For business owners trying to keep up with search marketing, the advice can feel contradictory. One headline says AI is changing everything. Another says ChatGPT barely sends visitors to websites.
Both can be true.
AI-generated answers are becoming more common within Google itself. Meanwhile, Google organic search continues to deliver substantially more website traffic than ChatGPT in the research discussed below.
For your business, the practical response is to keep investing in effective SEO while making your website more useful to people researching questions, comparing options and reading AI-generated answers.
Two recent articles by Danny Goodwin, Editorial Director of Search Engine Land & SMX, help explain why. His reporting covers separate studies from Semrush and Marie Haynes. Read together, they raise an important question: How do you stay visible as search changes without neglecting the channels that bring you customers today?
What is changing in Google search?
Semrush tracked 400 U.S. desktop keywords across banking, ecommerce and software from September 2025 through August 2026. Google AI Overviews appeared for 88% of those keywords by the end of the study, compared with 45.75% at the beginning.
These were commercial searches: questions involving reviews, prices, alternatives and comparisons. Searches using the pattern “best X for Y” had particularly high coverage, reaching 96.12%.
That matters because these questions sit close to a buying decision. Someone comparing two services or investigating pricing is trying to decide what to do next.
Google may now present that person with an AI-generated summary alongside links to individual websites. Your business therefore has more to consider than its position in a list of search results.
However, the scope of the research matters. The 88% figure applies to the keywords Semrush tracked, not all Google searches or every industry. The study also did not measure changes in website clicks or sales.
Does ChatGPT send more customers than Google?
In Marie Haynes’ analysis, Google delivered far more traffic.
Her study examined 12 months of GA4 data from 100 websites, representing more than 145 million sessions. ChatGPT generated just 0.62% as many sessions as Google organic search. Adding other large language models brought that figure to 0.73%.
That is a comparison with Google organic traffic—not a percentage of all website visits.
Among the 55 websites tracking conversions, ChatGPT visitors converted at a higher rate: 13.8%, compared with 3.02% for Google organic visitors. But Google organic still produced 27 times as many conversions as all the LLM sources combined.
A higher conversion rate can be valuable, but volume matters too. A source that converts a greater percentage of a small audience may still generate fewer inquiries or purchases overall.
These findings describe the sampled websites. They do not establish what your business should expect, particularly because the analysis did not specify the industry mix or how conversions were defined. Your own results should guide your spending.
The connection: AI visibility and website traffic measure different things
The Semrush study measured how often AI Overviews appeared. Haynes’ analysis measured visits and conversions attributed to particular sources.
Neither answers the entire marketing question.
An AI answer might introduce someone to your business without producing an immediate website visit. That person might search for your company later, ask a colleague about you or never take another step. These two studies cannot establish which outcome occurred.
Likewise, low ChatGPT referral traffic does not mean AI is absent from your customers’ search experience. Google itself includes AI Overviews and AI Mode.
Google explains that traffic from its AI features is included in overall Search Console reporting under the Web search type. That reporting should not be treated as a clean separation between traditional search and AI-assisted discovery.
Our takeaway at Blue Pen: protect the search performance you can measure, and make thoughtful improvements that help customers understand and evaluate your business wherever they encounter it.
How do SEO, AEO and GEO fit together?
These terms describe overlapping goals:
- Search engine optimization (SEO) helps search engines find and understand your website so relevant pages can appear in search results.
- Answer engine optimization (AEO) focuses on answering questions clearly and directly.
- Generative engine optimization (GEO) focuses on making information understandable and useful to systems that generate answers from multiple sources.
The terminology can make this sound like three separate marketing programs. For a business deciding what to improve next, much of the work overlaps.
Google’s own guidance says that established SEO practices remain relevant to AI Overviews and AI Mode. It does not require special AI markup or a separate optimization method for those features. Meeting its requirements also does not guarantee inclusion.
Start with accurate information, accessible pages and useful answers. Build from there based on evidence.
What should your business do now?
Answer the questions customers ask before they buy
Review your most important service and product pages. Can a potential customer quickly understand:
- What you offer and who it is for?
- What it costs, or what determines the price?
- How it compares with other options?
- What is included and what costs extra?
- What happens after they contact you or place an order?
These are useful questions whether someone reaches you through Google, an AI tool, a referral or an advertisement.
For example, a web design company could replace “Contact us for innovative digital solutions” with a clear explanation of its process, typical project scope and the factors that affect pricing.
The goal is to help someone make a decision.
Give a direct answer before the explanation
If a page asks, “How long does a website redesign take?” its opening paragraph should address timing. It can then explain how content preparation, approvals and technical requirements affect the schedule.
Avoid making readers work through several paragraphs of general marketing language before finding the answer.
Use descriptive headings, short explanations and relevant examples. This makes the page easier to navigate and gives each section a clear purpose. It does not guarantee that an AI system will quote or recommend it.
Support your claims with specific evidence
“Excellent service” and “industry-leading expertise” tell customers very little on their own.
Show what those claims mean through relevant case studies, named expertise, authentic customer feedback and a clear description of how you work. When you publish statistics, identify the source and explain the limits.
A case study should distinguish the work performed from the results observed. A comparison should explain meaningful differences. A pricing page should make clear what a customer receives.
Specific information gives people something concrete to evaluate.
Keep your website technically accessible
Useful content needs to be discoverable. Check that important pages can be crawled and indexed, connect them with relevant internal links, and make essential information available as text.
Google identifies these fundamentals as relevant to its AI search features as well as conventional search.
Before commissioning a separate AI visibility campaign, address basic problems that could prevent customers and search engines from finding your strongest content.
Measure inquiries, sales and customer quality
Traffic reports are useful, but your business needs to know what visitors do next.
Track meaningful actions such as qualified inquiries, consultation bookings and completed purchases. Where possible, connect those actions to actual customers and revenue.
Monitor AI referrals alongside your other sources. Treat AI mentions as a separate visibility signal: being mentioned is not the same as receiving a visit, and receiving a visit is not the same as winning a customer.
You can also ask new customers how they first heard about you. Their answers may add context that analytics alone cannot provide.
Should you move your SEO budget into GEO?
These studies do not justify a wholesale shift.
A more useful starting point is to examine what already produces qualified business. Maintain that work, improve pages that answer buying questions, and test additional AI visibility efforts against clear goals.
For one company, the immediate priority may be fixing weak service pages. For another, it may be publishing stronger comparisons or documenting customer results. A third may already have those foundations and be ready to investigate how AI tools describe its products.
The right investment depends on the gap you need to close.
Blue Pen’s perspective
Business owners should not have to rebuild their marketing strategy every time a new acronym appears.
The central job remains helping the right people find your business, understand what you offer and feel confident taking the next step. AI changes where some of those interactions happen. It also makes clear, credible information worth paying attention to.
Start with the questions your customers actually ask. Make the answers easy to find. Support them with evidence. Then measure whether your work brings in better inquiries and more business.
If you are unsure where to begin, talk with Blue Pen about how clearly your website explains your services—and what your search reporting says about the customers finding you today.
Reporting credit: This article draws on two original posts by Danny Goodwin, Editorial Director of Search Engine Land & SMX: “Google AI Overviews nearly double for commercial keywords: Study”, published October 22, 2026, and “ChatGPT sends less than 1% of Google’s traffic: Data”, published October 21, 2026. The underlying research comes from Semrush and Marie Haynes. The business recommendations and interpretation above are Blue Pen’s.