INSIGHTS.
A DIFFERENT WAY TO SEE IT.
2026 / 1 POSTS
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- Your SEO Strategy Is Already Falling Behind 06 NOV 2026 / INSIGHTS
Building a website is easy.
A Claude or ChatGPT prompt, and like magic, a website is born, with your name, your business logo, and everything else custom-fitted to your liking.
But you know your website isn’t performing as it should if all it does is exist on the internet.
You understand that people need to be able to find your website and interact with it the way you intended. At this stage, you have two options: take a substantial amount of time out of your year to learn Search Engine Optimization (SEO), or hire someone qualified, or at the very least knowledgeable, to do it for you.
If you have the time, it might be worth your while to learn the skill. But realistically, most business owners will choose to hire someone. In a fast-paced economy, the time you spend learning a skill is time you aren’t spending elsewhere in your business.
But what if the way people find your website is changing faster than your SEO strategy can keep up?
Artificial intelligence is changing how search engines deliver information, how people discover businesses, and what it means for a website to be visible online.
You may already have noticed this yourself.
What once looked like a familiar Google search results page can now present a curated, AI-generated answer to your question, often before you’ve even considered opening any of the websites listed below it.
You can find what you’re looking for without visiting a single website.
This is great for you as a Google user.
But what about you as a website owner?
What does this mean for someone who has just spent all that time learning SEO, or paid someone a pretty penny to make their website search-engine ready?
There’s good reason to be paying attention.
In a July 2025 study by Pew Research Center, researchers found that people clicked on traditional search results in 15% of Google searches without AI summaries, compared with just 8% when an AI summary appeared.
Source: Pew Research Center, 22 July 2025. Observational analysis of browsing behaviour from 900 U.S. adults, March 2025; these are shares of Google search visits that produced clicks on traditional results, not a controlled causal experiment.
That’s a substantial difference in how people interact with search results, and potentially, how they discover your business.
It doesn’t mean that AI is responsible for every lost click, nor that conventional search is becoming irrelevant overnight. But it does demonstrate why businesses should pay attention to changes in search behaviour.
To some, this could spell trouble. But for those who understand the point in time we’re in, there’s also an opportunity for growth.
How AI Is Changing the Rules of SEO
Imagine trying to enter a room that’s already crowded.
For years, everyone has been learning the rules of entry, competing for space, and trying to position themselves where they’ll be noticed.
Now imagine those rules begin to change.
Some of the people in that room are so accustomed to the old rules that they don’t notice what’s happening. Others notice, but assume they have plenty of time to adapt.
And then there are those who recognise the change early enough to start positioning themselves differently.
For a time, they may find themselves competing for attention in spaces their competitors haven’t seriously considered yet.
Of course, that opportunity won’t necessarily last forever. As more businesses adapt, competition will follow.
That’s the opportunity I see emerging with AI-assisted search.
For years, a central objective of SEO has been to help websites appear prominently when someone searches for a relevant product, service, or piece of information.
That objective still matters.
But now, appearing in a list of search results isn’t the only way your business might be discovered.
AI-generated answers can bring information together from multiple sources, sometimes answering a question before the user decides whether to visit any of the websites involved.
And if those answers are becoming part of how customers discover businesses, then surely we should be asking how our businesses are represented within them.
What Is AI Search Optimisation?
You might have heard terms such as Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) being thrown around.
Different names, overlapping ambitions.
Traditional SEO is largely concerned with making your website discoverable through search engines such as Google and Bing.
AI search optimisation expands that conversation to include how your business’s information is found, interpreted, and referenced in AI-generated answers.
The objective is to improve the likelihood that your business, its services, or its expertise can be discovered when someone asks an AI system a relevant question.
But here’s where things get interesting.
You don’t necessarily need to abandon everything you’ve learned about SEO to achieve that.
In fact, many of the fundamentals remain the same: accessible websites, useful information, credible sources, and content that clearly answers the questions people are asking.
There isn’t some magical switch you can flip that guarantees your business a place in an AI-generated answer.
What is changing is the number of places where your business needs to be understood and discoverable.
And that brings us to an important question.
Why AI Search Matters for Your Business
Traditional search engines still account for the overwhelming majority of measurable search-driven website traffic. But the way people find and consume information is changing.
AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Perplexity allow users to ask increasingly specific questions and receive answers assembled from multiple sources.
Sometimes, those answers include recommendations for products, services, and businesses.
Which raises an important question.
If someone asks an AI assistant to recommend a business like yours, will your business even enter the conversation?
I can already hear the objection.
“If most people are still using traditional search engines, why should I bother optimising for AI-assisted search?”
Well, if I brought you a time machine and told you that Bitcoin was gaining attention while most people were still dismissing it, would your first question be why you should bother?
Granted, we’re talking about two very different things. But the principle I’m drawing attention to is the cost of recognising an opportunity only after everybody else has recognised it too.
There’s no guarantee that getting involved earlier will produce better results. But waiting for an emerging channel to become the established norm isn’t necessarily the most sensible strategy either.
And unlike a speculative investment, improving the quality, accessibility, and credibility of your business’s online presence can support the marketing efforts you already have in place.
The point isn’t to abandon traditional SEO.
