How did AI results affect your business?

As you know Google always gives AI answers or results now. How did this affect your business and website traffic?

nuclearrap said:

As you know Google always gives AI answers or results now. How did this affect your business and website traffic?

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Negatively, I haven't optimized my website to appear in AI results.

didn’t change much. LLM traffic is still less than 1% in my case, so nothing really worth taking into conisderation. However, I do believe this will change in the future, so having an SEO optimized site is definitely the way to go

I run a small agency doing local SEO for dentists, lawyers and contractors. AI Overviews are killing traffic from local pack and near me searches badly. We've shifted to pushing real reviews, YouTube videos and better GBP optimization. Organic traffic dropped but local brand is stronger now

Yeah, it’s definitely changed things. Google answers a lot of basic stuff directly now, so fewer people click through. But anything more detailed still gets traffic.

I do music streaming, and the rise and quality of AI music made it sooo much easier.

Informational stuff got hit the hardest for me. Had a bunch of "how to" and "what is" type articles that used to bring decent traffic and those basically fell off a cliff once AI Overviews started showing up for those queries. People get the answer right there and never click.

But the pages with actual buyer intent, comparisons, pricing, "best X for Y" kinda stuff held up way better. Google still sends clicks when someone is close to spending money.

@EchoingEpitaph makes a good point on the local side, seen the same thing with a couple GBP clients. The near me searches are getting eaten alive. Doubling down on reviews and just being the recognisable brand in the area is honestly the only thing that still works there.

idk if i'd panic about it long term though. The traffic that survives tends to convert better anyway since the tire kickers got filtered out by the AI answer.

AI is bad. it is my personal opinion. i dont like ai. Everything becomes so easy. It takes everyone job. It can write emails, tell us ways to make money , what will work and what not. It makes us everything available on the table. we just have to come up with brainstorming ideas