How AI Will Affect SEO (Based on Real Data)

AI affects SEO in 2 major ways:

1) It changes how users search and how search results are presented

2) It changes how we execute SEO tasks.

Everyone is excited about the second, but everyone is worried about the first.

This article will primarily focus on how AI is changing SEO… based on facts we actually know, so you can prepare your website and business for the AI future.

(If you’re more interested in AI workflows, check out this guide on 18 ways to use AI for SEO.)

Feel free to skip ahead:

• AI-Powered Conversational Search is on the Rise (But Far from Taking Over)
• Search is Becoming More Personal
• AI Decreases Traffic (But Increases Traffic and Lead Quality)
• Search Rankings are the Top AI Results Factor
• Traffic from LLMs is Harder to Track
• Google is Committed to Keeping Websites Alive

AI-Powered Conversational Search is on the Rise (But Far from Taking Over)

AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are reshaping how people search for information online. These tools can answer questions, summarize research, and even synthesize insights from thousands of sources in seconds (as Google co-founder Sergey Brin recently pointed out). 

ChatGPT currently commands 80% of the traffic in the emerging AI search space, while Google’s own AI efforts currently account for just 5.6%.

So does this mean AI is about to dethrone Google? Not so fast.

Why This Matters for SEO Pros and Marketers

The reality is: Google still dwarfs non-Google AI search in volume and influence. Google handles 373 times more searches than ChatGPT today.

Even when it comes to traffic impact, AI chatbots make up just a small slice of the pie. 

A recent study of 35,000 sites found that AI chatbots drive just 0.1% of referral traffic — and that’s mostly limited to U.S. audiences in business sectors. Compare that to the top traffic sources:

• Search: 44%
• Direct: 42%
• Social: 13%

The bottom line: Google Search is evolving, not disappearing. 

Most recently, Google has launched AI Mode in the US to give other AI chatbots a run for their money.

AI Mode now offers smarter, deeper, and more personalized results, blending traditional SERP listings with AI-powered insights that analyze and synthesize thousands of pages in seconds.

Search is Becoming More Personal

AI is making search experiences more tailored than ever, and Google’s new AI Mode is leading the way. 

Soon, AI Mode will not only synthesize information from across the web, but it’ll also personalize results based on your own search history and, if you choose, data from other Google apps.

With personal context enabled, AI Mode could surface things like:

• Restaurant recommendations based on your past reservations and dining searches
• Event suggestions aligned with your interests
• Location-based tips tied to your flight and hotel confirmations (pulled from Gmail)

Google says they’ll clearly indicate when personal context is being used in your results.

Why This Matters for SEO Pros and Marketers

Personalized AI search is changing how and why certain content is displayed. Instead of purely ranking pages based on keywords and links, Google is factoring in what matters to each user (preferences, habits, context, etc.).

That means relevance at the individual level will be more important than ever for SEO.

AI Decreases Traffic (But Increases Traffic and Lead Quality)

AI Overviews have become one of the biggest shifts in SEO today because of how it changes how users interact with search. 

On one hand, they reduce clicks to traditional websites. On the other? They may improve lead quality for businesses that do get clicks.

Google has admitted AI Overviews reduce total traffic but increase the quality of the remaining traffic, meaning conversions may hold steady even as volume drops.

Recent data backs this up:

• 90% of B2B tech buyers still click through to sources shown in AI Overviews
• 72% encounter AI Overviews during product research

But the losses are real:

• AI Overviews slashed search clicks by ~30% over the past year
• Ahrefs found a 34.5% drop in click-through rate (CTR) for top-ranking pages when AI Overviews appear
• CTR for informational queries has fallen as much as 44.6% compared to pre-AI patterns
• NerdWallet reported a 29% YoY traffic decline, even as it claims a “high share” of AI traffic

These impacts hit content-heavy, informational sites the hardest. 99.2% of AI Overview triggers are for informational keywords.

Why This Matters for SEO Pros and Marketers

Even if you’re ranked #1, AI Overviews will steal your clicks by summarizing the answer before users ever visit your site. 

The AI Overview is essentially a super-featured snippet, citing multiple sources (often 4–28 links), which dilutes your visibility and increases zero-click outcomes.

Meanwhile, Google is supporting its own ecosystem:

• 43.4% of AI Overview links point to other Google pages
• Users now click 10 times within Google before exiting to another site
• AI Overviews already appear in ~30% of searches, especially longer-tail, low-volume, and medium-difficulty keywords

Search Rankings are the Top AI Results Factor

One of the biggest questions in SEO right now: Does your search ranking influence whether AI tools cite your content?

Short answer: Yes.

