April 30, 2025
By: Elizabeth Merchut, Partner at View Marketing & Creative
The usage of AI tools is exploding. Nearly every product that I’m using has rolled out an AI component: Gemini is embedded in my email and my computer has a CoPilot button to quick-launch an AI companion. Personally, I open ChatGPT to do all kinds of things from helping me wordsmith an email to searching the internet for recipes that follow specific parameters. Even as I’m writing this article in a Google Document, Gemini is suggesting that it “help me write” the next paragraph.
AI is certainly changing the game when it comes to Google searches. Today, if I ask Google a question, it typically serves an “AI Overview” answer. This means that I can get the answer to my question without actually clicking on any website results.
In the past, these kinds of questions were great ones to write blog content around. There are tools that give us insight into the questions people ask Google. By finding questions that people ask, which are related to a business or organization’s offerings, we would have the opportunity to answer their question and introduce the business or organization to an audience that is already curious about a related topic.
However, now that Google provides an “AI Overview” (AIO) for informational questions, is there any reason to click on the web results under the overview? Perhaps if the overview doesn’t fully answer the question or if you are looking for the answer from a specific source, you may click on results below the summary. However, the data is showing us that many people are likely satisfied with the overview answer because there has been a massive decline in the traffic going to some blogs that had previously been quite popular. For example, HubSpot’s blog has been pointed to over and over again because it is a stark illustration of what has happened in the last year.
In August of 2024, HubSpot’s website had just shy of 5M organic visitors. Today in April of 2025, that number has dipped down to 1.8M organic visitors. There are many articles that dive much deeper into this topic (example here), showing that AI Overviews have taken the place of these organic website visits.
So you may be wondering, if AI is so readily available, what does this mean for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Is it even worth investing in SEO?
Let’s answer those questions by digging in a little deeper.
Are people still searching on the internet? According to this source, there are approximately 16.4 billion searches on Google every day. The number of daily searches has been increasing with time, and 2025 is projected to have more searches than 2024.
The data is clear: yes, people are searching for things every day on the internet. This means that businesses and organizations should continue to find ways to be in front of people who are searching for the products and services that they offer.
How can I introduce my business or organization to these potential organic visitors?
Because of the evolving landscape of AI and SEO, we have to be really strategic about how to get in front of people who are searching for what you offer. This means that we need to find ways to serve your website to searchers no matter where they are searching, both in search engine results and in AI tool results. AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are functioning similarly to traditional search engines in that they have an algorithm that enables them to scan websites and choose results to serve to the searcher. So whether someone may be searching for a “restaurant near me” in Google or in ChatGPT, we want to make sure that if you are a restaurant near the searcher, the tool will deliver your restaurant as an option.
We do this by researching what has been working for you in the past. We also like to take a look at how your top competitors are capturing organic traffic. Perhaps most importantly, we take a lot of time researching topics and keywords along with the number of times that keyword is searched per month and how difficult it would be to rank on that keyword. We are careful to understand the intention of the searcher’s keyword and prioritize the types of searches that are most likely to turn into visitors such as searches with commercial intent, meaning they are looking for brands or services.
Each page on your website serves as a potential “entry point” for organic searchers to enter your website. This means that we may suggest building out more pages on your website so that we can be strategic about implementing more high value keywords into a site.
Anecdotally, we have been successful at achieving high quality leads for clients through SEO programs that are meant to connect people searching for specific services directly with that client.
What’s the next best step for my business in terms of AI and SEO?
Each organization is different in terms of the exact right approach to AI and SEO. With billions of searches happening every day on Google, there is a massive potential opportunity for you to get connected with people searching for your products and services.
The most important thing is to have a professional working alongside you to guide you in this evolving landscape. Our team is diligent in doing the research on how to attract organic leads in your industry so that we can put together a strategic plan that makes the most sense for your industry, website, and resources.