AI search is changing how clients find your business
Sixty per cent of searches now end without a click. Users get their answers directly on the results page and never visit a website. For businesses that depend on organic traffic, that’s a problem.
Google’s AI Overviews are the main driver. Research shows they can cause a 15 to 64 per cent decline in organic traffic depending on industry and search type. The AI-generated summary appears at the top of the page, pushing traditional results down by up to 1,500 pixels or roughly three full-screen scrolls on mobile. But most users never scroll that far.
On mobile, it’s especially pronounced. The AI Overview fills nearly the entire screen, with the first organic link almost out of sight. Tap ‘Dive deeper in AI Mode’, and Gemini takes over entirely. Instead of traditional search results, users get pulled into a conversation.
Google AI Overviews: March 2026 updates
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) recently forced Google’s hand. Under pressure from its ‘strategic market status’ designation, Google announced it is developing tools to let websites opt out of AI Overviews while still appearing in traditional search results. The CMA also wants clearer attribution when content is used in AI summaries.
Separately, Google scrapped its ‘What People Suggest’ feature, which presented crowdsourced health advice from forums. The official line from Google says it’s about ‘simplification’ but the timing follows months of scrutiny over misleading medical information in AI-generated search results.
At the end of the day, AI search is useful but the systems pulling answers from across the web don’t always get it right and the sources providing the information don’t always benefit.
Why AI search visibility matters for your business
However, there is a silver lining. While total traffic may drop, the visitors who do click through tend to be further along in their decision-making. They’ve already seen the summary and now they want depth, credibility or to take action. That makes them more valuable.
We’re already seeing this play out. For one client, ChatGPT referrals delivered the highest conversion rate of any traffic source – higher than Google organic and higher than paid. The volume is small for now but the quality is undeniable.
The challenge is making sure your business is visible in those AI-generated answers in the first place. That means strong traditional SEO. Research shows the majority of sources cited in AI Overviews already rank in the organic top ten, combined with content structured so AI systems can extract and cite it clearly.
This is called Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO). It comes down to clarity, authority and being genuinely useful at the point where user decisions are being made.
Our approach to Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)
We now track AI visibility as standard across our SEO work. That means running structured prompts through ChatGPT and Gemini, such as the questions your customers actually ask, and measuring how often your brand appears in the response.
The results speak for themselves. For one local business, we track visibility across 22 query categories and measure citation rates. That’s how many times out of ten the brand gets mentioned, and in what position relative to competitors. That client now has 60 per cent visibility in AI-generated recommendations for their sector, with their average keyword position improving from 9.5 to 1.3 across 19 core search terms.
For a professional services firm, we saw four keywords reach page one within weeks, including one jumping from position 30 to position 1. For another client, new service pages entered rankings at position 2 within a month of publication.
There’s also a first-mover advantage at play. When no competitors are being cited by AI for a specific topic, that’s a gap worth filling. We recently identified one such opportunity for another professional services client in a niche area where AI had no good answer to give.
In each case, the starting point was the same. You need to check where you’re visible in AI search results, find the gaps, and work backwards from there.
Get in touch
If you’re unsure where your business stands in AI search results, we can run AI search visibility checks and show you the gaps. Get in touch with your account manager or drop us a line to find out more.