Once upon a time, such was its popularity, that the word Google became a verb. A bit like Hoover, which became the de facto word of choice for the task of vacuuming. Although I think Googling things is way more fun than hoovering but maybe that's just me!  Anyway, whenever someone had a question on anything, the solution was to “just Google it.”  While it remains the case for the most part, Google now has a rival worth watching. In fact, rivals. Between social media, especially TikTok, and chatbots like ChatGPT, people are increasingly seeking information elsewhere. So while “just ChatGPT it” or “ just TikTok it” haven't quite entered our daily vernacular, that’s not to say they won’t in the future.

While changing our search habits is not exactly revolutionary, it presents a challenge for brands, especially marketers. And from the volume of emails I receive on the subject, it’s not something to ignore.

Why?

Because typically, brands and marketers have worked under the assumption that one of their primary objectives is to ensure they appear on the first page of a Google search. In theory, achieving this would result in people clicking on a blue link, landing on your site and hopefully becoming customers. 

Now that’s all changed. Between Google AI Overviews (AIO) and GPT et al responses, the need to visit another website for the answer is reduced and, in some cases, eliminated. 

Consider the following from a recent Bain survey: 

• 80% of consumers now rely on “zero-click” results in at least 40% of their searches, reducing organic web traffic by an estimated 15% to 25% 
• Roughly 40% to 70% of LLM users use the platforms: 
  • to conduct research, summarise information (68%) 
  • understand the latest news and weather (48%) 
  • ask for shopping recommendations (42%).

Meanwhile, Gartner predicts a 25% drop in traditional search volume by 2026. 

“Generative AI (GenAI) solutions are becoming substitute answer engines, replacing user queries that previously may have been executed in traditional search engines. This will force companies to rethink their marketing channel strategy as GenAI becomes more embedded across all aspects of the enterprise.” - Alan Antin, Vice President Analyst at Gartner

I’m sure you’ve done one, but for the purpose of this blog, I’ll show you how they compare.

Given the time of the year, I entered the words ‘best schoolbag’ and here’s what I got: 

The suggestions are quite different. However, what I liked about the ChatGPT one is that it provided the reasons why these bags were recommended. It was both educational and commercial. But from a marketing perspective, it’s a lot less about driving traffic to a site, thus changing the traditional paradigm.

So brands are right to be concerned, although the volume of traffic to Google and the volume to ChatGPT and co is still relatively small: chatbot traffic is still 34x smaller than search engines.

Google makes a lot of money from its ads, so not surprisingly, it’s taking action. Its dominance is still fairly set, but it does recognise the threat posed by these new search options. One recent Forbes article says AI Overviews (AIOs) are Google's response. They do appear above sponsored ads, so the impact on their revenue remains to be seen. And their woes don’t end there either.  A group of independent publishers has filed an antitrust complaint here in the EU. According to Reuters, the complaint says, “Publishers using Google Search do not have the option to opt out from their material being ingested for Google's AI large language model training and/or from being crawled for summaries, without losing their ability to appear in Google's general search results page." 

Despite some claims that SEO is dead, it’s not. However, increasingly I’m seeing  it described in either one of two new acronyms, GEO and AEO. 

(Marketers do love their acronyms). I’ve seen them used interchangeably and also seen them listed by their differences. GEO is making sure that your content is visible in AI-driven seach engines like ChatGPT and co. AEO is the same but the focus is very much on people asking questions when searching. 

The one thing to note is that rather than getting bogged down in acronyms, is to remain focused on your goal. So although the parameters may have changed, many of the fundamentals remain the same. 

• Quality content that informs and educates your customers is still gold. 
• Demonstrating that you are an expert, if not the expert, in your field, is still gold. 
• Having positive customer reviews is still gold. 
• And of course, technical SEO is still gold. You still need to use the appropriate HTML tags, optimise for the mobile experience, have fast loading times, good security, and fix any crawling or indexing issues.

So what’s different?

• AI bots search differently from the way humans do. Therefore, schema matters. Having a synopsis, also known as TL;DRs, FAQs, summaries, headlines and lists on your content, especially blogs, are highly beneficial. 
• People tend to ask chatbots more conversational questions. Therefore, optimise for long-tail keywords and question-based inputs.
• Diversify content - this isn’t new. The power of the video is a much-loved topic. YouTube is great, and for obvious reasons, Gemini pulls content from here.
• LLM models like ChatGPT pull or scrape their content from the internet. So, having your brand mentioned in multiple sources increases the likelihood that you will be included in an AI-generated response. This blog post does a great job of explaining how best to be mentioned in the main chatbots like ChatGPT and co.
• On a Neil Patel webinar that I recently watched, the advice was to start by conducting an AI search footprint. These tools were suggested: Profound, Otterly and ScrunchAI.

I’ll tackle how to be seen, or found, on social media another day. In the meantime, here are some useful resources:

• The Complete Guide to TikTok Marketing: Tips, Examples & Tools
• 2025 Guide to TikTok Marketing: Effective Tips and Strategies

And finally

SEO is not dead, but it is changing. Ignoring that is not the best business strategy. Now is the time to take a step back and reflect. And then make the relevant changes.