--- type: WebPage name: Ask a silly question. Get a sensible answer. id: "https://selfe.ai/ai-discovery/on-page-search" url: "https://selfe.ai/ai-discovery/on-page-search" publisher: "did:web:selfe.ai" description: "How visitors find what they came for by describing it in a full sentence, instead of leaving your site to ask somewhere else." --- # Ask a silly question. Get a sensible answer. > How visitors find what they came for by describing it in a full sentence, instead of leaving your site to ask somewhere else. Visitors describe what they need in a full sentence and get back the few things that fit, before they leave to ask somewhere else. Selfe answers the question somebody actually meant, not just the words they typed. ## Your visitors should not have to translate. Somebody asks for a ground-floor room with a walk-in shower. Somebody else wants a rug that will not shed on a dark floor. A keyword box returns every room or every rug, though the questions were perfectly clear. Your Selfe already holds those details. Point your site search at the same Echo and it understands the request, then returns the two or three things that fit. One record, nothing extra to maintain. ## What you get. **Search that takes a sentence.** A box on your site that answers a whole description. **The details, not the keywords.** Ground floor, walk-in shower, will not shed. Already held. **Answers, then results.** The few things that fit, with the reason each is there. **The same Echo underneath.** Visitors and AI agents read one record, so they cannot disagree. **Nothing to keep current.** No second record to update or switch on. **Empty searches.** Every unanswered question, kept as a list. **Cranstons Cumbrian Food Hall** A Cumbrian food hall and deli, connecting through its own WooCommerce shop, via Visit Keswick. **Casa Bella** A Keswick restaurant, now readable by an agent in real time, through Visit Keswick. ## Keep the question, and the sale, on your site. Answer the question where the visitor is standing and they have no reason to leave. It may be the cheapest sale you make all week. Every question your site cannot answer is kept, showing what people wanted and what you sell but never said. ## Worth reading next The latest on how AI agents actually work, written as it happens. **The request behind your booking button is what matters.** A booking button helps a person start a journey. An agent needs to establish the terms of a specific request, know what it may do and carry the relevant context into the next step. **Someone asks for a dog-friendly stay in October. What happens next?** A dog-friendly stay in October sounds like a simple filter until an AI agent tries to act on it. What happens next depends on details a first-pass search never asks for. **How much does an agent need to know before it can buy?** Not everything. An AI agent working through a booking request doesn't need a business's full history, it needs the small number of facts that resolve the specific thing the person asked for. A page with forty things to say and none of them the right one loses to a page with three. ## Does this replace the search already on our website? It can sit behind your current search box or arrive as a new one. Either way, visitors can ask in a sentence and receive an answer from the same Echo outside AI agents read, without guessing your catalogue's exact keywords or categories. **What is an Echo?** Your Echo is the structured record behind your Selfe. It holds products, rooms, rates, stock, rules and evidence as sourced facts an agent can use individually, rather than leaving them buried in pages. **Do we have to rewrite all our pages for this?** No. Selfe structures what is already there and shows what is missing or contradictory. You may choose to clarify a gap, but it does not depend on rewriting the site into machine-written copy. **How accurate is Selfe?** Selfe does not present every claim as certain. Each important fact carries its source, freshness and confidence. When sources disagree or evidence is missing, it shows the gap and follows your rule. It can use the best-supported answer, hold it back or ask you. **Will every AI surface show the same thing?** Not word for word; each surface decides how to answer. What stays consistent is the record it can check: the same product, policy, availability and sources. Selfe tracks what each surface has read, so disagreement can be traced rather than guessed at. ## Act on this - [Check whether an agent can buy from you](https://selfe.ai/agentic-commerce/buyability-check) — the free readiness scan. - [Discover venues](https://selfe.ai/api/registry/discover) — `POST`, semantic browse across the registry. - [Match a bookable answer](https://selfe.ai/api/registry/match) — `POST` with dates and party size. - [Verify Selfe's identity](https://selfe.ai/.well-known/did.json) — `did:web:selfe.ai`. - [Agent card](https://selfe.ai/.well-known/agent-card.json) — how to connect over A2A or MCP.