Is SEO dead? What AI search really means for your business

If you run a business and you’ve been hearing about AI Overviews, ChatGPT and “the death of Google”, you’ve probably wondered whether SEO is still worth your time or money. Here’s what’s really going on, in plain English.

The question keeps coming back because the numbers behind it are real. Around 68% of Google searches now end without a click on any website , up from about 60% just two years ago. Google’s AI Overviews – the AI-written answers that sit at the top of many results pages – now appear on more than one in five searches, and when they do, clicks to the ordinary results drop by nearly 60%.

Add ChatGPT and Perplexity answering questions people used to type into Google, and you can see why so many business owners are nervous.

But look closer and the story is more specific than “SEO is dying”. What’s shrinking is one particular kind of SEO: publishing thin blog posts to catch informational searches. If a one-paragraph AI answer can deal with the question, the click rarely happens any more. What’s not shrinking is people searching for a business to buy from – and that distinction changes everything.

You might have started seeing new acronyms: GEO (generative engine optimisation), AEO (answer engine optimisation), even LLM optimisation. They all describe roughly the same idea – making sure your business shows up in AI-generated answers, not just in the traditional list of links.

Traditional SEO is about ranking. You earn a position on the results page, and you win the click. GEO is about being cited. AI tools build their answers from sources they trust, so the aim is to be one of the businesses they quote and recommend – whether that’s in a Google AI Overview or a ChatGPT response.

Here’s the bit that often gets missed: under the bonnet, they’re mostly the same work. A clearly structured site, pages that properly answer real questions, schema markup, genuine expertise and a solid reputation across the web – that’s what gets you ranked, and it’s also what gets you cited. GEO isn’t a replacement for SEO. It’s SEO with the bar raised on credibility.

When someone searches “accountant in Hitchin” or “ecommerce web design agency”, an AI summary can’t finish the job. They still end up on a website, a phone call or a Google Business Profile. Commercial and local searches – the ones that actually turn into enquiries and sales – are the searches the zero-click trend has touched least.

That’s worth saying plainly: the traffic SEO is losing is mostly the traffic that never bought anything. The visits that become customers are still very much up for grabs – and with fewer clicks to go around, being the business that wins them matters more, not less. We’ve covered the local side of this in our guide to local SEO for small business.

Yes – arguably more than before, but only if the effort goes to the right places. If your SEO plan is “publish generic blog posts and hope”, stop. Put the work where buying intent lives: service pages that say clearly what you do and where, a well-kept Google Business Profile, steady reviews, and the occasional genuinely useful article that only your business could write. Fewer things, done properly.

For most small businesses, that’s a far better use of a limited budget than chasing traffic that AI answers were always going to absorb anyway.

SEO as “write posts, collect clicks” is fading. SEO as “be the business that search engines and AI assistants can confidently recommend” is alive, well and getting more valuable as the noise gets louder.

So the real question isn’t whether SEO is dead. It’s whether your website gives Google – and now ChatGPT – a reason to recommend you.

If you’d like an honest look at where your website stands, or a hand working out what AI search means for your business, we’re always happy to chat. Take a look at our SEO services or get in touch.