By Robert Burko

Last summer, I was in Portugal, and I started noticing something funny. You could almost tell who was on a “ChatGPT tour” of the city. People were moving with purpose, from one viewpoint to the next, following the same AI-generated itinerary.

That moment stuck with me because it captures what is happening to SEO right now.

For most of the last two decades, SEO mostly meant one thing, where you ranked on Google (and occasionally Bing). The customer journey was familiar. Someone searched, scanned a list of links, clicked and explored.

Now the journey is increasingly “ask, get an answer, take action.” And the platforms shaping that journey include ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google itself, which is inserting AI summaries, what Google calls AI Overviews, into search results. Google describes these overviews as an “AI-generated snapshot with key information and links to dig deeper.” It also cautions that AI responses may include mistakes.

Marketers are trying to name this shift AEO, AI SEO, GEO and more. The acronym matters less than the behaviour. Search is moving from rankings to recommendations.

Why Traditional SEO Metrics Are Getting Less Reliable

When an AI summary appears, many users never click a website at all. Pew Research Center found that “users who encounter an AI summary are less likely to click on links to other websites than users who do not see one.” In addition, when an AI summary is present, clicks on the sources cited inside the summary are rare.

This matters because many businesses still evaluate SEO primarily through organic traffic and rankings. Those metrics are not disappearing, but they are becoming incomplete. Increasingly, visibility is awarded before the click, directly within the answer layer. If your brand is not present in that layer, you might not even enter the consideration set.

The New Consumer Journey Is Compressed And Conversational

In a traditional search journey, consumers often ran multiple searches, compared options, read reviews and explored several websites before deciding.

In an AI-first journey, that process compresses. A user asks a broad question in natural language, gets a shortlist, asks one or two follow-ups, then takes action. The AI is not only retrieving information, it is shaping the path. That is exactly what I saw on those streets in Portugal. The “research” happened inside the conversation, and the itinerary followed.

This shift changes what it means to win in SEO. It is no longer only about being found, it is about being suggested.

What It Takes To Earn AI Recommendations

There is no single trick that guarantees an AI assistant will mention your business. Anyone promising a guaranteed formula is likely oversimplifying. But there are practical moves that consistently improve your odds because they make your business easier to understand, easier to trust and easier to cite.

1. Write content that answers, not content that markets.

AI systems tend to surface clear explanations and decision support, not sales copy. If your content is vague, overly promotional or thin, it is less useful to an answer engine.

2. Make your business easy to interpret.

AI systems build confidence through consistency. If your services, positioning and “about” information are unclear or inconsistent across your website and public profiles, you are harder to recommend.

3. Build credibility outside your own website.

In an AI-driven landscape, third-party validation becomes even more important. Credible references help establish that your business is real, recognized and worth including. This is also where traditional PR and thought leadership can quietly compound.

4. Create content that mirrors how people ask AI for help.

AI queries are often framed as “best option for X,” “how do I choose” or “what should I do if.” Content that maps to those questions, with direct answers and helpful structure, is more likely to be used.

5. Expand how you measure SEO performance.

Organic traffic still matters, but it should not be the only indicator. You need a way to understand when and where your brand shows up in AI-generated answers, and what topics you are being associated with.

The Leadership Takeaway

The SEO landscape is changing because consumer behaviour is changing. People are outsourcing more of the research process to AI, and even traditional search engines are becoming answer engines. Google’s own documentation on AI Overviews makes this direction clear.

A recent AP-NORC poll reported by AP News found that 60% of U.S. adults use AI to search for information. If your strategy still assumes the customer journey starts and ends with blue links and rankings, you are already behind. The new goal is to earn visibility where decisions are being shaped, inside the answers, not only in the links.

In the old SEO model, you won attention by ranking. In the new model, you win consideration by being the brand the system trusts enough to recommend.

Feature image credit: Getty

By Robert Burko

Sourced from Forbes