The end of SEO and SEA as we know
- Jürg Stuker
- 13. Apr.
- 2 Min. Lesezeit
Most companies have their playbook with a successful mix of owned, earned and paid media. You can safely dispose of it, because – as the traffic tells us – your prospects are changing the way they search.
People start their online journey using an AI tool
Google is pushing AI answers
The new kids on the block
We all know the beauty of generative AI and it’s ability to answer questions in plain language. And, as statistics show, people rarely do click on sources, even when systems like Perplexity and others diligently show them to explain the result.
You might argue that the use of AI for search is a marginal phenomenon. So chances are high that you are a boomer like me. Younger generations hardly spend any time with the “famous 10 blue links” on page one. I heard you whispering about the market share of the incumbents, so let me share the second reality.
The introduction of generative AI in Google’s SERP
Because the classic Google search engine result page (SERP) is so yesterday, its management has issued a 'code red' in 2022 amid the rising popularity of the ChatGPT. One of the (very many) results is, that they challenge their own golden donkey with “AI Overviews”.
A metastudy by Kevin Indig summarizes 19 studies analyzing AI Overviews by Google in the US in 2024. In this timeframe they were triggered for between 4,5% and 6.7% of total queries. Of course, this figure varies greatly depending on the search intent and can be as high as 99.2% for informational searches.
So you might think you can sit back, because the proportion for commercial and transactional purposes is still very small. If this is the case, think about how the systems will earn money in the future and have a brief look at “Buy with pro”. My recommendation: Don’t even think about leaning back, zero-click searches are here to stay.
What to do?
There is no new playbook yet, but let me offer three recommendations to think about:
Invest in your brand. More than likely, when people search for your brand, your brand will be the answer.
Invest in your community. Not only do personalized communications and events escape the new traffic flow, but AI systems also seem to like social signals for their ranking.
Understand how AI agents work. It's still the early days (people like to talk about GEO = Generative Engine Optimization), but patterns starting to emerge: The social signals already mentioned, the fact that AI agents are lazy searchers (preferring short click path and loading times), or that ChatGPT prefers to have a look at Bing's index instead of Google.
Why am I thinking about this? At Delta Labs, we build synthetic clones to mimic consumer behavior and challenge the way market research is done. The AI agents are one of these new hard-to-reach audiences. Like the Google crawler was back in the day…