I get this question from almost every client now: if people are asking ChatGPT for recommendations instead of typing into Google, why am I still paying for SEO?
Fair question. Here’s the honest answer: Google still sends more traffic to most small and mid-sized businesses than every AI tool combined, by a wide margin. But the AI answers are growing fast, and the way they’re built means SEO work matters more, not less — it just has to be done differently than it was five years ago.
The traffic math hasn’t flipped yet
Depending on the industry, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews together are sending somewhere in the low single digits of the traffic Google search sends directly. That’s growing every quarter, but it’s not close to a replacement yet. If you drop SEO because “AI is taking over,” you’re giving up the channel that’s still doing the heavy lifting to chase one that’s a fraction of the size.
The smarter move is running both at once, because the inputs overlap more than people assume.
Where AI answers come from
ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews aren’t inventing recommendations out of nowhere. They’re pulling from indexed content, structured data, and — increasingly — real reviews and mentions across the web. A business that’s never been properly optimized for search doesn’t have much for an AI model to find either. The two are connected: sites with weak technical SEO, thin content, and no structured data are invisible to both a Google searcher and an AI model doing research on your behalf.
This is why I don’t treat AI Engine Optimization (AIEO) as a separate discipline you bolt on later. It’s built on the same foundation as traditional SEO — clean technical setup, structured data, content that answers the question — with a few extra layers on top, like making sure your business info is consistent everywhere and that your content is written in a way models can parse and quote directly.
What’s changed about the work
A few things are genuinely different now:
Structured data matters more. Schema markup that clearly labels who you are, what you do, and where you operate helps AI tools understand your business instead of guessing.
Direct answers beat keyword stuffing. AI models favor content that answers a specific question clearly and completely. Vague, padded pages written to rank for a keyword don’t quote well.
Reviews and third-party mentions carry more weight. AI tools cross-reference what you say about yourself against what other sources say. A thin review profile or no presence on relevant directories is a real gap now.
Google Business Profile is doing double duty. It feeds both the local map pack and a chunk of what AI tools know about local businesses. If you’ve been ignoring it, that’s the first place I’d look.
None of this means you stop trying to rank on Google. It means the same foundational work — the kind covered on my SEO & AI Search page — now pays off in two places instead of one.
Where this matters most for service businesses
If you’re a contractor, home services company, or B2B vendor with a sales cycle that starts with someone researching options, this shift is worth paying attention to. A project manager typing “best insulation contractor near me” into ChatGPT and getting three names back is a real scenario happening today. If your business isn’t part of that answer, a competitor’s is.
The good news is you don’t need a separate strategy. You need the fundamentals done well, with a little extra attention paid to how your information is structured and how consistently it shows up across the web — which is exactly the kind of thing that also improves a paid campaign’s landing page quality, if you’re running paid media alongside organic search.
FAQ
Is AI search going to replace Google search? Not anytime soon. It’s a growing supplemental channel, not a replacement. Plan for both.
Do I need to rewrite all my website content for AI search? Usually not from scratch. Most sites need technical and structural fixes — schema, clearer answers, consistent business info — more than a full content rewrite.
How do I know if AI tools are already recommending me? Ask ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overview a few questions a prospective customer might ask, using your city and service. If you don’t show up and a competitor does, that’s your answer.
Does paying for Google Ads help with AI search visibility? Not directly — AI tools pull from organic content and third-party sources, not paid placements. But a strong paid campaign and strong SEO usually share the same well-built landing pages underneath.
If you want a clear read on where your business stands in both regular search and AI answers, that’s the first thing I check when I start working with a new client — happy to walk you through what I find.