For over two decades, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been the cornerstone of digital visibility, spawning an entire industry around ranking high on search results pages. The goal was to appear as high as possible in the first page of results on Google. But consumer habits are changing: publishers report a 30%-50% decline in organic traffic coming from Google, as they substituted web search with LLM Chatbots or Google’s own AI summaries (and more recent AI search mode), making the need to click on an external link, redundant.
Automated traffic accounts for 51% of all internet traffic, with malicious bots constituting 37%.
2025 Imperva Bad Bot Report (source)
This change in consumer habits and the rise of AI autonomous agents who can perform actions on behalf of a user including web browsing, is leading to a new paradigm that’s being called Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). This shift raises a question for investors and founders: will GEO eventually displace SEO as the primary driver of website traffic? And if AI bots already consist of 51% of web traffic, will the GEO be directed at humans or AI Agents?
The Undeniable Consumer Behaviour Shift… But Not Yet Displacement
Consumer habits are evolving, showing a clear movement towards AI-driven discovery. Two years ago (in June 2023), I’ve published a post on VC Cafe about how search is being reinvented with generative AI. That evolution is happening faster than anyone has predicted with the introduction of ChatGPT’s web search and operator, the rising popularity of Perplexity and the rise of ‘research agents’ which are able to produce deep research reports for free or for a small fee.
Capgemini’s 2025 report found that 58% of consumers prefer product recommendations from GenAI tools over traditional search engines, with 68% prepared to act on those recommendations. Conversations with practitioners suggest 90% of B2B buyers are using AI to research purchases. We are also seeing a decline in traditional Google searches, including a phenomenon noted for the first time in 22 years: Google searches in Apple’s Safari browser declined in the last month.
This reliance on AI is directly impacting traditional search experiences. Google itself is contributing to this change with AI Overviews that dominate search results and often provide synthesised answers, reducing the need for users to click through to websites. In the latest Google IO, Google went further than AI overviews by introducing a new paradigm for search called ‘AI Mode‘ in which users are able to ask questions of their search results. Check out the video below for a demo:
Studies indicate that users find all the information they need without leaving the search results page in up to 64% of searches, leading to declining website traffic from Google. AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini are emerging as “answer engines” that can entirely bypass traditional search results. If a business isn’t appearing in these AI-generated answers, potential customers may never discover them, even if they rank well in traditional search results. With AI mode, it’s likely that the number of people clicking on the external sources will go down even further.
However, recent data provides a more nuanced picture of the current traffic landscape. According to a 24-month study comparing the top 10 search engines and top 10 AI chatbots (April 2023 – March 2025):
- AI chatbots have seen a remarkable surge in traffic, with a YoY growth of 80.92% from Apr 2024 to Mar 2025, totaling 55.2 billion visits.
- Search engines experienced a YoY decline of 0.51% in the same period, with total visits falling to 1.86 trillion.
- Despite the rapid growth of AI chatbots, chatbot traffic accounted for only 2.96% of the total visits of search engines over the past year. To put it another way, chatbots generated 34 times fewer visits than search engines from Apr 2024 to Mar 2025.
- In March 2025, search engines still saw approximately 5.5 billion daily visits, while chatbots had only about 233.1 million, creating an almost 24X gap in user engagement.
- Comparing the leaders, ChatGPT still sees approximately 26 times less daily traffic than Google.
This data makes the conclusion clear: AI chatbots are not (yet) replacing traditional search engines. They are growing explosively and reshaping how users interact with information, but they currently lag far behind search engines in terms of total traffic volume.
Why SEO Alone is No Longer Sufficient (for AI Visibility)
While traditional search engines still dominate traffic volume, their role is evolving, and SEO alone is insufficient for visibility in the AI-driven parts of the search landscape. Traditional SEO tactics, focused on keywords and backlinks, only influence about 30% of AI visibility. Research indicates that classical SEO techniques like keyword stuffing offer little to no improvement on AI engine responses. In contrast, GEO, which optimises content for generative engines, can boost visibility by up to 40% in AI engine responses.
In a nutshell, brands care about how they appear on LLMs, both in terms of discoverability of the brands and its various SKUs, but also in terms of consumer sentiment, competitive landscape and being the ‘recommended’ solution. For example, if you take ‘Nike’ – they’d love to know all of the above for every major product they sell, across the most popular LLMs, as well as what responses come up for questions like ‘what is the best/coolest sneaker model’.
The core difference between SEO and GEO is in optimisation strategy: traditional SEO relies on keywords and backlinks, while GEO relies more on intent and context or memory. Generative engines personalise content delivery based on past interactions and preferences, meaning brands effectively addressing specific customer profiles are more likely to appear in AI suggestions. This makes GEO about not just showing up, but ensuring accurate and favourable portrayal within personalised recommendations.
