Summary: AI queries are not replacing traditional search. Rather, they are changing how people discover brands online.

  • AI-generated answers are becoming a more common feature within traditional search experiences, especially in Google’s ecosystem.
  • More online users are receiving AI-generated answers without clicking through to websites, leading to growth in zero-click search experiences.
  • Visibility in AI-generated answers and citations is as an important and distinct discipline alongside traditional SEO.
  • Traffic–direct or indirect–from AI tools tends to be higher quality than visitors from other traditional sources.
  • Measuring different elements of AI visibility will help brands calibrate their AI visibility and GEO strategy.

AI Queries Have Become an Increasingly Important Complement to Traditional Search

As anyone who has used Google at all in the last couple of years has seen, AI Overviews are appearing in a growing share of Google queries. This is supported by data, including a July 2026 article from TechCrunch, which references a report from Similarweb:

“In just a year’s time, Google’s AI-generated answers in search, known as AI Overviews, have gone from appearing in 15% of searches to 43%… what began as an AI layer on top of search has become an integral part of the search journey itself, as Google drops users into AI Overviews, where they can then continue their research via Google’s more conversational AI Mode”

In addition, Google AI Mode is encouraging significantly longer, more conversational searches and the number of follow-up searches is growing as people have ongoing conversations with Google’s search/AI ecosystem. A result of this is that search behavior is becoming more exploratory and research oriented.

The implications for businesses are clear: stop optimizing exclusively for short keyword searches and begin optimizing for questions, comparisons, recommendations and conversational discovery (this strategy is often referred to as GEO, or generative engine optimization).

Zero-Click Online Experiences Are Becoming More Common

As more online users are relying on AI tools (not just Google’s suite of products, but Claude, ChatGPT and others) for online questions, we are seeing a steady rise in the number of the zero-click online sessions.

Among the first to identify this trend was Rand Fishkin of Spark Toro. His most recent commentary on zero-click experiences makes clear which way things are going: fewer clicks to non-Google websites:

“Thanks to AI features, instant answers, UI elements that keep searchers in the results, and shifting user preferences, Google is becoming a walled garden… Ten years ago, ~45% of Google searches were zero-click. Today it’s 68%. That’s a 33.8% increase (23 points) in a decade.”

AI chatbots outside of AI Mode, Gemini and AI Overview also tend to keep users on their sites as these platforms answer questions without requiring an external website visit. Reliable data are hard to find, but a consistent pattern has emerged: websites across the internet are experiencing declining traffic from traditional search sources, as users are getting answers or information directly from search or AI answer engines.

Some data points that illustrate this point:

Website Visits from AI are More Valuable than Traditional Search Traffic

Now, there is evidence that the traffic that websites do actually get from AI chatbots is much higher quality than traditional organic search traffic. That’s because the AI tools are doing much of the evaluation for the user. So rather than sifting through ten blue links (which are often pushed far down the SERP), AI users are getting a more complete answer to their initial query and feel more confident when making a choice to visit a website. In short, they arrive on websites pre-qualified.

Recent research seems to back up this assertion that AI traffic tends to be more valuable:

One important note: Fishkin correctly points out that an AI-generated answer will not always spur an immediate website visit, but instead often leads to a separate search (usually branded). Google will take credit for this last-click attribution, either via organic search or an ad click, but it may in fact have been catalyzed by a query in an AI tool.

What Should Brands and Marketers be Measuring Now?

Website traffic remains important, but AI visibility should be measured beyond clicks. Rather than relying solely on traditional referral website metrics, businesses should be measuring:

  • Brand Mentions in AI-generated Answers: This can be done in a number of ways. The easiest way is simply to ask several AI tools the same question about your industry (“Tell me the best real estate investment and land development business in Texas.”) or about your business in particular (“I’m considering buying quantum computing hardware for my business from Lumivex Systems. What are the pros and cons of purchasing from Lumivex?”). Then assess if and how your brand or products are cited in the generative answers. Save these prompts and repeat them regularly and track the progress of your brand. This is not a precise method, but will provide a basic tracking protocol.

