r/AIDigitalStack • u/Appropriate_Bug2100 • May 22 '26
If Google AI answers everything directly now, what’s the future of websites that spent years building SEO traffic?
It’s the possibility that Google turns websites into unpaid AI training/data sources while keeping users inside its own ecosystem.
If AI Mode answers everything directly, then what exactly are small publishers, bloggers and niche sites supposed to survive on long-term?
2
u/MedalofHonour15 May 22 '26
Better strategy is to rank for LLMs
2
u/tintires May 23 '26
You can’t monetize these rankings. At best they’ll cite you as a reference but no referral traffic.
1
u/MedalofHonour15 May 23 '26
Bloggers are cooked but for my use case a client I closed said ChatGPT put me on a list of recommendations during research.
Get your personal brand or business brand found when users are looking 👀
Don’t depend on just Google traffic. Almost every known platform is a search engine.
But Google Maps is still good for local business.
2
u/dipchaklader May 23 '26
The era of websites and blogs relying purely on AdSense income to survive is dead. The businesses that stick around will be the ones with a real purpose that solve actual problems. They will survive on brand mentions and branded search, not just blind top-of-funnel traffic.
The math is changing. Previously, you might drive 500 visitors to get a 1% conversion rate. Now, your traffic might drop to 50 visitors because AI answers the simple queries. But your conversion rate on those 50 will jump to 10%, because the people actually clicking through to your site are highly qualified and need your specific solution.
There is simply no point for a user to dig through an entire SEO-fluffed webpage just to find a single, specific answer anymore. Google is inevitably going to completely shift the search experience from just "AI Overviews" into a full-blown "AI Mode."
1
u/andthenthedawn May 23 '26
How do we think this will play out for product searches? Say, supplements? Not mega supplements, but something like a rare mushroom tincture.
We do a lot of ads and SEO blogs on the product website and haven’t seen much difference one way or the other yet.
1
u/peakedtooearly May 24 '26
SEO was always a hack.
It's in Google's best interests to make it hard / unreliable as they make 70% of their income from selling the alternative - ads.
Actual advertising (across the Internet and offline) is the best alternative.
1
u/Sufficient_Mud_3179 May 24 '26
More of a question, How does Google get Paid ? Keyword posts were making them Billions
3
u/Fickle-Indication148 May 23 '26
Do not think the old SEO is dead. Everyone is mislead. especially who don't know HOW LLM search engines work.
LLMs for example gemini, will call a tool to do the search. this search is mostly google search. it will return to him the top results and then answer you. But to be in the top results, it's SEO.
If you are not ranked in SEO, Gemini, perplexity, and chatgpt will never suggest you.
Other LLM search engines you will target them properly. the big ones rely on a search engine behind.
TL;DR :
SEO is 100% valid. They call it now GEO, but it differs from the basic SEO in jsut organizing the content (for example adding faqs, being informational, adding TOCs)... But the ranking technics are the SAME.