Overview

• More than half of Google searches now end without clicks as AI Overviews and LLMs deliver instant, on-page answers.
• Publishers and businesses report organic Google traffic declines of roughly 20–40% as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini synthesize results.
• With AI used by most organizations — 78% in 2024 per McKinsey — discovery is shifting, pushing brands to diversify beyond traditional search.
• AEO reframes success as being cited as the source in LLM responses, favoring structured Q&A content and FAQ/JSON-LD schema.
• Developers are enabling GPTBot and OISearchBot in robots.txt, restructuring pages for direct answers, and tracking early “AI referrals” with emerging AEO audit tools.