And What Companies Should Do About It…
AI chatbots have dramatically reshaped the way users seek and consume information online. The competition to dominate AI-driven search experiences is in full force, and users are starting to adopt these new forms of “online search”. While these tools are impressive, they pose significant challenges for businesses that have relied on organic search traffic for visibility and growth.
Organic website traffic, SEO rankings, and user behavior have all been affected, creating an evolving landscape that businesses must navigate carefully. But how exactly is AI impacting search, and what should companies do about it? Let’s break it down.
The Evolving Search Landscape
The biggest shift is happening right on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Google’s AI Overviews are now appearing for a growing number of search queries, changing faster than traditional organic rankings.
According to Search Engine Journal, AI-generated answers are appearing and disappearing at a rapid pace, often outranking traditional organic results.
Businesses that relied on high organic rankings are seeing declining click-through rates (CTR) as AI-generated responses satisfy user intent without requiring a website visit. Furthermore, Google’s AI Overviews are not static. Their footprint on SERPs changes frequently, making SEO – and organic rankings – even less predictable.
Meanwhile, AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Grok are not providing traditional search engine-style results at all. Instead, they generate conversational answers, often summarizing content. Although you can appear in citations with links to your website, the current data shows that the majority of users aren’t clicking through.
To complicate matters, AI chatbots don’t function like search engines, even when using “Search Mode”. They provide direct answers to satisfy specific tasks. The natural consequence is that referral traffic from these platforms is incredibly low.
Who’s Using Which AI Chatbot?
So far, the data suggests that each AI platform has a different audience. None of that should surprise you when you consider how these Chatbots are integrated into the digital experience. Understanding these distinctions can help businesses adjust their digital marketing strategies:
Google AI Overviews are used by the broadest audience since they are integrated into traditional search. These users tend to be general information seekers looking for quick answers. Think: long-tailed, conversational queries to answer broad questions.
Microsoft Copilot is primarily used by business professionals and enterprise users, as it is deeply integrated with Microsoft’s Office suite.
ChatGPT attracts a younger, tech-savvy audience and high-income professionals looking for detailed, AI-generated insights. Many of its users interact in a research-oriented way rather than searching for specific products and services.
Grok (X’s AI Chatbot) is tailored for users who engage heavily on social media and lean toward trending topics, pop culture, and generally unbiased information.
The key takeaway? Not all AI chatbot traffic is the same. Businesses should assess where their audience is most likely engaging with AI and adapt accordingly.
AI Chatbot Traffic vs. Organic Traffic: Not the Same Thing
One of the biggest misconceptions businesses have about AI chatbots is that they will replace traditional search. In reality, AI chatbot traffic behaves very differently.
Most AI chatbot queries are:
- Conversational in nature
- Long-tail informational questions
- High-funnel or not even qualified leads
For businesses focusing on commercial or transactional intent, AI chatbot traffic is not a major driver of conversions right now.
For example, if someone asks ChatGPT, “How do I create a content marketing strategy?”, the AI provides an answer. But that doesn’t mean the user is ready to buy content marketing services. More than likely, they’re trying to do it themselves.
While we encourage companies to think about how to appear in AI Chatbot results, we still believe that businesses should focus more on targeting commercial and transactional searches that drive actual conversions.
How Businesses Should Adapt Their SEO Strategy
Instead of chasing AI-driven informational queries, we’re focusing on a two-pronged approach.
- Offer content that answers broad questions to continue generating traffic from informational searches and AI Chatbots…
- While simultaneously refining your commercial and transactional keyword strategy.
It’s best to optimize service and product pages for purchase-intent keywords to ensure they capture high-converting traffic.
Most importantly, you should develop your content to clearly differentiate your brand’s offerings. That will allow you to continue climbing in the organic search results where commercial and transactional searches still occur.
Local Companies Should Prioritize Local SEO
AI chatbots tend to prioritize national brands when answering queries, which means local businesses are often overlooked.
AI chatbots pull from broadly recognized, high-authority sources when generating responses. This means they tend to favor national brands and widely cited content over local businesses. That makes Google Maps and Local SEO more crucial than ever for visibility.
We encourage companies to optimize their Google Business Profiles with fresh updates, images, and reviews. Seriously, we can’t stress enough how important those reviews are.
Additionally, you should build local citations and backlinks to strengthen your business’s local search authority. Location-specific content is also crucial if you want search engines to continue picking up on your services and products within a specific geographic area.
These Days It Pays to Advertise
With organic rankings becoming less stable due to AI-generated overviews, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is more important than ever. We probably sound like a broken record here since we’ve written about PPC quite a bit over the last year… as seen here…. and here… and here.
We don’t promote PPC Advertising simply because we’re biased. The fact remains that PPC is still the leading way to get premier placement in the search results. Search is still the highest intent behavior online. When someone is ready to buy something, they search for it. Case closed.
With the SERP pages changing over the last year, paid placements still put you in the most visible position. But there are more benefits to working with a PPC partner who knows how to design data-driven ad strategies.
For starters, you can develop conversion tracking strategies that not only measure the strength of your PPC campaigns but also give you a really good bead on the performance of all acquisition sources. With different lead capture methods, you can also use that data for a variety of analytical and optimization strategies.
With broad informational queries shifting to AI chatbots, PPC campaigns should be laser-focused on high-intent, commercial keywords. Chasing top-of-the-funnel traffic is becoming less efficient, making ad spend optimization more critical than ever.
Avoid Over-Investing in AI SEO for Now
For the record, we are not saying that AI SEO won’t be the wave of the future. Indeed, AI-generated search results are growing, but the industry is evolving too quickly to make AI-specific SEO a primary focus right now, especially for small to mid sized companies.
We think it’s important to monitor AI chatbot results for your brand, but don’t shift too much effort there. Continue optimizing traditional SEO elements like high-quality content, user experience (UX), and backlinks. Doubledown on commercial and transactional keywords in your content strategy and across your service and product pages.
AI trends will keep evolving, but sales-qualified customers still search, click, and buy. Instead of chasing hype, businesses should double down on what works – commercial search, strong content, and smart marketing strategies.
Want to future-proof your marketing strategy? Let’s talk.