AI Search and Your Business: What Still Matters for SEO

A practical guide to staying visible as Google changes: how Google sees your business, local SEO, backlinks and what to do when rankings drop.

Connie
Founder & SEO Strategist, Digital Spark · 25 September 2026

If you run a business, you have probably heard that AI is about to make your website invisible.

Google now answers many questions with AI-generated summaries, and tools like ChatGPT recommend businesses directly. It is easy to assume that customers will stop visiting websites altogether.

The reality is more practical, and far less dramatic.

People still search for services, compare providers, read reviews and contact businesses. Your website, your Google Business Profile and your reputation across the web all remain part of how customers find you.

What has shifted is the way those options are displayed, and what it takes to stand out.

Is page one disappearing?

No, but page one is becoming more crowded and less predictable.

Depending on the search, the results may include:

Being on page one still matters, but “we rank on page one” is no longer a sufficiently precise measure of performance.

A result in position three may be highly visible for one query and buried beneath several other search features for another.

One frequently repeated benchmark claims that the first three organic positions receive approximately 68% of clicks. This comes from adding estimated click-through rates of 39.8%, 18.7% and 10.2%.

That may be a useful general benchmark, but it is not a universal rule. Click behaviour changes according to the query, location, device, industry and search features displayed.

My simple way of understanding Google

The traditional results page has not vanished. Its layout and the distribution of clicks have changed.

I use three metaphors when explaining Google.

Google is a librarian

Imagine Google as the librarian responsible for an enormous collection of information.

Each person, business and subject has its own box. Your box might contain:

The clearer and more consistent this collection is, the easier it becomes for Google, and potential customers, to understand who you are, what you do and when your information may be useful.

That does not mean you should publish hundreds of pages simply to fill the box.

Ten valuable resources can be more useful than 100 generic articles. The information needs to be accurate, connected and worth discovering.

Google is an inspector

Google is also trying to determine whether your claims should be trusted.

If you claim to be an expert, what demonstrates that expertise?

Do you show real work? Do you provide original examples, photographs, research, professional qualifications, client outcomes or first-hand experience?

Is the author identifiable? Can the reader understand why that person is qualified to discuss the subject?
Google encourages publishers to include accurate authorship information, clear sourcing and evidence of experience or expertise.

This is often discussed through E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. Google explains that E-E-A-T is not one individual ranking factor. Instead, its systems use a mixture of signals to identify content that appears helpful and trustworthy.

Read Google’s people-first content guidance.

Google is a clean freak

Google needs to crawl, organise and understand your information.

Help it by providing:

• A logical website structure
• Clear page titles and headings
• Useful internal links
• Crawlable content
• Fast, accessible pages
• Accurate business information
• Relevant images and videos
• Pages aligned with real search intentions
• Consistent information about your services and locations

Do human-first SEO

Do not build your entire strategy for ChatGPT.

We do not know exactly how ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Claude or future search products will evolve. Their models, sources, interfaces and retrieval systems will continue to change.

Build for the person asking the question. That means:

• Understand their intention.
• Answer their question clearly.
• Provide accurate information.
• Make the page easy to navigate.
• Demonstrate relevant experience.
• Include evidence and trustworthy sources.
• Help them make a decision or complete a task.
• Give them a reason to remember you.

Strong SEO cannot guarantee that ChatGPT will mention your business. Nobody can honestly make that promise.
However, it improves the content, technical accessibility, relevance and wider reputation that search and AI systems may use to understand your business.

Human-first SEO is, by consequence, AI-friendly SEO.

Personal branding can support SEO

Personal branding matters because people want to know who is behind the advice they are reading.

A strong personal presence can help you:

• Demonstrate real experience
• Build a recognisable name
• Earn relevant media coverage
• Attract natural links
• Develop professional relationships
• Appear in interviews and podcasts
• Generate branded searches
• Distribute your knowledge across different channels

If Google or an AI search system investigates a supposed expert, it may encounter that person’s website, LinkedIn profile, interviews, articles, videos, reviews and independent mentions. That creates a fuller and more consistent picture.

However, we need to be precise. There is no confirmed rule saying that having more Instagram followers directly improves your Google rankings.

The benefit is indirect and broader. A credible personal brand can generate recognition, searches, citations, links, conversations and evidence of real-world experience.

That is why the question should not be “Do I need SEO or social media?” For many businesses, the answer is both. Each channel can support the other.

