AI Search Is Eating the Top of the Funnel
Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT Search and Perplexity are reshaping how buyers discover brands — and how SEO teams must adapt.
Zero-click is the new default
SimilarWeb's 2025 analysis found AI Overviews now appear on roughly 47% of Google US queries, with click-through rates on the underlying organic results down 30–60% on impacted SERPs. ChatGPT Search and Perplexity together cross 1B monthly queries — small vs. Google, but rising fast.
Brand wins, content farms lose
AI engines preferentially cite branded, structured, well-attributed content. Thin SEO content collapses; deep, trustworthy brand publications outperform. The SEO discipline of 2026 is closer to PR and brand publishing than to keyword stuffing.
Optimise for citation, not click
Schema, canonical statements of fact, and brand-stable language make a site more likely to be cited by an AI engine. Citation share is becoming a leading indicator of category authority.
