The rollout of Google’s AI search function has led to a significant decline in web traffic, making it even more challenging for businesses to manage their online presence. The rise of large language model AIs is transforming how internet users discover information, forcing organizations to reorient their digital strategy approach towards truly owning their relationships with their customers and visitors.
For decades, organic search has been a somewhat straightforward — albeit constantly evolving — discovery tool: users Google a question, click links, and land on a site. Search engine optimization strategies could improve a website’s ranking in search results, and a wide web funnel helped convert customers.
The rise of LLMs, however, has changed those rules. AI models not only index content but also scrape it, and in doing so, they undermine traditional web traffic and lead generation flows.
It’s a shift that’s sent digital strategists and marketers into a tailspin. Traffic at sites across the web has plummeted, and aside from more lagging indicators, such as sales and conversions, the old metrics are no longer reliable.
However, just because SEO is on its way out, it doesn’t mean that digital strategy is dead. Companies that bury their heads in the sand on this risk losing out on customers at a critical juncture. Without clear insight into AI’s future or its algorithms, organizations need to focus on the things they can control — building a resilient and authoritative web presence that emphasizes customer relationships.
In the AI era, companies must ensure their digital strategy provides answers to three key questions: How does AI perceive this? Is this measuring what matters? And who owns this audience?
How Does AI See This?
While the number of click-throughs may have dropped, web traffic is still available to be captured. AI is transforming how users access information, but it has not yet assumed the role that most companies and brands play.
Rather than attracting customers at the top of their discovery journey funnel — which is where most SEO strategies are focused, answering the questions that help potential customers make a decision — the rise of AI means that customers are coming to businesses and organizations mid-to-late in the funnel. AI has answered users’ initial curious questions about a given topic (“what is deforestation doing to the Amazon?” or “what does a leaky faucet mean”), but users (and AIs) still need answers to the questions once they’re intrigued or invested (“what can I do to help?” or “who are the best plumbers in my area?”).
While AI may not immediately provide the user with your company’s blog that it scraped to answer the first question, when it comes time to answer the second question, having high-quality, prompt-engineered web content available to drive AI’s answer is key to capturing a ready audience.
Is This Measuring What Matters?
Moving down the funnel means that metrics like impressions, views, or clicks no longer correlate in the same way to business success metrics. Most websites simply won’t be getting those top-of-the-funnel link clicks anymore, meaning digital strategy teams need to be more nuanced in what they’re measuring.
Casting the widest net is no longer the only goal. Less glamorous and more difficult metrics will become the key scales on which businesses measure themselves. CRM growth, conversions, donation activity, newsletter sign-ups, and branded search volume — these metrics will tell a company how they’re actually performing.
Websites will have less volume, but the volume that does come through will, in many ways, be prequalified, meaning conversion rates should increase. It’s not a metric as high as page views, but it’s certainly more critical to business health.
Who Owns This Audience?
In a broader sense, the shift to AI from search presents a more existential issue for websites and an essential reminder for business leaders: don’t rely solely on platforms you don’t control.
As the world of Big Tech has grown larger, companies are increasingly reliant on a handful of companies to connect them with their audiences. However, Big Tech’s relentless push towards AI highlights the danger: at any point, algorithms may shift.
Social media might “shadow-ban” a term, or an AI model might be using content to point users elsewhere. Overnight, a company may become more challenging to locate, and its entire customer base may disappear along with it.
In this Big Tech era — one that may or may not be built on the back of a dead internet — having a genuine relationship with customers that extends beyond social media is everything. Strong email lists or text lists coupled with high-value content are how companies can build a more resilient pathway to customers. If a company can send its latest blog post directly to its customers, it can be more positive that its initiatives and insights are reaching its target audience.
Combined with UTM tracking, subdomains, and even custom URLs for when users share their content, companies have a chance to trace where their real value is coming from, even if it’s from private channels.
AI has already lost businesses thousands of critical relationship-building moments, as they’re cut off from the first interaction with customers. However, ignoring the shift is only going to exacerbate the situation.
Relationships, not impressions, are now the most critical digital asset companies have.
Chris Yoko is the Founder/CEO of Yoko Consulting.
Find a Home-Based Business to Start-Up >>> Hundreds of Business Listings.