Stop publishing polished nothingness

AI can produce grammatically correct content within seconds. This is exactly why polished but empty articles are becoming easier to ignore.

Do not publish another article that merely defines something already explained on 500 websites. Add something that deserves to exist:

Expert content does not need complicated words.

Real expertise often makes a difficult subject easier to understand. The objective is not to sound clever. It is to leave the reader better informed.

Backlinks are opportunities for discovery

Backlinks have always been about more than increasing a score inside an SEO tool.

A relevant link can:

• Help new people discover your business
• Send qualified referral traffic
• Connect your name with a topic or location
• Provide independent evidence of expertise
• Help search engines discover and understand a page
• Create another credible source an AI search system may retrieve

That does not mean every backlink increases your chances of appearing in ChatGPT.

A relevant mention in an established industry publication is very different from 500 links purchased from unrelated websites.

The objective is not to collect the largest number of links. It is to become genuinely worth mentioning.

Should we expect fewer website clicks?

For some informational content, yes.

Searches that require a short factual answer are particularly vulnerable. People do not want to scroll through ten minutes of filler when they need a cooking temperature, definition, age or quick calculation.

We already see this behaviour on TikTok, YouTube and other platforms. People value speed and clarity.

That does not make informational content useless. It changes what the content needs to provide.

Ask yourself: does this page offer anything beyond the one-sentence answer?

A strong informational resource might include:

A definition may receive visibility. A useful resource can build trust, recognition, links, subscriptions and enquiries.

Local SEO remains essential

Local SEO and traditional organic SEO overlap, but they are not identical.

If your business operates in Sydney, Brisbane or another defined service area, you need to help nearby customers understand:

• Where you operate
• What services you provide
• Whether you serve their suburb
• When you are available
• What previous customers experienced
• How they can contact or visit you
• Why they should choose you

This requires an accurate Google Business Profile, real customer reviews, useful local pages, consistent business information and a technically sound website.

AI does not remove local intent.

Someone still needs a nearby dentist, restaurant, lawyer, builder or marketing consultant. Google may change how it presents the options, but the underlying customer need remains.

What should you do when rankings drop?

Google changes its ranking systems regularly.

In 2026, Google’s public dashboard recorded core updates in March and May, spam updates in March, June and August, and a Discover update in February. View the Google Search Status Dashboard.

A loss of traffic does not automatically mean AI has replaced your website. It also does not automatically mean Google has penalised you.

Google recommends waiting at least one full week after a core update finishes before analysing its impact. It also advises against dramatic “quick fixes” when a page has only experienced a small movement.

Read Google’s core update guidance

The quickest recipe for disappearing from Google

If you want a recipe for losing search visibility, it looks something like this:

• Write for an algorithm instead of a person.
• Avoid answering the question clearly.
• Fill pages with repeated keywords.
• Publish large volumes of generic AI content.
• Rewrite information from other websites without adding value.
• Buy hundreds of cheap, irrelevant backlinks.
• Create almost identical pages for every suburb.
• Make exaggerated claims without evidence.
• Focus on publishing frequency instead of usefulness.
• Replace knowledgeable writers with unchecked AI output.
• Forget that the visitor has a genuine reason for searching.

You are speaking to a human being.

That person has searched because they want an answer, solution, service or next step. Give it to them.

Do not make them fight through three introductions, a history lesson and five paragraphs of filler before reaching the useful information.

Answer first. Then provide the evidence, explanation, examples and expertise that make your content worth reading.

Google does not have a simple blacklist for websites that publish too often. But its systems can neutralise manipulative signals, reduce a site’s visibility or apply a manual action when spam policies are violated.

Google specifically identifies link spam and scaled content created primarily to manipulate rankings as prohibited practices.

Read Google’s spam policies.

What this means for your business

Customers now find businesses through a mix of places: organic results, the map pack, AI summaries, reviews, videos and word of mouth that ends in a search for your name.

You do not need to rebuild your marketing every time a new AI feature appears. Focus on the basics that every one of those channels relies on accurate information, helpful pages, real reviews and a clear reason to choose you.

If those foundations are already in place, you are well positioned. If they are not, that is the place to start.

Search is changing how customers find you.

Being the most helpful, trustworthy option is still what makes them pick up the phone.

Official resources and further reading

GOOGLE SEARCH GUIDANCE

• Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
• Googleʼs core update guidance
• Google Search spam policies
• Google Search Status Dashboard

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