Discoverability in the Age of AI Search
Search is a huge part of our lives. As of December 2024, Google estimated that we search 99,000 times every second (or 8,500,000,000 times per day).
We search A LOT. And why wouldn’t we? The vastness of all human knowledge is available at our fingertips. We should be using that knowledge.
But we’ve also become dependent on fast, reliable search—which has basically always meant Google.
Take a moment to think back about searching online 10 or even 20 years ago. It was… different. Search engines focused on keywords and density, opening the way for a lot of deceptive, mediocre content.
Over the years, Google got really good at understanding whether an article, guide, video, or whatever was useful. Good content filtered to the top and skillful creators churned out more and more of this good content. For a time, search worked the way it ought to work: by providing the best content to meet our search query.
Using AI to ‘Answer’ Search
Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models have taken our digital lives by storm. Conversational AI is both fun and useful. It turns out, that people like to use search tools that interact with us.
This is sharply in contrast to the historic design of search engines. Google was always a dispassionate third party connecting us with websites, products, and content that satisfied our needs.
Let’s look at a real basic example I went through recently. My coffee grinder’s lid cracked, meaning I would need a new one. So I went to Google and searched: ‘coffee grinder under $60.’ Here are the results:
Pretty much what we’d expect—I get a bunch of products listed, with the top actual search result from Amazon. If I scroll down, I’ll see more ‘Top Products’ that meet my search parameters. Followed by links to expected content—another Amazon link, a Reddit link to r/espresso asking about budget grinders, and some content reviews promising to list the ‘4 best grinders for 2025’ or something similar.
My next move would be to read that Reddit thread, browse a couple of the listicles, and start my own list of potential grinders that meet my needs.
Now here’s the same search done with Perplexity AIs search engine.
The biggest immediate difference is the positioning of actual products to buy. Perplexity leads with articles and listicles outlining my coffee grinder options. Then we’ve got this nice table with some details about options like the type of grinder and its capacity.
The remainder of the search page features product links to the grinders in my table, as well as a bunch of suggested follow-up searches like; “Which coffee grinder under $60 offers the best grind consistency.”
Changing up the structure of the results points to the main difference between these search engines: Google is using the search terms to assume that I want to buy a new coffee grinder. So it served up a bunch of products. Perplexity assumed I wanted to research buying a new coffee grinder.
Note the ‘Ask follow-up’ option at the bottom of my Perplexity search.
The old way of searching was about connecting to a product, article, or service that meets our needs, based on the (reasonable) assumption Google’s search algorithm makes.
AI search is about finding answers to your questions. And it does that through iterative, conversational inputs. My question wasn’t just ‘Show me coffee grinders in my price range.’ It was actually ‘help me find the best coffee grinder for my needs in my price range.’ The AI search engine understands the buyer’s journey and helps facilitate the research part of buying far better than the old style of keyword-focused search.
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Making AI Search Work For You
Before you get too far into figuring out how to show up in AI search, you should start by evaluating if you already get any traffic.
Finding Your AI Traffic
Luckily, you can use an AI to tell you how to see this traffic. Here’s what Perplexity instructed me to do to find AI search results in GA4:
This is a very basic view of traffic from specific sources like ChatGPT. Perplexity went on to detail a variety of views and explorations I could set up to further evaluate my traffic.
There’s a good chance you’re already getting traffic from AI search engines, but it probably pales in comparison to the traffic Google drives to your site. That does not at all mean you shouldn’t think about how to optimize your pages for AI search.
You know you’ll get less traffic from AI simply because the searcher might not need to click on your site (yet). If they’re still researching and looking for answers, they’ll find that right on the search screen. Succeeding in a world of AI search means your content builds authority and shows expertise. The actual clicks are likely to come later, once your potential customer has done all of their research and is ready to move to the purchasing stage of the buyer journey.
