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Search Isn’t Dead By A Long Shot, But It Is Getting Crowded
There’s a lot of noise right now about how AI is changing search, and it’s not all wrong. Tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s new AI Overviews are reshaping how people find answers, trust content, and make decisions online. AI Overviews alone now show up in about 13% of search results (Semrush).
But here’s the nuance that often gets lost: traditional search isn’t going anywhere.
Google still holds about 90% of global search engine market share (StatCounter).
So while things are shifting, it’s not a clean break.
It’s an expansion.
In every training I teach and every podcast I’m invited to, this topic comes up: Do I need to change my strategy for ChatGPT? Is SEO still worth it now that AI Overviews exist?
These are fair questions. But most businesses don’t need a dramatic pivot. What they need is to double down on what already works: brand reputation, clean content structure, natural language, and smart use of schema markup.
I’ve been watching this evolve in real time across my clients’ sites.
LLM and AI Overview traffic is still a small slice, but it’s creeping upward.
And the foundations that support traditional search visibility? They’re also what position you to show up in these newer tools.
This moment isn’t about totally ditching your SEO strategy.
It is about making sure it works across a more complex ecosystem.
Organic visibility today means showing up in multiple systems, not just ranking on Google.
The Three Search Systems That Matter
There’s no single way people find content anymore. Depending on the platform and the person search can look very different. But most search-based discovery today falls into one of three buckets:
- Traditional Search (Google rankings): This is the system you’re already familiar with. Google uses page-based ranking to determine which content surfaces first. And despite all the AI chatter, it still owns about 90% of global search traffic (StatCounter).
- AI Overviews (Google’s summary layer): These are the auto-generated summaries that now show up at the top of some search results. They’re not rankings—they’re curated composites. Google pulls snippets from multiple sources to answer the query directly.
- LLM Search Tools (like ChatGPT, Perplexity): These tools don’t rank or summarize, they generate answers. Some pull from live content (like Perplexity), others rely on training data. Either way, they’re becoming another place people go when they want answers fast.
Each system decides what to show based on different signals.
If you want to be found, you need to understand what they’re looking for.
The Elephant in the Room: Are AI Overviews Stealing My Clicks?
Let’s not pretend they’re not. AI Overviews are absolutely changing how users engage with search results and click-through rates are taking a hit.
How much of a hit are we talking?
- Ahrefs analyzed 300,000 keywords and found that when an AI Overview is present, the top-ranking result sees a 34.5% drop in CTR compared to similar queries without one (Ahrefs).
- Mail Online saw their desktop CTR fall from 13% to less than 5%, and mobile CTR drop from 20% to 7%. That’s a 56% and 48% reduction, respectively (Press Gazette).
- Similarweb data suggests a roughly 20% decrease in clicks across the board when AI Overviews show up. (Search Engine Roundtable)
Are some types of searches more affected than others? Yes. AI Overviews mostly appear for informational queries—the “how” and “why” questions. They’re far less common for transactional or commercial searches like “buy hiking boots online.” (Blend B2B)
Semrush confirms that 88.1% of the queries triggering AI Overviews are informational. (Semrush)
So should you panic? No. Adjust? Yes.
There’s emerging evidence that while fewer people are clicking through, the ones who do may be more engaged.
According to Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge:
“We’re definitely seeing that the traffic you do get is more engaged. By the time they’ve done three more interactions with AI and then clicked on my website, they’re much better qualified. So, the engagement metrics, like time on site and conversion rates, are up.” (WIRED)
In other words: yes, clicks are down, but clicks aren’t gone. And the ones that remain may be even more valuable.
What Each System Prioritizes (And How to Show Up)
Each search system—traditional Google rankings, AI Overviews, and LLM tools—uses different logic to decide what to surface. So if you want to show up, you need to understand how each one thinks.
What Google Still Wants: Authority and Structure
Traditional search is the system you’re already familiar with. Google crawls and ranks individual pages based on how well they answer a specific query.
So yes, your SEO basics still matter: clear keywords, solid structure, internal links, and technical foundations.
But in addition to this SEO basics, brand reputation plays a increasingly big role, too.
Websites that get linked to, talked about, and consistently show up with helpful content are more likely to rank. That’s always been true, but it’s even more important now that Google’s juggling more types of content than ever.
What AI Overviews Want: Clarity and Credibility
AI Overviews flip the model. Google’s not ranking anymore, it’s assembling.
Instead of picking one top page, it’s pulling snippets from different sites to build a composite answer.
You don’t need to win the whole query. You just need one snippet that’s clear, structured, and credible enough to be included.
Formatting helps. Schema helps. But the biggest factor? Clarity.
