Impact of Generative AI on Search Engine Optimization

RIP SEO. Today was the first time Google automatically pushed me into AI Mode for a basic search. I wasn’t on Labs. I didn’t opt in. No blue links. Just a clean AI-generated answer, with no website listings in sight. This isn’t an experimental feature hidden away anymore. It’s becoming the new default in our #AnswerEconomy. As someone who’s spent 20+ years leading web strategy and SEO efforts, I’ve never seen such a dramatic shift in how information is presented for search. We began moving beyond traditional SEO to GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) in late 2023. ChatGPT’s launch three years ago shifted the web from a search economy to an answer economy. At first, it felt like a challenge to Google’s dominance. (The number I’ve seen most often is that Google owns about 90% of the search market.) Last year, I asked myself whether “Google it” would still be a verb in 10 years. Now, after seeing Google’s AI Mode in action, I think the answer is yes, but not in the way we’re used to. The traditional cluttered Google search results page is being replaced by an AI-first interface. If your content isn’t structured, factual, and optimized for AI engines, you risk becoming invisible. The future isn’t just about ranking first. It’s about being the trusted source the AI quotes. No clicks. No CTRs. Just answers. Welcome to the next era of search. #SEO #GEO #AIEO #AIsearch #DigitalStrategy #ContentMarketing #GenerativeAI #SearchRevolution #DigitalMarketing #Marketing

It will happen slowly, then all of a sudden. Your customers will shift how they search for information about your products. They will use: 1) Decision engines like Google, designed to help them compare products, confirm product details and make purchases. 2) Information engines like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews that feel more like a conversation with a trusted expert or knowledgable friend. Traditional search engines hand you a research project — many pages to sift through to find the information you seek. Generative AI search engines give you direct answers — with a chance of hallucination and inaccuracies. Here's what marketers need to understand: 🔹 Acknowledge the shift: Your customers are learning how/when to use two different types of search engines. There's the traditional "decision engine" like Google, and the "information engine" like chatGPT. 🔹 Accept that humans are lazy: Humans will choose the most convenient option. It’s human nature. Your customers prefer speed and convenience over absolute precision. 🔹 Information queries are moving to AI: When your customers want to learn about their problems, they’ll have conversations with AI instead of reading your blog posts. If your brand isn't appearing in these AI responses, you're becoming invisible to a growing audience. 🔹 Prepare for reduced website traffic: Expect fewer visits from basic informational queries as AI handles these directly. However, the traffic you do receive will be higher-intent visitors, closer to making a decisions, that should convert better. 🔹 Update your content strategy: Create different content for different search engines — intent-targeted informational content for generative AI search, and conversion-focused content for traditional search. 🔹 Build content AI can't summarize: Create interactive content, like calculators and data-driven content that requires user input. This ensures your brand stays visible even as AI handles informational queries. 🔹 Focus on intent, not keywords: The old approach of targeting high-volume keywords is outdated. Instead, understand and align with your customers' search intentions. The key takeaway? Humans are lazy. Your customers will consistently choose the convenience of direct answers from generative AI, even if those answers are sometimes inaccurate. They want to avoid sifting through pages of search results. As marketers, we need to adapt to this new reality. We must create content that caters to both types of searches: (1) content that helps your brand appear in generative AI responses for informational queries and (2) content that attracts and converts for decision searches on traditional search engines. How are you starting to search differently with generative AI?

Organic search is changing. Quietly, but meaningfully. Since Google rolled out AI Overviews, we’ve seen a clear shift. Visibility is up. Rankings are stable. But clicks are down. The summary box answers more questions before users ever reach your site. That changes how traffic flows - and how we think about SEO. Here’s what we’re seeing in the data, and what we’re doing about it. What We’re Seeing in Our Data We anticipated this shift early and have already been aligning our SEO strategy with how AI-driven search behaves, focusing on visibility, authority, and influence across both traditional and generative platforms. The chart below (from GSC, excluding branded keywords) tells a clear story: Impressions are rising sharply. We're now at our highest level of visibility since January 2024. But clicks are steadily declining, even though rankings haven't dropped. This means we're showing up more often in searches, but users aren’t clicking through like they used to. This trend began around the launch of Google's AI Overviews in May and has since accelerated. A good example is a high-difficulty keyword where we recently reached the #1 position (Ecommerce SMS Marketing). While traditional clicks are lower, this ranking still gets us featured as the first citation in the AI Overview, which boosts brand exposure and keeps Yotpo part of the answer. In this new environment, presence and influence matter as much as clicks. The Industry Is Feeling It Too We’re not alone in this. Multiple industry studies and leaders are sounding the alarm: Ahrefs found a 34.5% drop in CTR when AI Overviews appear on a search result. Search Engine Land reports publishers losing up to 37.04% of clicks in affected queries. Cloudflare’s CEO warns the shift is "killing the open web" - Google now sends 1 visit per 18 crawled pages, compared to 1 in 2 ten years ago. The biggest impact? On Informational, non-branded queries. What We’re Doing About It Doubling down on ranking visibility - because top placement matters, especially for being cited in AI summaries. Launching LLM optimization with AI trackers & optimization tools - to ensure our content shows up (and gets attributed) in AI-driven answers. Investing in content AI can't replace - like calculators, success stories, and use-case-specific pages that drive engagement beyond what Google’s AI can summarize. While the metrics are evolving, SEO remains a key pillar for discoverability, brand credibility, and long-term growth. We’re embracing the change - not just reacting to it. Curious to hear how your team is planning for this shift. Kudos to Amit for surfacing this one.