The Current Reality: Coexistence and Adaptation
Despite the clear shift in user behavior and the limitations of traditional SEO for AI visibility, traditional SEO is NOT dying out entirely. This is because AI engines still rely on underlying search infrastructure for content discovery. ChatGPT uses Bing’s indexing system, so pages not indexed by Bing won’t appear in its responses. Google’s AI Overviews rely on Google’s search infrastructure, and recent analysis found a strong correlation (0.65) between Google keyword rankings and the likelihood of a page being cited by AI models, particularly Google AI Overviews. Therefore, the current reality is: you need GEO in addition to SEO. GEO is emerging as SEO’s “essential companion”.
Moreover, search engines are actively adapting by integrating AI features themselves. Google’s resurgence in monthly traffic since late 2024 aligns with expanding AI-driven features like AI Overviews and SGE. Microsoft Bing’s significant growth reflects its AI-first approach and Copilot integration. Even Yahoo’s decline is attributed to its slowness in adopting AI features. This suggests that rather than being replaced, search engines are evolving.
However, the data also shows the consequence of not adapting. Companies without an AI visibility strategy are seeing double-digit traffic decreases from search engines. Ignoring GEO will likely lead to a gradual decline in visibility and relevance and decreasing traffic from search engines. The search landscape is moving from “find information” to “get answers”, and GEO is about ensuring your business is part of those answers. Experts agree that AI chatbots are not replacing search but are “redefining the term” or “converging with it”.
The Future of Discoverability and Traffic Sources
While SEO and GEO currently coexist, the trend points towards AI-driven discovery becoming increasingly dominant over time.
The entire marketing funnel is starting to happen within the chat environment, with users potentially moving from awareness to conversion without leaving the chatbot. A January 2025 survey found that 71% of shoppers wanted GenAI integrated into their shopping experience. This suggests that a significant portion of future commercial traffic could originate within these conversational interfaces.
Competition for visibility is also changing, moving from 10 options on a traditional search results page to maybe 2-5 brands mentioned in a concise AI answer. While this intensifies competition for those top spots, GEO also offers a more level playing field than traditional SEO by prioritizing content relevance to user intent over backlinks, which historically favored large enterprises. Semrush’s analysis in early 2025 suggested that more domains are benefiting from ChatGPT referrals over time, indicating a broader distribution of traffic across the web.
AI Discoverability solutions are emerging, broadly categorized into Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), AI Advertising, and AI Discoverability Infrastructure. The majority of startups are focused on the GEO space. GEO providers help brands optimize by constructing and running synthetic queries, analyzing AI responses for visibility, accuracy, sentiment, and citations, and providing recommendations or performing actions like content generation or optimizing for Agentic Experience (AX). AX ensures AI agents can easily access and accurately portray website content. Winning GEO propositions are building proprietary methods to understand user queries, context, and personas. The future likely involves “Analytics + Action,” where providers not only offer insights but also perform the optimization, including end-to-end marketing and AX. Content freshness and quality are paramount, as 51% of articles cited by AI engines were published within the last 90 days.
Another emerging area is AI Advertising. While platforms like Google AI mode and Perplexity are rolling out sponsored content, this is seen as complementary to GEO, not a replacement, much like how Google Ads didn’t kill SEO. ChatGPT is also rumoured to be working on its own ad network to be shown along results, though nothing has yet been announced.
Below are two recent startup landscapes in the GEO space, published by A16Z and MMC Ventures in the past month:
Conclusion: Adaptation and Co-Evolution
Will GEO completely displace SEO as the biggest source of traffic? so far the answer is no, not yet. Search engines still handle the vast majority of web traffic. However, the shift is undeniable and accelerating. AI-driven discovery is rapidly gaining prominence and is where a growing share of user attention and future interactions, particularly conversational ones spanning the marketing funnel, will reside.
Ignoring GEO is not a viable long-term strategy. Companies that adapt quickly by creating valuable, helpful content optimized for generative engines, focusing on intent and context, and ensuring their content is easily discoverable by AI agents (AX), will maintain visibility and ensure they are part of the answers AI provides. This adaptation requires understanding that the game is changing from “find information” via links to “get answers” via conversation.
At Remagine Ventures, we’ve made an investment in this space which is currently still in stealth. Founded by an experienced team, they understand that for companies to be accessible by agents who are looking to perform actions on behalf of users via LLMs, something needs to change. I’m excited to share more about them in due course.
For founders and VCs, the opportunity lies in building the tools and services that help brands navigate this transition. The most compelling GEO companies could go beyond analysis to become the system of record for a brand’s interaction with the AI layer, potentially representing a wedge into broader performance marketing. The timing is critical as search behaviour is shifting, and those who position brands to be remembered and referenced by the models hold a significant competitive advantage. The question isn’t whether AI will impact traffic, but how businesses will ensure they are seen and referenced in the coming AI-first world. The search engine landscape is rapidly evolving, and platforms that fail to adapt by incorporating AI-driven features risk being left behind.
I'm a former general partner at google ventures, head of Google for Entrepreneurs in Europe and founding head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups.
I'm also the founder of Techbikers, a non-profit bringing together the startup ecosystem on cycling challenges in support of Room to Read. Since inception in 2012 we've built 11 schools and 50 libraries in the developing world.
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