Our take on the future of search: SEO, GEO, and beyond

We’re living through the biggest transformation in search since Google launched in 1998.

You’ve seen the headlines: “SEO is dead.” “Google Zero is coming.” “How to rank #1 in ChatGPT search.” Is your site ‘LLM-ready?’’

It’s confusing, overwhelming, and hard to know what’s hype versus reality. But here’s the truth: modern, reader-first SEO also prepares you for the new world of AI search.

SEO is not dead. It’s expanding and evolving—fast. 

My team and I are immersed in this shift every day. We also see the so-called experts trying to sell you GEO as a shiny, new distraction. We remain optimistic about the future of the web, bullish on the role of creators, and confident in our proven strategies to grow your traffic.

Here’s what’s really happening:

• More searches, new behaviors: The volume of searches is exploding as people can ask things they couldn’t before. Most of this behavior is additive to Google, not yet replacing it.
• Decreased click-through rate (CTR): AI Overviews, AI Mode, and other Google changes continue to create more “zero-click” searches.
• New emerging opportunities: Personalized, relevant content will thrive, and opportunities like Google Discover will continue to grow as a source of traffic.

In the midst of all this change, your work as a creator has never been more valuable. We’re here to help you navigate the transition without getting caught up in the noise.

SEO vs. GEO: clearing up the buzzwords

The loudest noise in this evolution is around optimizing for AI-powered search engines and answer engines. You’re being bombarded with buzzwords, and the industry is tangled up in marketing acronyms instead of looking at reality. 

Let’s unpack (and debunk) it all, starting with the latest terminology: 

• GEO: generative engine optimization 
• AEO: answer engine optimization
• AI SEO: artificial intelligence search engine optimization
• LLM SEO: large language model SEO
• LMNOPEO: a joke, courtesy of Google’s Danny Sullivan

Do we believe there will be new approaches and tactics that help you rank across these platforms? Yes.

Do we think you should change your strategy today? No.

All of the modern SEO principles we’ve always emphasized—writing for your readers, focusing on E-E-A-T, and improving content quality—are the same things that will help you show up across any of the AI search platforms.

Meanwhile, anyone claiming that “content chunking” or “clarity of content” are groundbreaking concepts that will somehow hack your way to the top of the AI results is selling you snake oil. We’re closely monitoring any data that would support adjusting your strategy, but for now we strongly recommend staying focused on the fundamentals.

Don’t forget—ChatGPT makes up less than 0.2% of our network traffic today. Optimizing for micro-slices of traffic isn’t a strategy.

What’s actually changing in search?

The rise of AI tools radically shifted search from a “blue links” world to an “answer-first” world, which is prominent in these key AI search experiences:

• AI Overviews (AIO): Launched in May 2024, these AI-generated summaries are Google’s most visible change, often answering queries directly at the top of results.
  
• AI Mode: Introduced in June 2025, it expands AI Overviews into an experience, with deeper reasoning, multimodal responses, and richer summaries—but very few links out to the web.
  
• Web Guide: Announced in June 2025, but still in Labs testing, this is Google’s “organized results” experiment. It considers search intent, includes rewritten recommendations, and heavily features links.
  
• ChatGPT and other LLM search tools: ChatGPT is by far the biggest, but Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, and others are reshaping how people find and consume information.

These experiences are changing daily, reshaping the ecosystem, and impacting each of you in meaningful ways. Based on the data we’re tracking and trends we’re watching, three important things stand out: searches are going up, CTR is going down, and new opportunities are emerging.

Searches are exploding

People are asking more questions than ever across both Google and AI-powered tools, but the latest data shows that most AI search queries are additive to Google. 

Research from SparkToro and SEMrush shares that while ChatGPT usage is increasing, it’s not cannibalizing search behavior. In fact, search usage appears to be growing at the same time! 

That said, all of these changes are still impacting search behavior, expectations, query length, and more.