We ran a mini-study across major AI tools to see exactly how Google and Bing rankings impact AI visibility — and while the results weren’t identical across platforms, one pattern was clear: Rankings matter a lot.

ChatGPT Favors Bing Rankings

Here’s something surprising: ChatGPT’s web-based results are more influenced by Bing than Google — likely because both ChatGPT and Bing are Microsoft products.

• 63% of top-ranking Bing pages showed up in ChatGPT’s sources for the same search term.
• Only 45% of top-ranking Google pages made it in.
  

Takeaway: If you want to boost your visibility in ChatGPT’s web results, improving your Bing rankings may actually help more than focusing solely on Google.

Perplexity and Gemini Lean More on Google Results

For other major AI tools: Google still dominates.

• On Perplexity, 63% of Google’s #1 results were cited — compared to only 29% of Bing’s.
• Gemini was more selective: just 20% of Google’s #1 pages appeared, and only 16% of Bing’s.

AI Results are Unpredictable — Especially for Local Searches

One consistent finding across all tools: AI sometimes does its own thing.

In our test of 51 search terms:

• 12 top-ranking Google or Bing pages didn’t appear in ChatGPT at all.
• In some cases, neither Google nor Bing’s #1 result showed up in any AI outputs across ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity.

This unpredictability was most common on searches with local intent, where AI engines often blended different sources or skipped traditional top results.

For B2B results: Blogs are Still King

Across all four major AI engines — ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews — one thing is clear for B2B queries: Blogs are the top-cited source.

If you’re in the B2B space, maintaining high-quality blog content is still one of the most effective ways to earn AI visibility — especially for the complex, information-rich queries that drive AI interactions.

Traffic from LLMs is Harder to Track

Tracking search traffic is getting trickier — fast. As AI Mode and LLM-driven search results reshape Google’s SERPs, it’s becoming harder to see where your clicks are really coming from.

Google recently confirmed that AI Mode traffic will be included in Search Console’s Performance report — but it won’t be broken out from traditional search clicks. That means you’ll see blended data, without clear visibility into how AI Overviews or other AI surfaces are affecting your site.

It’ll also be harder to track people who find your company in an AI result, then separately search for your website.

Why This Matters for SEO Pros and Marketers

You can’t optimize what you can’t see. Without separate reporting for AI traffic, it’s harder to pinpoint which pages are benefiting (or losing out) from AI-driven search changes.

But there’s an interesting twist: homepage traffic seems to be rising, even as overall search clicks decline.

In a new study from Siege Media:

• Homepage clicks increased 10.7% overall
• B2B sites saw a 15% homepage traffic boost
• B2C sites gained 8%
  

Why? It looks like users who see AI-generated summaries are choosing to visit brand homepages directly, seeking validation and trustworthy sources, rather than relying solely on AI content or deep content pages.

But the caveat: non-brands are still struggling. As the report bluntly states: “If you weren’t a brand, this change hasn’t suddenly made you one.”

Google is Committed to Keeping Websites Alive

With all the buzz about AI Overviews and conversational search, it’s easy to wonder: Are websites on the way out? According to Google’s leadership — absolutely not.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently emphasized that AI will enhance — not replace — Search and the open web over the next decade. AI is already deeply embedded in Google Search, and future iterations (like SGE and AI Mode) will continue to build on the web, not bypass it.

Pichai also made it a point to emphasize that Google is sending more traffic to websites than ever, but it’s sending to a wider range of websites.

Why This Matters for SEO Pros and Marketers

There’s a lot of fear that AI might “eat” all SEO traffic. But Google’s vision is different:

• Websites will remain central to how users access trustworthy information
• AI summaries will still cite and drive traffic to web content
• SGE is an enhanced search experience — not a chatbot
• Google continues evolving beyond “10 blue links” (but that evolution still depends on the web)

AI Overviews increasingly pull citations from deep in the SERPs:

• 4x more citations from positions 21–30
• 2x more from positions 31–100
• 89% of citations now come from beyond the top 100

But here’s the catch: users only read the top third of AI Overviews, and what they trust often outweighs pure ranking relevance.

Final Thoughts

Search and SEO aren’t going anywhere.

It’s evolving fast, but one thing is clear:

AI is giving searchers more specific results than ever before.

So instead of focusing on getting tons of clicks (like many SEOs have been doing for years), it’s time to focus on optimizing websites for our specific ICP (ideal customer profile).

This includes creating content that bridges the gap between what your ICP searches and your company.

We should be tracking our website’s rankings on Google and Bing. But we should also be tracking the visibility of other places where our company lives on the web, like our social media and listings on other websites that will show our authority and relevance in our industry (aka good backlinks).

AI will look at our presence AND positioning on the web as a whole.