AI, GEO, AND THE FUTURE OF SEARCH.

I've been getting a lot of questions lately about how AI is changing SEO.

Questions like:

1. Is AI going to kill SEO?
2. Is ChatGPT going to replace Google as the English-speaking world's default search tool?
3. How important is it that large language models know about my business?
4. How can I get better visibility in AI search?

At Longtail Dragon, our core values include continuously innovating and helping small businesses thrive in the modern marketplace. So it was important to me personally that we have some accurate, actionable answers to these questions.

Let’s dive into the data-driven insights on how AI is affecting SEO, the long-term outlook for organic search, and what steps you can take to future-proof your marketing.

Is AI Killing SEO?

Yes and no.

The biggest change AI is bringing to search right now is the rollout of AI Overviews—those top-of-the-page, not-always-accurate AI answers to your questions on Google. As you can probably tell, I don’t love them. But Google didn’t ask my opinion.

And unfortunately, they’re probably here to stay.

The Impact of AI Overviews on Traffic

AI Overviews are stealing clicks from your website. Research shows that over half of search users don’t even click links anymore. AI Overviews and featured snippets are doing more and more of the answering.

Zero-click search was already a big deal, but in the past four months, AI Overviews have accelerated the trend. These days, even if you rank on the first page of Google, you're likely seeing 35% less traffic from those queries if that page includes an AI Overview—and about one-third of them do.

I’ve seen this in real-time across our clients' Google Search Console data. One client showed rising search visibility throughout the year, but clicks started dropping the moment AI Overviews launched. Another client had a delayed reaction, but the pattern was clearly the same.

Often it’s less dramatic—impressions go up while clicks trail behind—but the trend is unmistakable. Less traffic for the same rankings. Your SEO team needs to be thinking about how to claw that traffic back.

A Small Silver Lining

If your site is listed as a source in an AI Overview, you're 80% more likely to get clicked than if you're not. A 1.08% click-through rate might not sound thrilling, but it beats 0.6%.

So ranking in AI Overviews is going to matter a lot in SEO moving forward.

Will LLMs Like ChatGPT Replace Google?

They’d like to.

ChatGPT launched a search tool. Early adopters love it. Google’s been scrambling to respond with its own “AI mode.”

What the Market Share Tells Us

For now, Google still dominates with just under 90% of search traffic. So don’t fire your SEO or Google Ads teams yet.

Referral traffic from LLMs is still tiny. In a typical month:

1. Google Organic might make up 28–60% of your site’s traffic.
2. Bing: ~1%
3. DuckDuckGo: ~0.5%
4. Yahoo: even less
5. ChatGPT: around 0.1–0.5%

But that’s changing.

Growth and Conversion Potential

Traffic from LLMs has grown more than 500% in the last year, and that growth is accelerating. This channel is just getting started.

More importantly, LLM traffic converts 50–200% better than traditional search traffic. Why? Because most of the buyer’s journey is happening inside the LLM itself—researching, comparing, reviewing—before users even land on your site. By the time they get there, they're ready to buy.

And if ChatGPT is telling users to buy from your competitor instead? You're toast, no matter how often you show up.

It’s not just visibility that matters now. It’s sentiment. You need AI to talk about your business—and talk about it positively.

Will AI Kill Google?

It hasn’t yet. But it could.

No one knows for sure what the search landscape will look like in five years. If they say they do, they’re full of it. But here’s what we’re seeing.

The “Enshittification” of Google

If you're terminally online as much as I am, you’ve probably heard the term "Enshittification." It describes how platforms get worse over time:

1. First, they're good to users.
2. Then they prioritize advertisers.
3. Then they try to claw back value for themselves—and begin to die.

Facebook, Netflix, Amazon—they’ve all gone through it. So has Google.

Right now, I’d say Google is sliding dangerously down that slope. It’s not inevitable, but the incentives aren’t aligned for them to fix it. Ads are suffocating the experience, and the company shows no appetite for change.

Monopolies can slide farther before they feel pain. That’s why Google still has 90% of the search market. But every inch they slide makes them more vulnerable to disruption.

Eventually, the pain of switching will be less than the pain of staying. That’s when Google stops being the default.

Is ChatGPT the New Google?

Maybe.

It’s hard to separate hype from substance with AI. But right now, ChatGPT Search—or one of its competitors—is looking like the likeliest candidate to take Google’s crown.

How to Rank in AI Overviews and LLMs

First rule: don’t stop investing in SEO.

If you’re not actively doing SEO, it’s time to start. Here’s why:

Traditional SEO Still Matters

AI Overviews rely heavily on the top 10 organic results. So traditional SEO is still critical for ranking in those AI-generated summaries.

LLM search is essentially just traditional search with a natural language UI. ChatGPT Search, for example, pulls from Bing’s search index. And there’s chatter that it even leans on Google when Bing results fall short.

That means content, links, page speed, and structured data still matter. SEO is still the foundation of discoverability—even in AI search.

GEO: Our AI Optimization System

At Longtail Dragon, we’ve developed a system specifically for this new search frontier.

We're calling it Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). Here's how it works:

Included in Every SEO Package (Basic GEO)

If you’re on one of our SEO plans, you're already getting basic GEO at no extra charge. That includes:

• LLM Discoverability Audit – Ensures LLMs can crawl your site properly.
• LLMs.txt – A sitemap-like file that tells LLMs what your most important content is.
• LLM-optimized content – Everything we write for SEO is also optimized for ingestion and summary by LLMs.

We especially love our expert interview content model for this. It creates content AI systems love, straight from the real subject matter experts: you.

Premium GEO Add-Ons

On top of that, we offer three premium options designed to boost:

1. Brand visibility
2. Positive sentiment
3. Frequency of mentions across the web

These strategies directly impact the training and retrieval data that LLMs use to form opinions about your brand.

And best of all, everything in these packages also helps your traditional SEO.

Ready to Get Started?

Go to longtaildragon.com/geo. Fill out the form. We’ll get back to you with custom recommendations for your brand.

And for the first three customers who sign up, we're offering a 20% discount on their GEO plan.

Final Thoughts

Yes, AI is changing search. Yes, it's messy. But we built this service to meet that challenge head-on.

This is the earliest possible moment that it makes sense to take action. Any earlier, and we wouldn't have had the data. Any later, and you’d be playing catch-up.

Our clients who move on this now will have a clear early-mover advantage.

So let’s go take that hill. We’ll see you at the top.