74% of "how-to" queries now show AI Overviews instead of organic results. But that's not even the most shocking shift in search. A groundbreaking study by First Page Sage reveals something even more disruptive: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity are becoming the new gatekeepers to your customers. Welcome to the era of GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). Here's what's happening: When someone asks an AI chatbot "What's the best CRM software?" or "Who are the top marketing agencies?" - they're getting recommendations not from Google, but from AI. And the algorithm is completely different. FirstPageSage analyzed 11,128 commercial queries across the top 4 AI chatbots. The results? Mind-blowing. Here's what ACTUALLY determines AI recommendations: For ChatGPT (61.3% market share): • Authoritative list mentions: 41% • Awards & accreditations: 18% • Online reviews: 16% • Customer examples: 14% • Social sentiment: 11% For Google Gemini (13.3% market share): • Authoritative list mentions: 49% • Google website authority: 23% • Awards & accreditations: 15% • Online reviews: 13% For local businesses, it's even more fascinating: • Local business reviews: 38% • Authoritative list mentions: 29% • Online reviews: 19% This changes EVERYTHING about digital marketing. While you've been obsessing over keyword density and backlinks, your competitors might be securing spots on "top 10" lists that rank highly on Google. Why? Because when ChatGPT gets asked about your industry, it's scanning those lists to make recommendations. What this means for your business: 1. Create and rank "best of" lists that include your company (This influences 41-64% of AI recommendations!) 2. Showcase awards, certifications, and affiliations prominently (Influences 15-19% of recommendations) 3. Generate positive reviews on trusted platforms (Influences 13-31% of recommendations) 4. Publish customer case studies and usage data (Influences 13-14% of recommendations) 5. Monitor and improve social sentiment (Influences 11% of ChatGPT recommendations) The companies that master GEO now will dominate the next generation of search. Those who don't might disappear from the customer journey entirely. Our AI Agent can help you analyze your GEO potential in minutes: • Scan for list inclusion opportunities • Identify award and certification gaps • Analyze review sentiment across platforms • Generate a complete GEO strategy The future of search isn't coming. It's already here. Are you ready? Source: FirstPageSage's Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Study (link in comments)

Forbes estimates 60%+ of organic traffic is being effected due to the introduction of AI summaries, the adoption of LLMs, and ultimately the changes in SEO. I recently spoke at Affiliate Summit East on the emergence of AI and the impact to eCommerce. I touched on SEO and the move to SGE (search generative experience), the issues facing identity capture and noise created by bots as well as AI-generated content, and how content goes viral with changes to TikTok & Meta's algorithms. Sharing some of the learnings (and slides) on AI summaries and rankings: Impact - Google's AI summaries can take up to 3 full mobile scrolls or 2 desktop scrolls (1500 pixels) - LLM search went from 0.25% of traffic to 2.25% in <12mo - 60% of organic site traffic is impacted meaning the CTR drops aka people do not end up landing on your site. How to adapt - SEO & SGE are underpinned by the same recipe: content. - How to show up as the featured AI summary or authority? 1. Create unique content and lots of it 2. Build contextual content At Checkmate we get 1.5M+ unique visitors/week to our public-facing product pages. We also are featured on 1700 ChatGPT pages. How we were able to do that is by pulling in long-form structured content for the products we help sell as well as using LLMs to generate some unique content. For those in eCommerce I featured Stanley 1913 with what I think as a really strong product pages that rank well for SGE. If you look at any of their products they have extremely rich, unique content. They leverage product descriptions, product specs, related other products, reviews (not hidden or collapsed) & FAQs. For SGE shorter isn't better, the more unique content the generally better the indexing. Stanley 1913 also has a really strong formatting structure with clear H1, H2 tags, and containers. You have to remember if a bot can't make sense of the text then it won't surface in AI summaries. This will also be extremely important in the future of agentic commerce. 2. Building contextual content The way people are searching is moving from "black shoes" to "best shoes for running a marathon". Context is key. To be able to show up in LLMs or AI summaries, you need to associate your products within that context. 3 easy ways to do that: 1. Create and leverage a PR strategy 2. Build your own written contextual information in a blog on your website 3. Contribute/invest to review sites If you are able to both create unique content with a strong structure and build contextual content AI summaries and LLMs can be a great source of traffic. It is early days so investing in content and structure is a must. Drop me a note if you have other tips you see working or other brands doing it well!

