Your Customers Aren't Searching Anymore. They're Getting Answers. And You're Not In Them.

The internet's grand bargain is dead.

For twenty-five years, we've operated on a simple compact: publishers create content, search engines deliver eyeballs, advertising foots the bill. It was a beautiful, dysfunctional marriage that built empires. Google became a trillion-dollar colossus. Publishers carved out sustainable niches. Everyone got their cut.

That world ended sometime in 2023, though most of us are only just noticing the corpse.

Generative AI doesn't send you anywhere. It simply tells you the answer. No clicks. No journey. No discovery. Just synthesis, served neat. And in that shift from search to synthesis lies the complete rewriting of how value flows through the digital economy.

If you're running a business (any business) this isn't tomorrow's problem. Your customers are already asking ChatGPT about you. The question isn't whether they'll find you. It's whether you exist in the answer at all.

The numbers don't lie (and they're brutal)

Let's dispense with the euphemisms. When Google rolled out AI Overviews, publishers watched their traffic crater by up to 70%. Chegg, once the darling of online education, reported a 49% year-on-year collapse in non-subscriber traffic by early 2025.

This isn't disruption. It's demolition.

The maths is perverse: Google now crawls exponentially more content for every visitor it actually sends to a website. OpenAI's ChatGPT is worse: it's a black hole, consuming content and emitting answers, with no return journey at all. Anthropic's Claude once hammered Freelancer.com with 3.5 million requests in four hours, extracting value whilst contributing precisely nothing.

Yet here's the twist: the visitors who do arrive via AI are gold dust. They stay longer, browse deeper, convert better. The pipeline has narrowed to a trickle, but what flows through is champagne, not water.

The new kingmakers

Google's hegemony is cracking. Its search share has slipped below 90% for the first time in a decade - still dominant, but no longer divine. The barbarians aren't at the gates; they're in the boardroom:

ChatGPT commands 77% of AI search traffic, processing billions of queries monthly. It's become the default for a generation that treats it like a hyper-intelligent friend.

Perplexity has captured 22 million users and a $18 billion valuation by being what Google should have become: clean, fast, citation-heavy.

Claude positions itself as the thinking person's assistant, handling complex, multi-step reasoning that makes traditional search look like a child's abacus.

Even Google is hedging, desperately cramming AI Overviews into 35% of desktop searches, trying to cannibalise itself before others do it first.

Each engine has its quirks. ChatGPT favours fresh content and news outlets. Perplexity genuflects before academic sources. Google's AI, somewhat pathetically, has developed an addiction to Reddit and Quora. The messy serendipity of the open web - that blog you never knew you needed, that brand you stumbled upon - is shrinking to nothing.

The death of the keyword

Watch how people search now. It's extraordinary.

The average Google query: 3-4 words. Transactional. Robotic. The average Perplexity query: 11-12 words. Conversational. Human.

We've stopped typing "best laptop 2025" and started asking "What's the best lightweight laptop for remote work under €1,000 that runs quietly and has all-day battery life?"

Keywords trained us to think like machines. Prompts let us think like humans. And when customers converse, they reveal everything: needs, constraints, context, fears, desires. 

But there's a dark side. The "messy middle" of decision-making - that profitable purgatory of comparison shopping and endless browsing - is evaporating. When a chatbot delivers a single, confident recommendation, exploration dies. If you're not in that answer, you're nowhere.

Following the money (spoiler: it's not coming to you)

The economics are staggering:

●      Generative AI traffic exploded by 890% in 2024

●      The market will exceed $1 trillion by 2028

●      Big Tech's AI infrastructure spend: $125 billion in 2024, $320 billion planned for 2025

Yet the money flows in one direction: up. AI models gorge on content created by publishers, SMEs, bloggers, communities - extracting value whilst returning nothing. Wikimedia reports AI crawlers now account for 35% of page views but consume 65% of bandwidth. They're not customers; they're parasites with venture funding.

Enter GEO: SEO's sharper, meaner offspring

Generative Engine Optimisation isn't SEO with a fresh coat of paint. It's a fundamentally different game with exponentially higher stakes.

SEO gave you ten chances to win (ten blue links). GEO gives you 2–7 (average citations per AI response).

The competition isn't just tougher; it's existential. Here's what wins:

Authority is everything. E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) isn't a nice-to-have; it's table stakes. Named authors, transparent sourcing, demonstrable expertise - without these, you're invisible.

Freshness matters more than ever. AI citations run 25% newer than traditional search results. Yesterday's insight is today's irrelevance.

Structure is strategy. Schema markup, FAQs, fact-dense paragraphs - make it easy for AI to digest your content or watch it choose your competitor's instead.

Original research dominates. Studies, proprietary data, unique analysis see 5× higher citation rates. Me-too content is dead.

The metrics have changed too. Forget traffic. Track citation frequency, sentiment in AI responses, share of voice across engines. You're not optimising for clicks; you're optimising for mentions in the conversation.

Winners, losers, and the walking dead

The carnage is sector-specific:

Publishing: Apocalyptic. With 78% of revenues from advertising, the model is broken. The Guardian's pivot to "authority journalism" - deep, citation-worthy reporting - has boosted subscriptions despite traffic implosion. Adapt or die.

B2B Services: Thriving. Almost 90% of buyers now use generative AI in purchasing. Deals close faster, at higher values. AI is the ultimate sales enabler - if you're in its recommendations.

E-commerce: Scrambling. Shopping queries on ChatGPT doubled in six months. ASOS is frantically rewriting product descriptions to be conversational, citable, findable. Amazon's dominance suddenly looks vulnerable.

Healthcare: Transformed. WebMD lost 42% of traffic but struck deals to become a verified AI health source. Authority trumped volume.

The pattern is clear: being the authoritative source quoted in an AI summary beats being the 12th blue link nobody sees.

The European imperative

Why should European leaders care more than most? Three reasons:

Regulatory advantage: The EU's Digital Markets Act already constrains platform self-preference. With Google judged a monopoly in the US, Europe could pioneer licensing models - an "AI-as-Spotify" where creators get paid per use. First-mover advantage in regulation could mean first-mover advantage in the new economy.

Linguistic sovereignty: AI systems still fumble with non-English content. For European companies, creating native, high-authority content in local languages isn't just an opportunity - it's a moat. Spotify's multilingual strategy tripled its citation rate in non-English markets. There's a lesson there.

Strategic autonomy: With Chinese players like DeepSeek offering models at 90% lower cost than OpenAI, Europe faces a choice: own your visibility or accept digital vassalage. GEO is part of strategic sovereignty.

Your playbook (start yesterday)

This isn't a "wait and see" moment. While you're reading this, your competitors are already moving. Here's your tactical blueprint:

1. Audit your AI visibility immediately: Run systematic prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Google AI Overviews. What do they say about you? Are you mentioned at all? The results will shock you.

2. Restructure everything: Your content needs conversational architecture, structured data, transparent authorship. Every page should answer a question completely, authoritatively, quotably.

3. Invest in genuine authority: Commission original research. Publish expert commentary. Make E-E-A-T visible, verifiable, undeniable. Authority can't be faked anymore.

4. Track what matters: Monitor citations, sentiment, competitive positioning. Traffic is yesterday's metric. Influence is today's.

5. Explore partnerships now Consider licensing relationships, API integrations. Bloomberg's API-first strategy grew subscriptions whilst traffic plummeted. There's a model there.

   
   

The ROI timeline is surprisingly short. GEO results manifest in 3–6 months, faster than traditional SEO ever could.