Why this matters now: how search is changing

The shift that’s already happened

For twenty years, finding information on the web meant typing a few words into Google and clicking one of the blue links it returned. That hasn’t disappeared, but it’s no longer the default for everyone.

Increasingly, people ask AI tools directly. They open ChatGPT and ask a full question in plain English. They use Perplexity and read the synthesised answer rather than visiting the sources. They Google something and read the AI Overview at the top of the results without scrolling to the links underneath.

The mechanics are different, but the consequence is the same: a single answer is taking the place of a list of options.

This isn’t a future shift. It’s already happening, at speed, to almost every website you can name.

What “AI answers” actually look like

There are three main places this is showing up right now.

Google AI Overviews. The AI-generated summary that appears at the top of many Google results pages. It pulls information from multiple sources, presents it as a single answer, and often includes small citation links. Most users read the answer and stop there.

ChatGPT, Claude, and other chat tools. Users ask a question and get a written response. Depending on the tool and the question, the response may or may not link to sources. When it does, those sources are the websites that get cited — not the websites that ranked first on Google.

Perplexity and similar AI search engines. Purpose-built for this. The interface looks like a chat, but it functions like search — the answer is generated, but every claim is linked back to a source. The websites that get cited here are the ones that show up in the visible answer, not the ones buried in a search index.

The pattern is consistent across all three: the user gets an answer, and only some of them click through to the underlying source.

What’s disappearing — and what isn’t

A lot of the traffic that used to come from informational searches is shrinking. Questions with clear, factual answers — “what time does the post office open,” “what is the population of Toronto,” “how do I write a meta description” — are increasingly answered directly, without anyone visiting a website.

That doesn’t mean all traffic is disappearing. Several kinds of search still send people to websites in roughly the same way they always have:

• Commercial searches — anyone looking to buy something, book something, or hire someone usually still wants to visit the actual business
• Local searches — “dentist near me,” “restaurants in Yorkville” — still drive map clicks and website visits
• Branded searches — people searching for a specific company or product by name
• Comparative or deeply researched purchases — anything where the user wants to read multiple perspectives, not a synthesised answer

What’s changing is the proportion. Informational traffic is shrinking. Commercial and branded traffic is more important than ever. And being cited inside AI answers is becoming its own form of visibility — sometimes more valuable than ranking, because the citation comes with implicit trust.

What this means for your website

A few things follow from all of this:

If your website depends heavily on informational traffic — blog posts, how-to content, definitional pages — you’re likely already seeing fewer visits. The traffic isn’t necessarily going to competitors. It’s being absorbed by AI answers.

If your website depends on commercial intent — services, products, local business — the basics still work, but visibility inside AI answers is becoming a real driver of trust and consideration. Being cited as the expert on a topic is now a way customers find you, even when they never visit your site first.

And if your website hasn’t been touched in years — no structured data, no clear author, no recent content — the signals AI systems use to decide who to trust simply aren’t there. That’s the gap GEO closes.

A useful mindset

Search hasn’t disappeared. It’s split — into the search that brings people to your site, and the answers that mention your site without sending a click.

The first kind is what SEO has always optimised for. The second kind is what GEO addresses. You need both.

Coming up in the next lesson: What you can and can’t control as a website owner. Before we get into anything tactical, it’s worth being clear about which of these changes you can actually influence — and which are decisions made by AI companies that no amount of optimisation will affect.