Throughout 2025, AI search results have been increasingly dominating search engine results pages (SERPs). Many of my SEO content colleagues have lost 50% or more of their traffic. Some of them have stopped their organic search content operation because they feel like it’s not worth it anymore. Google wants to win the AI arms race, and they don’t care if victory means partial destruction of the human content that powers their core product.
I’m not going to pretend I have guaranteed solutions for you. What I will do is:
offer advice on how to manage expectations and view the new landscape
Make recommendations on what you should deprioritize
Show what my team is doing and what is working vs. not working for us
Explain how my work might generalize to yours
Based on analytics from my own site and client websites, I think AI search results will continue to act as a sort of traffic quality filter. The people who make it past the AI overview and onto your website should have better average engagement and conversion metrics.
It’s no secret that young people use and trust AI products more than older generations. If your analytics are able to provide data on average age, look for an increase. Many of my older audience members have said they don’t trust AI search results and would rather skip past them.
If you’re open to my theories and predictions on how the AI search results landscape could change and affect content creation trends, you might want to hang in the SEO content game instead of ragequitting. AI search results are likely here to stay, but we don’t know if their dominance will always be at the current level. For those who hang in there, spoils may await.
As I mentioned, I’ve been chatting with people and reading hundreds of LinkedIn posts about teams and individuals who are temporarily or permanently quitting SEO content. This trend means less competition from other humans. If you stay in the game, you might be able to claim traffic from sites that are now waning.
If Google overly discourages human SEO content creation, their own AI search results will deteriorate because they will lack information to draw from. I think Google will eventually see this decline and decide to find a better balance. In this case, human creators would regain some of the traffic they lost, and the people who stayed in the game would have a huge advantage. Google wants to win the AI arms race, and they need a high-volume, high-quality supply of human content to do so.
Many keywords still don’t have AI content for their search results. Sometimes the AI content is missing because Google has decided on another format. Prioritize these keywords where you can go back to the old ways of competing only with other humans.
You might also occasionally encounter SERPs where this message appears at the top: “An AI Overview is not available for this search.” I stumbled upon this message when I was checking on the keyword, “the real anthony fauci book review.” We wrote a book review that once ranked highly for this keyword but has now taken a hit, which brings me to my next point.
When I lost traffic for that book review earlier this year, I assumed AI search results were the only culprit. It looks like I was wrong. Recently algorithm updates seemed to have affected core web vitals standards as well. When I looked more deeply into my analytics, I noticed that my traffic loss happened at exactly the same time many of my core web vitals metrics were dropping from green to yellow.
Many of my colleagues have overlooked this possibility, too. Don’t let AI blind you to other factors that are still important!
I’ve been doing this for more than a decade, and I used to get so much organic search traffic by writing a highly-researched article that simply defined a word or term. Now we can’t get nearly as much traffic from these posts because many Google users are satisfied with the short AI answer at the top. If your time and resources are limited, I recommend deprioritizing this type of content for now.
Now that we’ve seen which SEO content types AI has hit hardest, we’ve leaned into making more of the less affected types. Here’s a breakdown of what is still going strong.
So basic, I know, but they work. Our traffic to book lists has not decreased very much. I think this outcome is because searchers use lists to explore and discover. With this mindset, a simple AI summary at the top is not very satisfying.
When people search for a product keyword, such as a book title, not all of them are ready to buy. They might want a lot of information, more than an AI overview can provide.
For simple “how to” content, an AI overview can effectively summarize an entire article. But what about complicated advice?
Late last year, I wrote and published an article called “How to Write Biracial Characters Who Feel Real.” AI has not had any negative effect on this article. It’s clear that people searching for this term want lengthy advice and insights.
Some queries act as an exception to the definition problem I mentioned earlier. Right now we are using an article to try to rank highly for the keyword, “plot devices.” People searching for this query do want a definition of what plot devices are, but the idea is hard to briefly summarize. The definition is more of a starting point for a larger discussion and debate on how plot devices work, which ones qualify and which ones should or shouldn’t be employed.
The AI boom has changed SEO content, but some aspects of the game are exactly the same. Link building is more important than ever. Keep doing it! When human readers do make it to your site, they still want editorial quality, utility, great design and so on. Adapt, but don’t lose sight of what got you traffic in the first place.
Bio: Joseph Rauch is the founder of The Rauch Review, a brand publication that focuses on articles about the literary landscape and craft of writing, fiction and political nonfiction book reviews, and original creative writing pieces.
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