    A more rigorous (and expensive) method for tracking brand mentions in AI-generated answers is to use tools such as Visto,* Otterly.AI, SEMRush, Ahrefs or others.  These AI visibility tools can usually track not just mentions of your brand in AI-generated answers, but your share of voice compared to your competitors.
  • Share of Voice in Generative Answers: Share of voice measures presence across large prompt samples, providing a relatively reliable view of how often a brand and its rivals are included in generated answers. A company with a smaller share of voice than its competitors is likely to have weaker awareness and a lower online profile, and thus have a harder time ultimately garnering qualified traffic to their website.
  • Citation Frequency in AI Answers: AI citations are different than brand mentions. AI citations measure whether a source is directly referenced and whether content is linked or cited. Tracking citations can be conducted in the same way as brand mentions but have a different value.  

    A brand can receive many citations and few AI mentions (like Wikipedia). Or it may receive many brand mentions and relatively few citations (like Google or Apple). While mentions in AI tools can help raise the profile and awareness of a brand, citations are more likely to lead to traffic back to the source’s website (although the amount of website visits is still likely to pale in comparison to traditional search traffic).
  • How “AI-friendly” Your Website is: Many of the tools already cited (and others such as the AI Friendliness Scanner,**) test how easily AI search engines and chatbots can read and understand your web pages. This kind of analysis typically evaluates some combination of the following factors on a website. Taken together, these metrics help digital marketers effectively evaluate existing owned content on your website and add, edit, or improve it to increase likelihood of it being indexed, used and cited by AI tools:
    • AI Crawler Accessibility: Which tools are allowed to access your site maps without being blocked. This helps you ensure that the important LLMs can access and index your site content.
    • Schema Markup: Which key pages are built with helpful JSON-LD schema, thereby allowing AI tools to more easily identify the kinds of content on a given page.
    • Meta Data: Is there helpful and complete meta data—like titles, meta descriptions and alt tags—that allow AI bots to more easily identify page content.
    • Authority, Clarity, and Trust: This is very similar to traditional E-E-A-T factors (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) from traditional SEO.
    • Currency of Content: AIs seem to favor more recently published content with current statistics, data and references, so knowing which content is outdated or obsolete is important.
  • Direct Brand Searches in Google: As noted earlier, visibility in AI-generated answers can help improve visibility for a brand. But the traffic generated from this visibility often comes from a different source, mostly Google searches. So, it’s important to track the number of branded searches for your brand over time and correlate that with your AI visibility. If AI brand visibility is rising in parallel with branded searches and website visits from these branded searches, it’s fair to conclude that brand mentions in AIs are helping drive high-quality traffic to your website. (This can be tracked most easily in Google Search Console.)
  • Website Traffic Directly from AI Tools that Leads to Conversions: The initial numbers are likely to be small, and some conversions from AI can be attributed to organic search from Google. And tools like HubSpot do have the capability to identify which leads or conversions came directly from AI tools. Knowing how many new customers, clients or purchases came directly from which AI websites will help business calibrate their AI visibility strategy going forward.

The Bottom Line: AI Visibility Is Critical for Businesses in 2026

In short, brands that show up in AI-generated answers can earn higher-intent, higher-converting traffic, even if that traffic arrives in smaller volumes and through more indirect routes than years of SEO practice trained marketers to expect.

So, it’s important for businesses who want to continue to grow to treat AI visibility as a core discipline. And I’ve outlined some of the key factors to consider when developing an AI visibility strategy:

  • Expect traffic from traditional sources to continue to erode
  • Website visitors from AI tools are likely to be farther down the conversion funnel
  • Invest in effective measurement tools to assess and track AI visibility
  • Use the learnings from your analytics to enhance or improve owned online content

Because GEO isn’t a replacement for SEO, but a complementary layer build on top and alongside it.

If you’re still not sure where to start, open a few AI tools, ask the questions your customers are already asking, and see who shows up. If it isn’t you, that’s your starting point.

* Pierpont Communications is a subscriber to Visto and uses it as our AI-visibility measurement tool.
** The AI Friendliness Scanner is a product of MantyWeb, who provides web support for Pierpont Communications.