How do you drive visitors to your website if people stop Googling?
It may seem far-fetched, but it’s an increasingly common occurrence.
AI-powered chatbots, like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Gemini, are quickly replacing standard search engines for many web users. And instead of delivering a series of links to potential best-fit websites, these chatbots are designed to generate answers, summaries, or content based on a user’s prompt – negating the need to click, read, and synthesize the information themselves. The same is true for search engine-based AI summaries, which now appear by default at the top of the results page.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that organic search traffic to news websites is plummeting with the growth of generative AI. In the last three years, the Journal’s total traffic from organic search fell from 29 percent to 24 percent. The New York Times’ organic search traffic fell from 44 percent to 36.5 percent over the same period.
These changes aren’t unexpected. A 2024 Gartner study estimates that search engine volume will drop 25 percent by 2026 as people rely more on AI assistants or other virtual agents for information.
As these tools grow in popularity – ChatGPT had 800 million weekly users in April, up from 400 million in February – organizations and government agencies need to rethink their content and SEO strategies to ensure their information reaches key audiences.
AI chatbots vs. search engines
To optimize your site for AI assistants and summaries, it’s helpful to understand how these tools differ from traditional search engines.
Search engines, like Google and Bing, comb websites using complex algorithms to evaluate site URLs, keywords, metadata, internal and external links, and other factors to compile a list of sites that best fit the search query.
AI chatbots and summaries go a few steps further. Instead of just listing links, they try to understand the question being asked, scan and evaluate the available information, and generate a direct answer or summary.
These summaries typically pull information from multiple sites. Even if they provide a list of or links to those sites, users who trust the AI-generated answer have less need to click through.
4 ways to adjust your SEO strategy
To ensure relevance with chatbots and search engine AI summaries, organizations should focus on these key areas:
1. Understand user intent
To successfully answer questions, you must first understand users’ intent – i.e., what are they really looking for?
For example, a user may search “How to file my taxes?” The most obvious search result would likely be the 110+ page Internal Revenue Service 1040 Instructions book. That source is certainly thorough, but it’s also intimidating. The user probably wants a more colloquial guide.
So, consider what users are really looking for and provide that information in a clear, easily consumable way.
2. Structure content for AI readability
Make your content easy to digest. This means using clear headlines and subheadings, concise summaries and FAQs, numbered lists, and bullets to streamline content presentation. Anything you do to make your information simpler for humans to understand makes it easier for AI models to parse.
Also, don’t forget to keep using your relevant keywords naturally in the content and metadata.
3. Create content worth quoting
Quality has always been a key factor for SEO, but it’s even more important with AI chatbots. Content should not only tell a story and promote services, features, and benefits, but it should also provide accurate and authoritative information that directly answers common questions.
4. Earn trust from AI and humans
Establish your brand as a trusted source. For government agencies, the .gov or .mil domain helps convey your credibility, but you still need external validation. Cite your sources, back up your claims, and make it easy for readers — and algorithms — to trust what you say.
Use every page on your site as an opportunity to establish your organization’s position on a single, relevant topic. For each industry, domain, or service offering, provide proof points that demonstrate your success.
At the same time, you want to earn backlinks from other reputable sites, citations, and positive mentions across the web. This shows that others trust your content, and these third-party references are proving increasingly important factors for AI chatbots. (We will let you in on a little secret: creating high quality, relevant content that supports its claims, appropriately addresses users’ needs, and is well structured and easy to read will naturally lead to this.)
Traditional SEO practices are still important
Even though AI chatbots don’t crawl the web the same way a search engine does, traditional SEO practices remain relevant. This means including relevant keywords, phrases, and meta copy, ensuring your site design is responsive and offers mobile-friendly designs, and prioritizing clean code and structured data.
All of this helps make your content easier for AI to access and interpret.
Have questions about how you can strengthen your website to rank higher in AI-powered search engines? Our web development and content strategists can assess your site and help you develop and execute a plan that keeps you visible in AI-powered search results.