Now that SEO is "over," GEO, or generative engine optimization, is rapidly taking its place. Can you really optimize an entire brand (or individual pieces of content) for AI results? Absolutely, yes: if you can believe what ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude are telling you. Unlike in years past, when SEO algorithms were a heavily guarded fortress, AI tools aren’t interested in gatekeeping the critical info about what makes content "win" in results. Today, you can ask ask Gen AI tools specifically which sources across the digital ecosystem they're looking at, reviewing, and weighting to produce answers for users, the tools will tell you in explicit detail. To test it out, try this prompt (just customize it for your brand and specific need): "I work in brand marketing for a HR SaaS company. When evaluating the user query 'what is the best CRM for a human resources SaaS startup' what are the top 5-7 types of information or sources you consider most influential from across the digital ecosystem? For each, please explain why it is a significant factor in your analysis, detailing the specific aspects or signals within that source that you find particularly informative. How might the relative importance and the specific informative aspects within these factors shift for different types of queries? I'm using this info to allocate my budget and time resources so that my company is served up as the result when people ask this question. Can you also provide me with weighting (a percentage) for each response?” For me, the answer broke down like this: • Authoritative Software Review Sites (e.g., G2, Capterra, TrustRadius) Weight: 30% • Google SERP Features & Aggregators (e.g., Listicles from TechRadar, HubSpot, PCMag, Zapier) Weight: 25% • SEO-Optimized, Use-Case-Targeted Content on Your Own Site Weight: 15% • YouTube & Video Content Weight: 10% • Peer Forums and Communities e.g., Reddit, Indie Hackers, Product Hunt, Slack/LinkedIn groups) Weight: 10% • Affiliate & Influencer Content (e.g., SaaS-specific creators, comparison blogs, newsletters) Weight: 10% Having this breakdown tells me exactly where I should spend my time, effort and budget for this specific query. After seeing this, I'd put more effort into rewarding my customers for reviewing the product on G2, and I might pull back on slightly on influencer content or YouTube videos. Try this prompt with your own sample term (something your brand wants to win) and let me know what you think. Which tool gave you the most helpful results? Any hallucinations or responses that don't align with your thinking?

It’s finally begun. The ‘Age of GEO’ (Generative Engine Optimization) is here. I went to see what Chat GPT would generate after I typed a prompt asking for some hat recommendations. I was given: → A curated list of options → Images of the products → Buy buttons that took me straight to the PDP → And personalized reasons why each product might be a good fit for me This was all inside ChatGPT. No Google search. No clicking through pages. No SEO needed. We’re entering a world where ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini are the first stop for product discovery, content, and decision-making. If your brand isn’t referenced, cited, or structured clearly, you’re invisible. Here’s what’s changing: 👇 • Traditional SEO ≠ Generative visibility • Rankings matter less than references • Keyword-stuffing won’t help if you’re not cited • LLMs favor clear, structured, sourceable content • Sites need to be optimized for AI comprehension, not just humans How to prepare: 1. Audit how your brand appears in AI-generated answers 2. Optimize content for clarity, structure, and sourceability 3. Get cited by trusted third-party sources 4. Treat LLMs like a new distribution channel, not just a tool The shift is from search engines → answer engines. GEO is the new SEO.

I've been saying this for a while now: AI Overviews are quietly killing your web traffic. Now new data from Pew Research confirms what many of us in marketing have already seen: Google’s AI Overviews are slashing clicks to websites. 📉 Pages without AI summaries see a 15% click rate 📉 Pages with AI summaries? Just 8% 📉 Clicks on sources cited in AI Overviews? Only 1% Google claims AI is creating “new opportunities” for traffic. The reality? AI is answering your customer’s questions in AI results. We’re in a new search era, one where visibility in AI Overviews might matter more than traditional rankings. If your brand isn’t being cited in AI responses from Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude, you’re invisible in the very spot users are now ending their search journey. Want to show up where the clicks are disappearing? This is what Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is all about, and why I created a course on get your brand AI visible and why I've been shouting it from the rooftops.