Picture this: In the soft glow of a phone screen, a CMO types a query into Google’s Gemini. “Which agencies are the best at web design in Navi Mumbai?” Instead of the familiar stack of blue links, the AI instantly delivers a neat shortlist complete with brand names, features, and pricing. No extra tabs. No publisher pit stops. Just a final answer.
That moment captures the new reality of online discovery. Artificial intelligence isn’t simply another layer on top of search. It has become the entryway itself and it’s closing the door on the SEO playbook we’ve relied on for two decades.
The Rise of AI-First Discovery
According to recent McKinsey research, AI-driven search has shifted from novelty to norm. Nearly half of all Google queries already generate an AI summary, and that share is expected to exceed 75% by 2028. People of all ages even a majority of baby boomers are turning to tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Perplexity for shopping, advice, and product comparisons. In fact, 44% now say AI is their top source of purchase guidance.
By McKinsey’s estimates, U.S. revenue flowing through AI-driven discovery will reach $750 billion by 2028. The implication for marketers is brutal: we are entering a “zero-click” world where organic traffic drops 20–50% as AI intermediates the customer journey.
The Metrics Are Already Shifting
This isn’t conjecture. The 2025 Previsible AI Traffic Report documents a 527% spike in referrals from AI platforms in just the first five months of the year. In advisory-heavy sectors like finance and healthcare, these referrals already make up around 1% of total sessions a sliver that once belonged exclusively to Google Search.
Publishers are absorbing the biggest hit. Some have seen click-through rates collapse by more than half. The underlying reason? User behaviour has fundamentally changed. Instead of typing strings of keywords, people are asking conversational questions, mixing voice, images, and context and receiving answers directly from the model without visiting a source site.
The Collapse of Traditional SERPs
McKinsey reports that over 70% of AI queries happen at the top of the funnel, but AI’s influence runs across the whole decision journey: category research, feature comparisons, personalised rankings, and more. In consumer electronics, 55% of shoppers use AI-first search; in apparel, 40% do.
The classic SERP is no longer the centrepiece of discovery. The “blue-link economy” is evaporating.
SEO’s value once based on securing page-one positions is eroding fast. Brands are no longer fighting for rankings but for inclusion: to be cited, paraphrased, or even vaguely referenced inside an AI-generated summary.
Brands Are Losing Visibility
McKinsey finds that only 5–10% of the data feeding AI responses comes from brand-owned websites. The rest is pulled from third-party content: forums, reviews, news articles, comparison sites, Reddit threads, Wikipedia, and user-generated commentary. Even dominant brands can disappear from recommendations despite their real-world market share.
And yet only 16% of companies actively measure how they show up in AI outputs. Most are flying blind.
The Shift to GEO: GenAI Engine Optimisation
Forward-thinking marketers are responding by building a new discipline: GEO (Generative AI Engine Optimisation). It functions alongside SEO, but instead of optimising for rankings, it tracks:
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how often a brand appears in AI answers
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the accuracy of those references
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the sentiment and context of mentions
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which third-party sources shape the model’s output
This demands broader content ecosystems. Brands must invest in the external environments AI models learn from social platforms like TikTok and Instagram (where 40% of young users source recommendations), as well as forums and trusted publishers that influence AI’s “knowledge graph” (e.g., Reuters, AP, BBC, NPR, CNN, NYT, Washington Post, Reddit, Wikipedia).
Depth, clarity, and expertise matter more than volume. Human insight, structured data, and conversational formatting increase the odds of being cited.
A New Philosophy for CMOs
For marketing leaders, the uncomfortable truth is this: your website is no longer the destination. It’s a reference node. Most people will encounter your brand as a sentence maybe even a clause inside an AI-generated explanation.
Your job is to ensure that sentence is the most credible, compelling, and quotable version available. Compete for the citation, not the click.
The future media plan isn’t about placing attention around the answer. It’s about earning attention inside it.
Search marketing isn’t evolving. It’s being replaced. And the real question for the industry is whether we’re ready to bury the old model and design something entirely new in its place.