Remember, we’re in the early stages of AI search, so more data will clarify how search behavior evolves. For now, search is still the biggest source of traffic across our network, so don’t stop paying attention to Google yet.

Click-through rate is declining

While search volume grows, overall click-through rates on Google search results are falling, largely driven by users getting their answers from AI Overviews first, without needing to leave Google. 

This trend is impacting the publishing industry as a whole. According to research from Similarweb, zero-click search grew from 56% to 69% from May 2024 to May 2025.

AI Overviews appear for over 30% of search queries and can impact CTR by 30–40% when they appear. These zero-click searches mean less steady search traffic to your site, fewer ad impressions, and bigger revenue hits.

In our network, this is most evident in non-food verticals. Across a sample of one million keywords:

• Non-food keywords show AI Overviews 26% of the time
• Food keywords show AI Overviews 13% of the time

In fact, recipe keywords have been mostly protected from the impact of AI Overviews. In our sample of around 100,000 keywords containing the word recipe, AI Overviews only showed 0.4% of the time.

This is, in part, because instead of rolling out AI Overviews in the recipe space, Google launched AI-organized search results—a new user interface (mostly confined to the recipe vertical) that uses AI to organize the results and drive clicks out to the web.

New opportunities are emerging

As people ask deeper, more specific questions, platforms like ChatGPT and Google will understand underlying search intent and user needs in richer, more nuanced ways. This means new opportunities for personalized, relevant content to connect with readers, and new ways to thrive and grow. Personally, I believe a lot of our future content consumption will come from recommendations rather than active searches.

Because of this, our team has been spending a lot of time with Google Discover. While clicks from search are declining, Google Discover is growing and often delivers significant traffic volume.

For more on Google Discover, don’t miss our best practices and webinar replay.

Modern SEO still works

Despite all of these changes, modern SEO is still valuable and effective. 

Whatever you call it—GEO, AEO, LLM SEO—building high-quality content for real people on trusted sites is what wins, not tricks or shortcuts. Even Google’s search team has confirmed it: “Good SEO is good GEO.” 

Our data also shows that strong SEO rankings currently correlate with strong AI rankings. We analyzed ~1.5M keywords and found that sites ranking in the top three positions in search results were twice as likely to also rank in AI Overviews results when the feature was present vs. sites that were not already ranking in the top three positions.

The core strategies we share, and the tools we have to support them, remain the best way forward:

• Create original, helpful content that puts readers first
• Strengthen your E-E-A-T and topical authority 
• Publish new content consistently and refresh existing content to keep it relevant
• Prioritize technical health with fast load times, clean structures, and easy navigation
• Build a trusted brand to drive positive sentiment and mentions across the web

And because it’s a common question, we still recommend blocking AI bots. It does not affect your traffic or search rankings, or prevent you from showing up in AI search. 

Why we’re optimistic

This isn’t the first time we’ve heard it’s the end of SEO—and it likely won’t be the last. Remember when:

• Facebook was going to replace Google?
• TikTok search was going to replace Google?
• The future was all about video?

All of those things became big, but traffic from Google also grew during those periods. All of these major new eras have been additive. And every time, creators adapt and opportunities expand.

There’s a lot of change, but great content will always find its audience. Even during this search evolution, our data suggests that users gravitate to high-quality content from sites they trust. We believe AI search will retain that core behavior, and the value of links may re-emerge in new ways across platforms.

In today’s landscape, your voices are essential and powerful. Readers want to go deeper and follow authentic, trusted experts, not generic AI slop. In fact, our recent study on “AI stink” found that when people suspect something was written by AI, they automatically think less of it.

As long as there are readers searching for answers, help, inspiration, and connection, there will be a strong market for you to create and share high-quality content.

Yes, SEO is evolving and expanding. The challenges are real, and so is the opportunity. Our team will stay on top of the developments, and together, we’ll cut through the noise, track and test what’s real, and keep you ahead of the curve.