Is SEO Still Relevant in the Age of AI Search?
Your SEO investment isn’t dead, but if you’re not adapting it for AI search, you’re leaving money on the table.
Part 2 of 3: The Small and Mid-Sized Business’s Guide to AI Search
In Part 1, we explained what GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is and why it matters. In this article, we'll help you diagnose whether AI is actually affecting your traffic and show you why your SEO investment remains valuable. In Part 3, we’ll cover what specific actions to take if AI search is stealing your web traffic.
You've been investing in SEO–maybe for years, maybe more recently–and you’re seeing traffic decline. You're hearing that AI is changing everything about search.
Here’s what you need to know: AI isn’t killing SEO. But it is changing how search works, and that means your approach needs to adapt. This article will help you diagnose what’s actually happening with your traffic and evaluate whether your current strategy is keeping up.
Your SEO Investment Matters More Than Ever
Despite the rise of AI search tools, traditional search engines still dominate. Google processes approximately 8.5 billion searches worldwide every day, and about 40% of those searches still result in clicks on organic and paid results. That's 3.4 billion clicks daily that depend on strong SEO.
But here’s the part most business owners miss: your SEO work also helps you show up in AI search. AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity are trained on web content. If you're not indexed and authoritative on the web, you won't be cited by AI tools either. Your domain authority—your website's credibility in Google's eyes—matters for both traditional search and AI search. The same goes for backlinks (links from other reputable sites to yours) and brand mentions across the web.
Quality content, clear site architecture, and technical health remain essential. AI search engines use almost everything that your website has done to optimize for search engines. SEO built the foundation; AI search optimization (called GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization) builds on top of it.
Your website now has the potential to drive traffic from two different types of platforms: search engines and AI engines. Treat SEO and GEO as complementary and overlapping initiatives. The two work together.
Is AI Search Actually Affecting Your Business?
Before you make any decisions about your marketing strategy, you need to understand what's actually causing your traffic changes. Not all declines are AI-related, and misdiagnosing the problem leads to the wrong solution.
5 Specific Signals That AI Is the Culprit
Here's how to identify whether AI search is your problem:
Traffic drops are concentrated on informational content. If your how-to articles, explainers, comparison guides, and educational content are seeing the sharpest declines, AI is likely the culprit.
Rankings are stable but clicks are down. AI-generated summaries are appearing at the top of search results, answering questions without requiring clicks.
AI Overviews appear on your target keywords. If you run a search for some of your target keywords and see AI-generated summaries at the top of Google, those results are reducing your click-through rates.
Branded searches are up, non-branded searches are down. AI is intercepting your discovery traffic but people who already know your name can still find you.
AI tools answer your prospects' questions without citing you. If ChatGPT or Perplexity provides complete answers without mentioning your brand, you're losing visibility.
What Traffic Loss Actually Means: A Real Client Example
We have an e-commerce client whose organic traffic decreased by about 50% from 2024 to 2025, but sales from organic search remained relatively flat. When we analyzed the data, we found a 0.4 correlation between organic search traffic and organic search sales during this time frame.
This tells us the traffic they lost was the "least productive" traffic: browsers and researchers who weren't converting anyway. This doesn't mean the lost traffic had no value (it built brand awareness and pipeline), but it does mean their measurable bottom line hasn't been significantly impacted.
The lesson: Traffic decline doesn't automatically mean revenue decline. Understanding which traffic you're losing—and why—is critical.
How Different SEO Strategies Are Being Impacted
The impact of AI search varies significantly depending on your SEO strategy:
Informational and research content (blog posts, how-to guides, educational resources): AI tools now provide direct answers without sending traffic unless they're citing you as a source.
Local business searches (Google Business Profile, local citations, location-based content): You're largely protected. People still need physical locations, phone numbers, and hours.
Product and e-commerce searches: Less immediate impact since purchases still happen on websites. However, your how-to content, installation guides, and industry expertise articles are likely generating less traffic.
Thought leadership (original research, proprietary frameworks, unique perspectives): Actually becoming MORE valuable. AI tools preferentially cite recognized authorities.
For a deeper look at which businesses are most negatively impacted by AI search, read our Part 1 article: “What You Need to Know About AI Search.”
New Metrics to Track Beyond Traffic
Track these new metrics to understand traffic patterns in an AI-influenced search landscape:
Brand search volume: People searching specifically for your company name (protected from AI cannibalization)
Citation mentions: Whether AI tools reference your brand when answering relevant queries
Traffic from AI tools: Some AI platforms do send traffic; track whether you're receiving it
Assisted conversions via modeling: Someone discovers you via AI, searches for you directly, then converts
Share of voice in AI answers: Manually test key topics in ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity
Where SEO and AI Search Optimization Overlap (And Where They Differ)
If you've been doing SEO well, you're approximately 70% of the way to effective AI search optimization.
As we covered in Part 1, both SEO and GEO require high-quality, authoritative content, strong technical foundations, and brand recognition. The fundamentals haven't changed.
What this means practically:
You don't need to start over
You're not abandoning SEO best practices
You're refining and adapting, not replacing
The additional work is incremental, not revolutionary
But here's the catch: that 30% difference matters a lot.
What GEO Requires Beyond Traditional SEO
Content structured for machine readability: Chunked formats like lists, tables, FAQs, and clear hierarchies that AI tools can easily parse and cite
Schema markup implementation: Structured data (FAQPage, HowTo, QAPage schemas) that helps machines understand your content
Writing for "answerability": Facts, statistics, and insights that AI tools can extract and cite standalone
Monitoring performance in AI tools: Manually testing key topics in ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity (traditional SEO tools won't show this data yet)
If your team or agency says they're "doing SEO," ask them specifically how they're adapting for GEO. The overlap is significant, but the differences are critical.
The Questions Every CEO Should Be Asking
These are the critical questions to ask about your current approach:
Can you show me definitively whether AI search is affecting our traffic?
Your team should be able to walk you through a diagnostic framework that distinguishes between AI impact, algorithm changes, and other factors.
Are we tracking where AI tools cite our content?
This should be part of regular reporting now. At minimum, your team should be conducting manual audits by searching your key topics in ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity to see if your brand appears in the results.
How are we adapting our content strategy for AI search?
Your team should be able to explain specific structural changes they're making: implementing schema markup, reformatting content with lists and tables, creating FAQ-style content.
What's our traffic trend for branded vs. non-branded searches?
Branded searches (people searching for your company name) are protected from AI cannibalization. Non-branded searches (people finding you through topic searches) are vulnerable. The ratio between these two tells you a lot about your vulnerability to AI search disruption.
If your current team or agency can't answer these questions clearly, you may not have the right expertise, data, or scope in place for this transition. And this transition is happening now—not in some distant future.
What This Means for Your Business
SEO isn't dead, but it's evolving rapidly. Your investment wasn't wasted, but it needs to be adapted. The businesses thriving through this transition aren't the ones with the biggest budgets; they're the ones that understood the shift early and adapted strategically. Now you need to decide: do you have the right expertise and strategy to execute?
Not sure if your current approach is adapted for AI search? Schedule a discovery call.
Up next: In part 3 of this series, we’ll cover the four strategic pillars that protect your business growth even as traffic patterns shift.