The Rise of AI Search: Why CMOs Can’t Rely on SEO Alone

Content leaders have spent decades perfecting SEO. Ranking first on Google or Bing meant visibility, leads, and dominance. But in 2025, a new dynamic is reshaping discovery: AI-powered conversational search.

Increasingly, users aren't scrolling through search results—they're asking AI agents for answers. The result? Brands that fail to show up in these conversational responses are effectively invisible.

A Landscape Transformed

Traffic data tells a stark story. Major publishers like Wikipedia, TripAdvisor, and Yelp now receive over 50% of their traffic from search, yet referral traffic has plunged by double digits in 2025. Google’s own AI-generated Overviews have accelerated this shift, answering queries directly and siphoning clicks away from websites.

TollBit reports a startling 49% surge in AI-bot visits in Q1 2025, far outpacing legacy web crawlers. When half the bots fetching your content are AI tools rather than human users, the nature of visibility has shifted dramatically.

Users Are Changing Where They Search

Traditional engines remain dominant, but AI chat is growing fast. A recent survey found that 71.5% of users have tried AI tools for search, with 14% using them daily.

Globally, research shows:

• Google still handles around 14 billion searches per day, roughly 5 trillion annually, maintaining over 90% search share.
• Yet in 2024 alone, ChatGPT processed some 365 billion prompts—surpassing the time Google took to reach that volume, years after its launch.

Another report predicts that by 2027, nearly 1 in 10 Americans will rely on generative AI as their first choice for searches — semrush.com.

This isn’t about replacing Google—it’s about dual-mode discovery: search and conversational AI living side by side.

The New Discovery Deficit

The paradox is clear: Google’s search volume continues to grow, but user clicks to third-party websites are flat or declining. Zero-click searches—where users get answers without leaving the results page—now account for 58.5% of searches in the U.S.

AI-powered Overviews reduce organic click-through rates by 20–40%. Marketers focused solely on ranking pages are missing the new frontier: being cited, not just clicked.

Why CMOs Need to Lead the Shift

For CMOs in tech, trust and visibility directly shape buyer journeys. AI-powered tools are increasingly the first place a prospective customer seeks answers—and the first place trust is formed. If your product isn’t among the examples that ChatGPT or Perplexity cites, your story isn’t even heard.

Brands risk being judged by “alternate realities” if AI bots choose others to include. If trust is rooted in top-of-funnel visibility, being omitted cuts deep.

Reimagining Content Strategy

This new context forces a strategic rethink: content must be crafted not just for human readers, but for AI retrieval, synthesis, and citation. That means:

1. Structuring information for AI parsing—clear formats and semantic cues.
2. Writing factual, citable statements capable of being embedded by AI.
3. Tracking presence across AI platforms.
4. Benchmarking against competitors—who gets mentioned, and why.

That’s not marketing fluff—that’s the infrastructure of future brand equity.

From SEO to AEO/AIO: The Shift Begins

Welcome to the era of Answer‑Engine Optimization (AEO) or AI Optimization (AIO)—an evolution from SEO. If SEO built awareness through ranks, AEO builds relevance through recognition.

You’re not optimizing algorithms. You’re optimizing for inclusion in AI answers.

CMOs who understand this early will lead in awareness, trust, and discovery long before AI becomes the dominant interface. Those who don’t risk becoming invisible in plain sight.