If your content is well-organized and easy to scan, you’re giving Google exactly what it needs to pull you into that overview.
And yes, authority still matters. Google favors sources it already trusts.
Nearly half of all links in AI Overviews come from the top 10 organic results. If you’re in position one, your chances of being featured jump to 53% (Rich Sanger).
What LLMs Look For: Depth and Natural Language
LLM search, like ChatGPT and Perplexity, is a different beast.
These tools don’t rank or summarize. They generate responses based on either trained data or real-time retrieval.
They tend to reference content that’s clear, deep, and written in natural language.
The kind of content that actually answers questions, not just for Google, but for a human reading it. Take the time to research what your audience is searching for, in their own words.
Blog posts tend to do well here, especially when your brand shows up in other places too: backlinks from authoritative websites, podcast mentions, citations.
According to Previsible, 75% of LLM referrals go to blogs. But it’s not spread evenly. Finance dominates over 90% of AI-referred traffic.
And the users? Men dominate desktop ChatGPT usage. Women only overtake men in the 25–34 and 55+ age brackets.
If your audience is women in their 40s or 50s, Google Search probably still brings you more visibility (Previsible).
This Isn’t Precision Surgery. It’s Strategy for Real People
It’s tempting to treat these updates like a checklist: optimize for traditional search here, optimize for AI Overviews there, and throw in some natural language for ChatGPT.
But real-world visibility doesn’t work like that. Your audience isn’t using just one of these tools.
They’re bouncing between Google, AI Overviews, and whatever link a chatbot drops into their group text.
And depending on your industry, your audience might not be engaging with AI tools at all…yet.
The lion’s share of LLM traffic right now is happening in a few specific niches, like finance and tech. For everyone else? Google still dominates.
What actually works is creating content that’s flexible: That is, content that can rank well, be pulled into a summary, and be referenced in a generative response, without you needing to write three different versions of it.
Google’s not dead. It’s just got company now.
GENERATIVE SEARCH OPTIMIZATION: HOW TO OPTIMIZE FOR AI SEARCH
Here’s where we bring it all together.
If you want your content to show up—on Google, in AI Overviews, and inside tools like ChatGPT—you don’t need to triple your workload.
You need to create content that works across all three systems. Some in the SEO industry call this Generative Search Optimization (GSO).
Whether you’re onboard with another acronym or not, that means:
- Prioritize clarity. Make your point fast, and make it easy to find.
- Structure your content so both humans and machines can follow it.
- Use schema code where it makes sense. It won’t help everywhere, but it can make a difference, especially for summaries and featured answers.
- Think like your reader. LLMs tend to surface content that mirrors natural language, so write the way people actually talk.
- And don’t forget to close the loop. If your blog is where people land, make sure it’s also where they convert. Clear calls to action, smart internal links, and lead capture still matter.
This isn’t about playing the algorithm. You literally can’t anymore.
It’s about creating content that’s helpful, trustworthy, and easy to use, wherever someone’s searching.
Closing Thoughts: Optimize Like a Realist
Every time something new shows up in the search results, the instinct is to rewrite everything.
Rethink your whole strategy. Start from scratch.
But here’s the thing: most of what matters hasn’t changed. Not really.
Search is still about helping people find clear, trustworthy answers. That’s true whether they’re reading a blog post, skimming an AI-generated summary, or asking a chatbot the same question three different ways.
If anything, the rise of AI in search just makes the gaps in your content more obvious. If your site is vague, hard to parse, or floating in a vacuum with no authority—yeah, you’ll probably feel the shift.
But if you’ve been writing useful content, organizing it well, and showing up consistently? You’re not behind. You’re prepared.
So no, you don’t need to overhaul your strategy.
You just need to make it impossible to miss.
Want help getting started?
Future-proof your SEO strategy by creating the content your audience is actually searching for.
SEO Simplified will help you identify the words your audience is typing into the search bar, so you can show up with purpose, clarity, and confidence.
References Discussing AI, LLMs and The Future Search
Semrush AI Overviews Study: What 2025 SEO Data Tells Us About Google’s Search Shift
Semrush analyzed over 10 million keywords to assess the impact of AI Overviews on search
AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 34.5%
Google AI Overviews leads to dramatic reduction in clickthroughs for Mail Online
More Studies Show AI Overviews Harm Google Click Through Rates
How will Google AI Overviews impact your website and business?
With AI Mode, Google Search Is About to Get Even Chattier
The Rise of LLM Traffic: An AI SEO Study About the Future of Search
Google AI Overview Study: Link Selection Based on Related Queries
Semrush AI Overviews Study: What 2025 SEO Data Tells Us About Google’s Search Shift
