AI and search.

Search has started answering on its own

Search engines increasingly close the query themselves: Yandex’s ai-generated results and Google’s AI Overviews assemble an answer from sources right on the results page. The person gets the information — and does not click through to any site.

For a business this is a new situation: positions can grow while traffic falls. The classic logic of promotion was built on the chain “position — click — visit — enquiry”, and the ai answer breaks it at the very first step.

Visibility has not disappeared, it has changed form

The search engine does not assemble the answer out of thin air: it takes it from specific websites and shows links to the sources. The competition has simply moved — before, the fight was for a place among ten blue links; now it is for getting into the answer itself.

The list of three to five sources beneath the ai answer is the new first position. What is more, a mention works even without a click: the person sees the company’s name in the answer to their question and remembers it.

Audience behaviour, meanwhile, is changing unevenly. Some people still scroll the results and compare sites — especially where the decision costs money and a two-line answer is not enough.

Which queries lose clicks and which hold up

Losing — reference queries, simple instructions, definitions and lists with no choice involved. Anything that can be closed with two paragraphs of text the search engine now shows itself.

Holding up — commercial queries like “buy”, “order”, “price”, comparison and contractor selection, brand queries and complex topics where a primary source is needed rather than a retelling.

The pattern is simple: the closer a query is to money and to a choice, the more resilient its traffic. The ai answer handles facts well and responsibility for a decision badly.

How to work out how hard this hits you

Before changing strategy, look at the structure of your own semantic core. Split the queries that bring traffic into informational, commercial and brand — and calculate the shares.

If the bulk of your traffic is commercial and brand, ai-generated results affect you far less than the news suggests. If your visits rested on informational articles, the rebuild is needed now.

The second sign is a gap between impressions and clicks. Impressions hold or grow while clicks fall: that means the answer is being taken before it reaches your site.

How to rebuild promotion

The goal shifts: not only to bring the person to the site, but to get into the answer itself. The work priorities change like this:

• Structured content with direct answers — a clear question in the heading and the answer in the first sentences, not after three paragraphs of lead-in.
• Unique data and case studies with figures — things the ai models have nowhere to get except from you, and therefore have to cite.
• Working on brand demand — a mention in the answer works as a media contact, and brand queries do not lose clicks.
• Strengthening commercial pages — traffic is shifting towards transactional queries, and the landing pages for them must be stronger than before.

The flip side is also clear: articles that retell publicly available information stop paying off. Continuing to write them means paying for content that the search engine will retell instead of you.

What to measure now

Two metrics join the familiar positions and clicks: the domain’s share of appearances in ai answers across the key semantics, and the dynamics of brand demand.

This changes how reports are read. A drop in clicks alongside growth in mentions and brand queries is not a promotion failure but a change in the channel of contact. And the reverse: flat traffic with mentions gone is a reason to investigate before it starts to fall.

Frequently asked questions

So SEO is no longer needed?

It is needed, but the goal is different. Technical requirements, structure and page quality have not gone anywhere — those are precisely what the search engine uses to select sources for the answer.

How do you get into the sources of an ai answer?

Nobody offers guarantees. Direct answers at the start of a section, a clear heading structure, your own data and the domain’s recognition on the topic improve the odds.

Should you block your site from ai systems?

For most businesses this is shooting yourself in the foot: once blocked, you vanish from the answers, but the clicks do not come back as a result.

Is a blog useless now?

A blog made of retellings is useless. Material with your experience, calculations and examples works better than ever — it is exactly what gets cited.

What to do next

The zero click takes traffic from retellings, but not from expertise and not from commerce. Sites that were a source of unique information and a convenient place to buy keep both their visits and their sales.

Start with an audit of your semantics: calculate what share of traffic lands on informational articles. Then decide what to rewrite first.

We handle ai search promotion and classic SEO promotion together. Next, our guide on how to increase website traffic will come in handy.