1. AI search is no longer experimental—it’s the default experience
Google’s AI Overviews now sit above the traditional “10 blue links” for millions of queries, summarising answers in-line and eroding the need to click through to publisher sites.explodingtopics.com At I/O 2025, Google went a step further, expanding those overviews (and its new “AI Mode”) to more than 200 countries—making the conversational result the first thing most users see.medium.com
2. Traffic patterns are tilting away from classic organic search
A June 2025 Semrush study projects that AI-search visitors will overtake traditional organic visitors as early as 2028—and sooner if Google flips the switch on AI Mode globally.semrush.com Early data already shows why this matters: click-through rates on affected queries can fall by 18-64 percent once an overview appears.explodingtopics.com
Yet the quality of those surviving visits is rising. The same Semrush study found that a single AI-search visitor converts 4.4 times better than an average organic visitor, because the LLM has pre-qualified the lead.semrush.com
3. The market is fragmenting—and Google’s share is slipping
For the first time since 2015, Google’s global share has dipped below 90 percent, while ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini compete for information-seeking users.explodingtopics.com ChatGPT alone grew to 800 million weekly active users between late-2023 and April 2025.semrush.com
4. What this means for your SEO playbook
Traditional technical SEO still matters—crawlability, structured data, and E-E-A-T signals remain ranking factors inside large language models. But Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) adds new layers:
Old SEO FocusGEO OverlayRank for keywords in SERPsEarn citations inside AI answersAcquire backlinksSecure brand mentions on trusted forums (Reddit, Quora, niche communities) that LLMs love to quoteOptimise titles & snippetsOptimise “quotable chunks” the model can lift verbatim
5. Measuring what LLMs actually say about you
Here’s the hard part: AI chat interfaces don’t expose impression or ranking data the way Search Console does. That’s where emerging analytics platforms come in.
Promptwatch monitors how often—and in what context—brands are mentioned across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overview snippets. It compares your share-of-voice with competitors, flags content gaps, and even tells you which prompts to test next so you can iterate messaging before the algorithms do.aitools.inclinkedin.com
Why it matters
- Visibility you can’t see is invisibility you can’t fix. Without a tool that scrapes AI answers at scale, you may never know that a chatbot recommends your rival three times more often than you.
- Prompt-level testing is the new position-tracking. GEO success depends on refining prompts and feeding updated content back into the model’s training orbit—something Promptwatch’s campaign monitors are purpose-built for.aitools.inc
6. Action plan for 2025-26
- Audit your AI presence. Run a baseline Promptwatch report to see how often (and why) you appear in AI answers.
- Structure content for quotability. Break complex pages into concise, fact-rich paragraphs that models can cite verbatim.
- Seed authoritative communities. Engage on Reddit, Quora and sector forums; these sources feed many AI summaries.semrush.comexplodingtopics.com
- Embed schema & canonical data. Machine-readable claims help LLMs ground responses and attribute credit.
- Iterate prompts quarterly. Treat every high-value query like a keyword cluster—test, measure, refine.
The takeaway
SEO isn’t dying; it’s mutating. As search turns into a conversation, brands that measure and optimise their AI visibility today will own tomorrow’s recommendation engines. Promptwatch won’t replace solid content strategy, but it does give marketers the radar they need to navigate an AI-first landscape—before the competition writes them out of the story.
