Key Takeaways
- The “SEO is declining because AI is rising” narrative relies on a false zero-sum assumption. This mirrors past mistakes (e.g., apps vs. the web): AI usage can grow significantly without the web or SEO declining in parallel.
- Many claims about SEO traffic collapse are based on weak self-reported survey data. Asking users to estimate past search or AI usage is methodologically unreliable compared to panel-based traffic data.
- Large-scale traffic data shows only a modest decline, not a collapse. Analysis of panel data from Similarweb covering 40,000 major U.S. sites across 2024–2025 showed total organic traffic down ~2.5%, not the commonly cited 25%, with results directionally validated against internal and Google data.
- AI introduces new user behaviors and changes how visibility works, rather than simply replacing search. A joint OpenAI and Harvard study found roughly a third of AI prompts reflect entirely new behaviors (e.g., writing, self-expression).
- In AI systems, visibility matters beyond the “top three” results because models draw from many citations and from core training signals, making rankings noisier and broader than traditional search.
No items found.