Optimizing Your Content For AI Search
Here’s a staggering number: in 2024, nearly 60% of Google searches ended without a click. Think about that for a second. The purpose of Google is to connect people with a question or need to your content and products. How are you supposed to build an audience and sell your products or services if no one is clicking through the search results to your pages?
There are a couple of huge problems with zero-click searches. The most immediate one is that Google decides how to rank sites based on clicks. If you’re not getting clicks, you might not rank as well as you should, even if your content answers the search results better than other sites. That means you’re even more buried under the AI overview, the product listings, the ads, and the behemoth companies like Amazon that will outrank almost everyone.
The loss of clicks in search is partially due to Google emphasizing its platforms in search, which naturally means less traffic for sites on the open web. But the biggest shift is Google’s AI overview. When someone asks a question, Google provides an answer (using its Gemini AI model) right at the top of the search results. That answer comes from Gemini’s large language model, which is trained on the information content creators like you put out on the web.
AI search needs your expert content to formulate answers. Here’s a relatively simple example from Google:
The AI overview is a snippet from the National Zoo. Which is great, because I know that’s a reliable source. But with the snippet, I have my answer and don’t need to actually click through to the source. Zero clicks, but I still got my answer from a source I trust.
This is what search will look like in the future. Your specific expertise and ability to answer questions will be more important than winning specific keywords.
SEO isn’t dead, but it’s different.
The Future of Search is Answers
This might seem obvious, but as content creators, we need to refocus our attention. Winning search doesn’t mean artfully peppering your blog posts with keywords or writing the perfect YouTube description to capture search results.
What search is about is answering questions. For SEO experts reading this, it means focusing on long-tail phrases rather than terms. Zero-click searching is just the way we will engage with content going forward.
Luckily, there are lots of ways we can influence and work with this new model. It might mean we have to accept some metrics—like click-through rate—are going to be significantly lower, if not completely irrelevant. If someone goes to Perplexity and asks ‘How should I print my books on-demand?’ and Lulu doesn’t show up as an option, that’s because we haven’t done a good enough job of answering that question.
While we have always ranked well for search-related keywords like ‘print my book on-demand,’ that isn’t enough today. Individual creators and brands alike need to go a step further and answer the questions that stem from the keywords. That’s how we show up in AI overviews and that’s how we stay relevant in a zero-click world.
Staying Relevant and Displaying Authority
Search is being overrun by AI. I doubt that will change—and most in the marketing world agree with that sentiment. We’re going to get even more embedded into AI-based search results. Tools like Perplexity are going to continue getting better at answering our questions with relevant and authoritative references. To win at search, we need to be the ones behind those references.
That means creating content that answers the key questions your audience (and potential audience) are asking. To understand what those questions are, you need to be present online—based entirely on your audience, this could be Facebook, Reddit, TikTok, LinkedIn, Substack, or some other gathering place. Showing up as a person is just one more tool for building a reputation of authority in your niche.
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Combining that public relations push with accurate, answer-based content is how you’ll find your content being featured by AI overviews and search results. The model is only as good as the content it’s reviewing to provide an answer. If you have the right answers and you structure your content to center on the questions your customers are asking, you’ll begin to appear as a source in AI search results.
This will mean fewer clicks and less traffic. That’s just the way search is changing. But it also means you’re providing valuable answers and that your brand/content is showing up as the source for the AI results. While this is far more difficult to track—How do we know if our answers are surfacing? How do we know if they’re useful?—it doesn’t change the fact that we still can have significant reach. We’ll just need to find new ways to measure that reach.
These (and many more questions) will continue to hang over all of us as we navigate the evolving world of search. The key thing for you, right now, is to understand that keywords are less important and answers are more important than ever. You shouldn’t abandon a keyword strategy for your content, but you should refocus on making those keywords part of an answer to the questions you know your audience is asking.
That means partaking in conversations, engaging with your existing audience, polling them to learn more about their journey, and using that information and connections to build answer-based content our new AI search tools can use to answer your audience's questions.