It’s to recognise that the ways customers discover and evaluate businesses are expanding, and that your digital presence should be capable of supporting more than one route to discovery.
Why AI Search Visibility Extends Beyond Your Website
There’s another interesting development worth considering.
AI systems don’t rely exclusively on business websites for information. Depending on the platform and the question being asked, they may reference publications, community discussions, reviews, and video content.
YouTube is becoming a particularly interesting part of this conversation.
A June–August 2026 citation study by Featured reported that YouTube accounted for 5.5% of citations in its sample, compared with Reddit’s 3.7%.
Source: Featured, August 2026. Featured analysed 405 GEO audits conducted June-August 2026, involving 22,881 citations. These shares are sample-specific; they do not establish rankings across all AI services or queries.
That doesn’t mean YouTube has overtaken Reddit across every AI platform, or that creating videos automatically improves your ranking. It does, however, demonstrate why businesses should consider how their expertise and information appear beyond their own websites.
Think about the questions your customers ask before making a purchase or deciding to work with you.
What does your service involve? How much does it cost? What makes one provider different from another? What should someone understand before committing their money?
These are questions your website can answer.
But they’re also questions that can be addressed through useful videos, articles, interviews, and other forms of content.
A business that explains its services clearly on its website, publishes useful content, and makes relevant information available through other credible channels is giving potential customers more opportunities to discover it.
And potentially, giving AI-assisted search systems more relevant information to work with.
This is one reason I think content creation deserves a place in the conversation about the future of SEO.
Not because every business suddenly needs to become a YouTube channel, but because the information a business publishes can have value beyond the platform on which it originally appears.
Is Your Website Still Important in the Age of AI?
No, your website isn’t becoming useless. Not at all.
For the foreseeable future, your website can remain one of the most important places where prospective customers learn about your business, evaluate your credibility, and decide how they want to proceed.
What’s changing is how those customers might arrive there.
Think of your website as a destination. For years, conventional search results have provided one of the main roads leading people to it.
Those roads still exist.
But new routes are opening, and some potential customers may discover your business through an AI-generated recommendation before they ever see your website appear in a traditional search result.
And some may make decisions based on information they encounter without visiting your website at all.
That makes the quality and accuracy of your online presence particularly important.
Your website remains a place where you can present your business on your own terms, explain your offering in detail, and give prospective customers a clear way to contact you, make an enquiry, or complete a purchase.
It can also serve as an authoritative source of information about your business.
The question isn’t whether you should abandon SEO and start chasing AI algorithms.
It’s whether your current digital strategy is preparing your business to be found through both.
How to Prepare Your Business for AI Search
The good news is that preparing your business for AI-assisted search doesn’t necessarily mean starting from scratch.
In many cases, it means improving the foundations you’ve already built.
Start with the information on your website.
Can someone clearly understand what your business does, who your services are for, and what makes your offering different?
If a potential customer struggles to find that information, you shouldn’t expect an AI search system to magically fill in the gaps.
Answer the questions your customers are already asking.
Your website should contain useful explanations of your services, the problems you solve, and the questions that arise before someone decides to work with you.
And where possible, don’t just repeat information that can already be found on a hundred other websites.
Your experience, your processes, and your understanding of your customers can provide useful information that generic content cannot.
Make sure your website can actually be found and understood.
A technically sound website, properly structured pages, accessible content, and clear internal navigation remain essential parts of SEO.
Search engines need to be able to discover and interpret your content before it can have an opportunity to appear in relevant search experiences.
Look beyond your own website.
Relevant videos, credible publications, accurate business listings, and other reputable online references can help people discover your business through different channels.
A useful piece of content shouldn’t necessarily have to live and die on the platform where you first publish it.
And finally, measure what matters.
Website traffic is useful information, but it isn’t the only indication of whether your digital presence is working.
Pay attention to the enquiries, purchases, bookings, and other meaningful actions your website generates.
If your business receives fewer visits but those visits produce more qualified enquiries, the change isn’t necessarily bad news.
Similarly, increased visibility in AI-generated answers isn’t particularly valuable if it never contributes to a meaningful business outcome.
None of these steps guarantees that an AI assistant will recommend you.
But they can put you in a better position than treating your website as a digital business card and hoping someone stumbles across it.
The objective isn’t to chase every change in the search algorithms.
It’s to make sure your business remains visible, understandable, and worth recommending as the way people search continues to evolve.
What Does This Mean for Your Business?
If all of this sounds like additional work, it can be.
But that’s what businesses like ours are here for.
You don’t necessarily need to become an SEO specialist, a YouTuber, and an AI researcher on top of everything else you’re already responsible for.
There are ways to improve your website’s visibility, build a more discoverable digital presence, and introduce content strategies that don’t leave you feeling as though you’re fishing for the 25th hour in a day.
Whether that means refining your existing website, answering the questions your customers are already asking, or developing a YouTube content strategy that doesn’t consume every spare hour you have, the important thing is to approach these changes with a plan.
The businesses that benefit most from these changes won’t necessarily be the ones chasing every new trend.
They may simply be the ones paying enough attention to recognise when the way their customers find them has changed.
Your website doesn’t need to disappear for your business to become harder to find.
