AI has completely disrupted the world of search. How people find answers to questions, including those related to products, is now mediated by AI, either through ChatGPT and other AI chatbots or through Google AI Overviews, which are now the most prominent element of many online searches.
Just two years ago, marketers had a well-understood, if evolving, playbook for optimizing clicks through Google searches. But now, how has the playbook changed to account for AI, and what should you be doing differently?
What’s Changed? – the Value of a Click
The goal has always been clicks – and that much hasn’t changed. Getting clicks is just a lot harder. The bar is higher.
AI-generated search results are causing click-through rates (CTRs) to fall precipitously for both organic and paid results – about 61% and 68%, respectively, over the past year.
Many searches go no further than the AI Overview, because the user is satisfied with the answer. Hence, the “zero-click” phenomenon.
Of Google searches that generate AI Overviews, only about 1% result in a click-through to a cited source, and only about 8% result in a click-through to a webpage listed anywhere in the search results, according to a Pew Research study.
What gets missed in these seemingly grim statistics is the value of a click. The clicks are fewer, but their value is greater. That’s true because they now represent a select audience of users most intent on a purchase or understanding an issue. For example, Semrush found CTRs from ChatGPT and other AI chatbots to be 4.4 times more valuable than CTRs from traditional organic Google searches, as measured by sales conversions.
Further, 90% of B2B readers click through to the sources or citations for AI Overviews, according to 2025 research by TrustRadius. They also scroll down search pages to learn more or fact-check AI results, the research shows.
How to Get Clicks – the Amended Playbook
To secure clicks in this new environment requires an additional effort. What you’ve already done to optimize your webpages for organic and paid search is still necessary and helpful, but more is required to secure citations in AI Overviews.
The LLMs that generate AI summaries and citations do not operate in the same way as Google algorithms that generate sponsored and organic content rankings. They are using different criteria, even if there is some overlap. LLMs are searching for specific pieces of information, whereas traditional search algorithms are evaluating whole webpages.
Not surprisingly, strategies for securing clicks from AI-mediated search place a renewed emphasis on the quality and depth of content and where it’s appearing. For example, LinkedIn, Wikipedia and YouTube are among the top domains cited in Google AI Overviews. Publish your content there, on other social sites and in the mainstream, business and trade press because these measures raise your visibility, credibility and authority in the eyes of LLMs. Very briefly, here are three other content-related tips:
- Write with search queries in mind. LLMs are searching for discrete pieces of information, so ensure your content is specific, detailed and in-depth.
- Practice content proliferation. Create many pieces of content in many formats addressing the same locus of information.
- Obsess about structure. Ideally, your content pages should contain concise summaries, as well as a clear hierarchy of headings and subheadings, delineated in different font sizes.
Anchor Your Program in AI Insights
Google and other search engines provide access to data showing what people are searching for, including keyword volumes and performance. The same is not true of LLMs, like ChatGPT. There are many AI visibility tools on the market, such as Semrush, Arcai and BrightEdge, that will provide share of voice data in AI search results relative to competitors, but these are only estimates based on modeling. We can, however, use traditional keyword research, in combination with the modeling capabilities of AI visibility tools, to build and track the success of a comprehensive program that increases the likelihood of your being cited in AI searches and securing clicks.
In Closing
- SEO and organic search still matter. Remember, AI search only brings a small amount of traffic to the website. And although AI search is growing at a higher rate, organic search still brings the highest percentage of traffic to a website. According to BrightEdge, AI search brings under 1% of traffic to a website, while Google still holds 90% of traffic. That means you should continue to focus on growing and defending organic search traffic, visibility in Google search and presence in AI Overviews. AI search visibility should be an added strategy to your current SEO plan and work hand in hand. Evolve your success metrics beyond clicks and conversions. Focus on brand visibility, mentions, citations, brand sentiment, conversion rate and share of voice against competitors.
- Valuable content will be essential for growth in 2026. You’ve heard it a million times, and I’m going to say it again: Original content is your bread and butter. In-depth and structured content, focused on your line of expertise, will matter even more for both organic search and AI visibility. Write for audience intent and understand what intent each content targets. Address your audience needs at each stage of their buyer journey, from information gathering to purchase decision-making. Ask yourself: Does this content solve a problem, answer a question, bring value to my customers? Make sure your content is unique and adds value to your audience. Prove that your content is backed by data and expertise, and that it’s written by experts in your industry. Package your content for organic and AI search. Add chunk-able paragraphs, clear header structure, summaries or tables of contents at the top, conclusions at the end, visuals that make sense for your audience. With the right tools, a brand can unlock and unpack the value exchanges it needs to create content for. Layer on PR knowledge to help find the right, most authentic content partners and creators.
- Know what your AI brand visibility is (and your competitors’). Understand your brand depth, your brand entity and the relationships between your brand and the industry you serve. Then focus your strategy and content development around this entity. Know what your brand visibility in AI search is. Understand the difference between mentions and citations, and where you need to improve visibility. Start with topics and focus on opportunities for growth. Make sure your current visibility is an accurate portrayal of your brand. Work on any negative sentiment you have and address any inaccuracies. Look at your competitors’ visibility in AI (by AI platform) and spot opportunities for your brand’s growth. Pick a tool that allows you to analyze and track the prompts that matter. Understand what AI platforms bring the most value to your brand. Just because ChatGPT has a lot more active users than Perplexity doesn’t necessarily mean you need to only focus on ChatGPT. Look at your current metrics to analyze AI traffic growth and conversions and focus on the AI platforms with the highest conversion rate and highest growth.
- The PR department should be your new best friend. Do you remember back in the day when everyone was concerned about organic and paid search working together? Guess what? There’s a new friend in town: your PR buddies. Successful brand visibility in organic search and AI search cannot solely rely on SEO (and paid search) anymore. Your SEO strategy should work cohesively with PR efforts and messaging. Think of your brand as a book where every chapter is connected to your brand entity, whether that chapter is about SEO efforts, PR outreach, social media amplification or paid search strategy. With AI search, organic optimization efforts can only achieve partial success for a brand’s visibility because AI platforms don’t always want to cite a brand for the source of information. Sometimes, AI search engines, like ChatGPT, will only source authoritative publications that have significant expertise in your industry or provide unbiased information. Other times, AI platforms will prefer to source discussion forums or review platforms – if the search is about testimonials and firsthand customer experiences. So, in order to have brand visibility in AI search, it’s essential to have a close relationship with PR and social media mavens and work together to grow a brand’s visibility.
- Focus on the outstanding technical health of your website. Make sure crawlers can access your website content, which means making sure your content is not hidden under JavaScript. Just like you would with traditional SEO, ensure your website is fast. Speed is essential. Look at your top converting page, compare your average page speed with your competitors’ and improve page performance where it’s needed. Schema still matters. Microsoft confirmed use of schema for AI and how it is used to help Bing large language models (LLMs) understand content. Remember that valuable content? Make sure it is tagged with schema, whether you are using authorship, blog, FAQ, product or image schema.