The 2020s have ushered in a fundamental transformation in how people search for information. The rise of large-scale conversational AI platforms has moved search beyond a simple keyword-matching exercise and into an era defined by meaning, context, and intent.
Advances in machine learning, neural networks, and natural language processing now allow systems to interpret queries with far greater sophistication. As a result, web strategists can no longer rely solely on traditional keyword-based SEO. Instead, they must consider how content satisfies user intent at a conceptual level.
The adoption of generative AI is accelerating rapidly. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has stated that more than 100 million people use ChatGPT every week, making it one of the fastest-growing consumer applications in history. At the same time, Google’s global share of search has slipped below 90% for the first time since 2015, as users increasingly turn to social platforms and large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity AI.
These tools are reshaping search from a list of ranked links into a conversational experience—one where users expect direct, synthesised answers rather than pages of results.
The Rise of AI Overviews and Zero-Click Search
Google’s introduction of AI Overviews (AIOs) in May 2024 has further accelerated this shift. AIOs are multi-sentence, AI-generated summaries that appear prominently at the top of search results and aim to fulfil user intent immediately—often without requiring a click.
Microsoft’s Bing Copilot follows a similar approach, embedding AI assistance directly into the search experience.
Together, these changes are influencing both search behaviour and user expectations. Queries are becoming longer, more conversational, and increasingly multimodal (for example, combining text and images). Perhaps most significantly, Zero-click searches continue to climb: in 2024 around 58.5% of U.S. Google searches and 59.7% in the EU ended without a user clicking through to any website, and this trend persisted into 2025 with roughly 60% of searches overall resulting in no external click as AI-driven answers satisfy queries directly on the results page.
AI-powered search systems also personalise results using search history, preferences, and behaviour, creating highly tailored responses rather than generic rankings.
This raises an important question: what does a world of zero-click search mean for traditional SERP rankings?
SEO Is Not Dead—But It Is Changing
Despite these disruptions, organic search remains the single largest driver of website traffic. Around 53% of all trackable web traffic still originates from organic search, and Google processes over five trillion searches annually. Of the searches that do generate a click, approximately 70% go to the top five organic results. Mobile devices now account for 61% of organic search visits, reinforcing the continued importance of mobile-optimised SEO.
However, click-through rates are undeniably under pressure. When AI Overviews appear, organic CTRs drop by roughly 67.8%, while paid CTRs decline by about 58%. This reflects how effectively AI summaries are answering questions directly within the results page.
In other words, visibility alone is no longer the primary goal. Influence within AI-generated answers is becoming just as important.
Fewer Clicks, Better Clicks?
A falling CTR might seem alarming, but Google’s Head of Search, Elizabeth Reid, offers an alternative perspective. She suggests that clicks originating from AI Overviews tend to be “higher quality”—users bounce less, spend more time on site, scroll deeper, and explore more sources.
If this is true, then traditional SEO KPIs need to evolve. Metrics such as total sessions or percentage of new users may decline, while downstream metrics—time on site, engaged sessions, qualified leads, and conversions—become more meaningful indicators of success.
This shift has helped drive the emergence of Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO): a discipline focused on optimising content for inclusion and citation within AI-generated responses, while blending AI-referral data with traditional SEO metrics.
The strategic question is no longer:
“How many clicks did we get?”
but rather:
“How effectively did we answer user intent—and what business outcomes did that create?”
Not All Queries Are Equal
AI Overviews do not appear uniformly across all searches. Their prevalence is highly context-dependent.
Google tends to surface AIOs most often for informational, high-trust, and non-sensitive queries—such as definitions, explanations, and FAQs—where summarisation is relatively safe. For transactional searches, sensitive topics, subscriptions, and breaking news, users are still more likely to click through to source websites.
This distinction is critical.
Rather than treating AI as a universal threat, businesses should audit their content portfolios and identify which pages are most likely to trigger AI summaries. Informational content is typically the best candidate for GEO-focused optimisation, while commercial and transactional pages should continue to prioritise classic SEO and conversion optimisation.
The Takeaway
Search is no longer just about ranking—it’s about relevance, usefulness, and authority in an AI-mediated environment.
The winners in this new landscape will be the brands that:
Create genuinely helpful, well-structured, authoritative content
Optimise for intent, not just keywords
Measure success through engagement and outcomes, not just traffic
SEO isn’t disappearing. It’s evolving into something broader—where SEO and GEO work together to ensure visibility not only in search results, but inside the answers themselves.
