Companies are hiring growth marketers and SEO leaders with the expectation of driving significantly more organic traffic, while largely treating AI as a future problem rather than a current shift.
The reality is that search behavior is changing NOW.
Google AI Overviews and AI-generated answers are already reducing clicks for many informational queries, especially since Google changed its search box to keep people using Gemini instead of scrolling down to search results.
The old expectation that SEO automatically equals more traffic deserves another look.
Organic traffic may not continue climbing the way it did in the past, especially for upper-funnel and informational content. If traffic growth is the only KPI, there may be some disappointment ahead.
That doesn't mean we stop optimizing for search or AI Overviews. We absolutely should. But success is becoming broader than rankings and clicks alone. Visibility, inclusion, branded demand, authority, and influence in AI-generated experiences are becoming part of the equation too.
And if the primary goal is immediate traffic volume, particularly for competitive commercial terms, paid placement at the top of the SERPs may increasingly become part of that strategy.
If you have questions about this, or need a consultant, please reach out to me.
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