AI-referred website sessions surged 527% year-on-year in the first five months of 2025, according to the Previsible AI Traffic Report. ChatGPT alone now attracts 5.4 billion global monthly visits and processes around 2 billion queries every day. It has become the fifth most visited website on the planet.
At the same time, 60% of Google searches now end without a click. Google's AI Overviews appear in roughly 25% of search results, up from 13% just a year earlier. When those AI summaries appear, click-through rates to traditional organic results drop by up to 58%.
Gartner projects that traditional search engine volume will decline by 25% by the end of 2026. And here's the number that should get your attention: visitors arriving from AI-powered search convert at 4.4 times the rate of traditional organic visitors. In our data at ClickedOn, the conversion rate is 10x higher for AI traffic. When a user visits your site after doing all the background work on an LLM, they have already made their decision. The traffic is smaller, but it is dramatically more valuable, and being visible during the early LLM conversation is key.
The discipline of optimising content for AI-generated answers has at least half a dozen names circulating right now. GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) is the most widely adopted term, used by Princeton/IIT Delhi researchers and the GEO Conference series. AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) was originally coined for voice search and is now largely subsumed by GEO. LLMO (Large Language Model Optimisation) is technically precise but narrow, focusing on LLMs specifically rather than the broader AI search ecosystem. AI SEO is the colloquial catch-all, widely understood but can confuse AI-powered SEO tools with the discipline itself.
At ClickedOn, we use GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) as the primary term. Our working definition: GEO is the practice of structuring your content and digital presence so that AI-powered platforms (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and others) can retrieve, cite, and recommend your brand when answering user questions.
We chose GEO because it has the strongest academic foundation, the most industry traction, and a dedicated conference series. But honestly, the name matters less than what you do with it. Whatever you call the discipline, the work is the same.
Traditional SEO optimises for ranking positions in a list of links. GEO optimises for citations within AI-generated answers. A page can rank number one in Google but never get cited by ChatGPT if it lacks the structural elements AI engines prioritise. Discovery has changed. Instead of competing for 10 blue links, you're competing for inclusion among the two to seven sources an AI typically cites in a single answer. Intent signals have changed. Users no longer type "best CRM software" into a search bar; they ask an AI more nuanced questions. Success metrics have changed. Rankings still matter, but you also need to track citations, brand mentions in AI responses, and share of voice across multiple AI platforms.
A significant amount of what made good SEO effective still applies. Authority and trust still drive visibility. High-domain-authority sites earn three times more AI citations than lower-authority sites, according to SE Ranking's analysis of 2.3 million pages. Technical SEO remains the foundation. E-E-A-T has not gone away. Quality content still wins. Brand building is more important than ever. AI engines recommend brands they "know."
The building blocks of AI visibility include: answer-first content structure (the first 200 words should directly answer the primary question), question-format headings (H2 and H3 headings as actual questions), specific and citable data (statistics with named sources), structured data and schema markup, third-party brand mentions across trusted industry sites, content freshness (update cornerstone content every seven to 14 days), and multi-platform presence across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Claude.
Common mistakes businesses make include treating GEO as a replacement for SEO (more than 76% of URLs cited in Google's AI Overviews also rank in the top 10 organic results), ignoring the shift because AI traffic is "small" (it grew 527% in a year and converts at 4.4x the rate), optimising for one platform only, and publishing content shaped for browsing rather than extraction.
If you're not sure where to start, audit your current AI visibility by searching for your brand in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode. Then restructure your top 10 highest-traffic pages with answer-first introductions and question-format headings. Strengthen your technical foundation, build citation authority through industry publications, set up measurement in GA4, and commit to regular content freshness.
Whether the answer comes from Google search results or an AI-generated response, ClickedOn helps businesses stay discoverable. If you're ready to understand your AI visibility, try our free GEO Readiness Checker at clickedon.co/tools/geo-readiness or connect with us to build a strategy that works across both traditional search and generative engines.
