AI Search Is Changing SEO. Here’s How To Adapt.

Debate is raging on whether artificial intelligence (AI)-generated search results are destroying search engine optimization (SEO).

There’s a certain amount of panic, and a good deal of misinformation, about the nature of search in 2025. It’s understandable—after almost 30 years of ranking pages, Google has made some unprecedented changes. What was once a pure search engine has become, to a certain extent, an answer engine. 

Today, AI-generated answers pull data from websites and provide direct answers at the top of the page. Consequently, fewer users are scrolling down to the organic links, and content that may have once attracted a high volume of traffic is not performing as well as it once did. 

However, the significance of AI-generated summaries to a brand can vary greatly, depending on the type of content being produced and the outcomes being measured and valued. It’s also not guaranteed that you will see an AI summary every time you search, since their appearance varies by type of query. Currently, over 96 percent of all AI overviews appear due to informational keywords in the search. That means it’s unlikely you’ll get an overview for more transactional or local search queries. 

Bearing all this in mind, this article looks in detail at how AI summaries are affecting search, what “authority” means in the era of AI-generated overviews, and how brands can adapt their content strategy accordingly. 

How Are AI Summaries Affecting Search? 

You type something into Google, and instead of pages of links, the first thing you now see is an AI overview. This snippet usually takes the form of a summary of an article (or articles) and runs to around 160 words in length.  

While 160 words isn’t much, these overviews are having a significant effect on how the results page looks, pushing down top-ranked links by around 1,500 pixels. In real terms, this means about two full scrolls on a desktop, and three scrolls on a mobile. So, your carefully crafted piece of content is now further down the page. 

This development has affected the click-through rate (CTR). There are several different analyses on exactly how much AI overviews have changed CTRs, but there is general agreement that organic CTRs have the potential to drop somewhere between 18 percent and 64 percent. 

The reason this may seem overwhelming to many is that this has changed over a relatively short period. In August 2024, around one quarter of search results featured an AI overview. Today, it’s around half. This has not been entirely welcomed by the public (it’s ironic that “remove AI overview from Google search” is also getting thousands of monthly searches), but this is the world that brands and marketers find themselves in. And it is critical to respond in a way that is strategic and not driven by panic. 

While this article is focused on Google’s AI-generated summaries and their impact on SEO, it’s important to note that other AI-driven search tools, including ChatGPT and Perplexity, are playing a role in taking users away from Google entirely and reshaping how users find and interact with information. While these two platforms currently only account for less than one percent of total global search traffic, this is clearly changing fast. As their adoption grows, they present both a challenge and an opportunity for brands to be discovered or cited, and so, content strategies must adapt and not rely solely on traditional search engines. 

What “Authority” Means In The Era Of AI-Generated Overviews 

SEO has always been about authority—it’s whether Google sees your content on a particular topic as reliable, trustworthy, and worthy of ranking high (and higher than your competitors) when a user conducts a search. So, the first step for brands responding to these changes is to redefine what authority now means. 

In the world of AI summaries, one strategy is to ensure your content is referenced or cited in an AI-generated answer. This helps establish you as a trustworthy source because Google’s AI engine is showing your content to be credible. If you are cited by AI as a valid source, it can, over time, influence your brand reputation and then prompt users to seek out your content directly if they want more detail or context. Alternatively, you create content that can’t be summarized and therefore requires the user to click on a link.  

How Brands Can Adapt Their Content Strategy 

Brands now have the opportunity to create content that AI can’t easily condense, or that users are motivated to explore beyond just a brief summary. Examples of this include industry analysis, personal stories, data-driven case studies containing original research, unique product or service breakdowns, opinion pieces, reviews, and other unique perspectives. In other words, content that is human, unique, and can only be created by your brand. When you deliver real depth and originality with a distinctly human point of view, you are separating yourself from competitors and giving something that AI summaries cannot create. 

Let’s look at how you might start thinking about an SEO content strategy for the era of AI overviews: 

• Optimize content for AI summaries: The first strategy is to be featured in AI summaries. Use good structure to help search engines better understand your content, and write in a clear, direct style that answers key questions concisely at the beginning of your articles. Anticipate follow-up questions and address them naturally throughout the content. The more helpful and well-structured your content is, the more likely it is to be selected by AI for summaries. It’s worth noting that one study showed that when a brand appeared in the AI overview, organic CTRs increased from 0.74 percent to 1.02 percent on average. 

• Create unique content: The alternative is to focus on content that is difficult to summarize. Demonstrate expertise and authority by sharing original insights, unique data, or analysis that users can’t find elsewhere. Original research is always going to be very valuable. Remember that long-form content can still perform well if it offers high-value information. 

• Think beyond Google: Diversify your traffic sources by building a presence on social media. You can also consider publishing newsletters, starting podcasts, and engaging in online communities. These can provide more resilient and sustainable traffic beyond traditional search. 

• Improve on-site engagement: Once users land on your site, focus on keeping them engaged. Enhance the user experience by making your content easy to navigate and using smart internal linking to guide visitors deeper into your site. Prioritize conversions and meaningful user actions over sheer traffic volume. 

SEO Will Never Stop Evolving 

Over the past three decades, we have seen a lot of change around SEO, including everything from updates to algorithms to mobile-first indexing, to zero-click searches, and so on. Every time this has happened, leading marketers have managed to adapt. And while AI search is happening much faster than previous changes, there are rewards for brands that have a clear strategy.  

Because what underpins good SEO hasn’t really changed—it’s still about understanding your audience and creating valuable content for them. In that sense, AI hasn’t destroyed SEO at all, but it has exposed brands that are not ready. 

So, the tools we use will continue to change on an almost daily basis, but if brands can stay focused on serving the user better than anyone else, they will see results, regardless of the changes that come today or tomorrow. 

About The Author 

Jigar Sagar is an entrepreneur, investor, and government advisor with over 31 ventures valued at a combined US$350 million. With a degree in business administration from the American University of Dubai and a master’s in financial management from the University of Melbourne, Sagar began his career as a finance manager at Creative Zone. Sagar’s ventures include Set Hub (formerly Business Incorporation Zone), which has facilitated over 25,000 companies, including EZMS, Appizap, Ocube, and Créo. Instrumental in shaping the UAE’s dynamic digital ecosystem, Sagar is a prominent industry voice known for speaking at global conferences and writing the LinkedIn newsletter, Entrepreneur’s Edge.