How AI is expanding SEO
Search is evolving faster than it has in decades. AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, and Perplexity are changing how people find and consume information. This evolution is expanding traditional search and creating major new opportunities for businesses that adapt early.
What’s changing in search?
The shift is real, and it’s happening across multiple fronts.
AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, and Perplexity are changing how people discover information, but the data shows that despite predictions, they’re not replacing search but expanding it.
Here’s what we’re seeing:
- Search volume is growing, not shrinking. People are asking more questions than ever, both on Google and AI platforms. Data from Similarweb and BrightEdge shows ChatGPT usage increasing alongside Google searches
- Zero-click searches keep rising. More searches now end with an answer directly on Google (through AI Overviews or featured snippets) without requiring a click. This shifts where visibility happens, especially for informational queries.
- New opportunities are emerging. Personalized content, Google Discover, and AI-cited mentions are opening up fresh ways to reach your audience.
Winning in search today means mastering both sides of the equation. Businesses that combine strong SEO fundamentals with visibility in AI-driven results will capture far more attention and market share than those relying on just one. It’s not about old versus new. The game is the same, we just have a new channel to work with and if you’re paying attention, the opportunities right now are massive.
SEO fundamentals matter more than ever
From Google: “Good SEO is good GEO.” GEO (Generative Engine Optimization also know as AI search optimization or AI SEO) is the practice of optimizing for AI-powered search results.
From Google: “Good SEO is good GEO.”
If your content is answering the right questions and you’re cited reliably, you’re doing better than most of the websites out there. The fundamentals that have always worked for SEO also work for AI search.
In our own tracking and across multiple studies, sites ranking in Google’s top three positions are twice as likely to appear in AI Overviews when those features show up. The same qualities that help you rank traditionally (authority, clarity, helpfulness, and trustworthiness) are what AI systems look for when deciding which sources to cite.
If you’re doing SEO correctly, then your content should already be centered around answering questions people actually use to search and should be extensive and thorough enough to also contain the family of relevant questions to that body of content.
- Original quality content that answers real customer questions
- Trust and authority built through expertise, reputation, and reviews
- Technical performance that keeps your site fast, secure, and easy to navigate
- Topical relevance internally and externally to build authority
What this means for local businesses
If you’re a plumber, attorney, home builder, small medical practice, or any other local business or service provider who relies on maps pack and local search rankings, you’re in a much better spot than the large publishers. Local search is more resilient to AI disruption than most other categories.
When someone needs a service nearby, it’s not just a research task. They’re looking for a real business they can contact. AI answers summarize options and the user clicks over to a real business, technician, physician, attorney, etc website to provide that service.
How people discover and evaluate those businesses is changing and actually improving conversion rates significantly if you’re the business getting the clicks.
A typical AI search scenario looks like this: User asks ChatGPT for a shortlist of contractors, reads the AI summary or AI overview, checks Google reviews, selects a business. Or the search happens with conversational voice queries instead of typed, but the process is similar.
Because all of that research has been done prior to visiting the business website, and because people are now used to generally getting fairly reliable information from ChatGPT and other answer engines, once the user actually gets to your website, if it looks reasonable and trusted, they are far more likely to fill out your contact form or call you. That of course assumes that you are visible in AI answers in the first place.
It’s another opportunity to win, but it’s also another opportunity to lose. The key is to appear in AI-generated answers AND review platforms AND Google search AND on various ad platforms (depending on the search results that are showing for your main commercial search queries) and to know what your cost per conversion looks like.
The Complete SEO strategy
We test new strategies weekly. That’s right, weekly. So we know what signals matter and adapt our approach in real time to keep clients winning in AI and traditional search results.
Our approach combines:
- Proven SEO foundations that build long-term visibility and trust
- AI search optimization that helps you appear when AI engines generate answers
- Multi-channel visibility across Google, AI tools, reviews, and directories
- Ongoing iteration as the search landscape evolves
We’re grounded in data, not hype. AI-driven platforms like ChatGPT account for far less traffic to most sites, even those that are dominant in AI answer results. If your SEO is non existent, we start there and make sure you have the basics in place. That said, we love to test new channels and we prioritize AI search more than most agencies because there’s so much opportunity to win and our SEO fundamentals and citation work gives us big head start. The agencies that have taken a “content only” strategy have had and will continue to have the most trouble competing for emerging channels this year.
The future of digital marketing
Strategy and experimentation will, as always, be rewarded. Companies that move fast and play smarter will win. The brands paying attention right now are already seeing how SEO and AI discovery combine to create outsized visibility. We’ll be publishing a full guide soon with specific tactics and examples from current client results.
At Complete SEO, we’ve helped businesses adapt and grow through every major of change in search, and our mission stays the same: figure out what works, and then scale it faster than anyone else.