO and AI optimization as complementary strategies by strengthening website authority, answering prospective students’ questions, and building credibility beyond their own websites.
Authenticity Builds Student Trust
Authenticity emerged as another defining theme. Session after session reinforced that students respond to real stories over polished marketing campaigns. Research presented during the conference found students place the greatest value on day-in-the-life videos, campus tours, financial aid guidance, and career outcomes shared by real students and trusted voices. At the same time, overly scripted promotional content was consistently cited as a reason students stop engaging.
Student Experience Shapes Enrollment Decisions
The student experience was another recurring focus. Drawing inspiration from Disney Imagineers, speakers challenged attendees to think less about delivering information and more about designing an experience. Where do students get stuck? How can institutions remove uncertainty, answer questions sooner, and create moments that build confidence along the enrollment journey?
Dr. DeRecco Lynch, Vice Provost at the University of Cincinnati, motivated attendees to bring “Beyoncé energy” into their marketing strategy.
“Students don’t choose the school with the most ads,” he advocated. “They choose the brand they feel something for.”
Putting AI Knowledge to the Test
Those conversations continued beyond the session rooms. At Paskill’s AI Search Star experience, more than 30 higher education marketers completed the interactive quiz, with 13 achieving the highest distinction of AI Search Super Star. While every participant recognized the importance of maintaining consistent messaging across websites and digital channels, the question marketers most frequently missed focused on Google’s E-E-A-T framework: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.
Earning AI Trust Through Expertise
The topic was central to Torin Keefer’s Lightning Talk, Earn Your AI Search Star: Five Tactics to Make Your Institution the Trusted Answer, where he emphasized that AI evaluates more than keywords and technical optimization.
“LLMs are trained to value expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, what we refer to as E-E-A-T,” notes Keefer. “That means the who behind your content matters just as much as the what. A program page written by a committee reads differently to AI than one that features a quote from your department chair, cites a faculty research study, or links to a professor’s published work.”
Keefer encouraged attendees to interview their faculty, feature students, and cite their research.
“Amplify that expertise on the platforms where credibility compounds. Every native platform has its own AI now. Feed them something worth recommending.”
The Paskill quiz results reinforced one of eduWeb’s biggest takeaways: higher education marketers understand why AI search matters and are now looking for practical ways to build the credibility that both AI platforms and prospective students increasingly reward.
