What changed on the results page
For twenty years the search results page was a list. Now, for a growing share of queries, it is an answer followed by a list. AI overviews, answer boxes, and conversational search assistants read the web and summarise it, which means your page can inform the answer without earning the click.
That shift changes the economics of some content. Thin, definitional pages that once ranked for "what is X" questions are being summarised into irrelevance. Pages with original data, specific experience, and a clear point of view are the ones being cited and linked.
What did not change
The uncomfortable truth for anyone selling an "AI SEO" package: the core work is the same as it was.
- Technical health — a fast, crawlable site with clean code and sensible internal links. Our SEO practice still starts here on every engagement.
- Relevance — pages that match the intent behind a query, not just its words.
- Authority — backlinks from reputable sites remain one of the strongest signals, and the AI systems that summarise results lean on the same ranked pages.
- Experience — a layout people can use, on a phone, without fighting it.
What has changed is the return on each of these. Technical and experience work are now table stakes. Relevance and authority are where differentiation lives.
Write to be cited, not just to be ranked
A summariser needs three things from a page: a clear claim, evidence for it, and enough structure to extract both. That favours a particular style of writing.
- Lead each section with the answer, then explain. Do not bury the point in paragraph four.
- Use specific numbers, dates and named methods. "We tested this across 40 landing pages over six months" is citable; "in our experience" is not.
- Build an extensive, honest FAQ. Questions phrased the way customers phrase them are exactly what conversational search is matching against.
- Keep headings literal. Clever headings make for poor extraction.
The page that gets cited is the page a careful human would quote. Write that page.
Measure differently
Click-through rate on informational queries will fall for almost everyone. Treating that as a failure leads to bad decisions. Instead, track:
- Impressions and citations for your key topics, including brand mentions inside AI answers.
- Branded search volume — the clearest sign that being summarised is building awareness.
- Conversion rate of the organic traffic you still receive, which tends to rise as low-intent clicks disappear.
Audit your top 50 organic pages. For each, decide: does it deserve to be the cited source for this topic? If not, either make it the best page on the subject or redirect it to the page that is.