Measuring early impacts of generative search on web visibility (Search to Ask)

How AI search engines are rewriting the rules of online discovery

The end of the click era

For twenty years, the web’s currency was clicks.
If you could rank on Google, you could exist.

But in 2025, that logic is quietly collapsing.

People no longer “search”, they ask.
Instead of scanning ten blue links, they talk to AI systems like Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, which summarize the internet in a few conversational sentences.

This shift from search engines to answer engines is changing what it means to be visible online.
I wanted to understand how deep this change goes, so I decided to measure it.

What I set out to discover

How is generative AI search changing which websites, brands, and creators actually get seen?

Traditional SEO rewards optimization, backlinks, keywords, meta tags.
Generative search, however, rewards clarity, authority, and structure.

So I designed a small research experiment to measure which types of content survive and thrive in this new ecosystem.

Inside the experiment

Over a seven-day period, I tested 100 search queries across four engines:

• Google Search
• Gemini (Google AI)
• Perplexity.ai
• ChatGPT (Browsing mode)

Each query was either:

• Informational (e.g. “What is the best CRM for agencies?”)
• Commercial (e.g. “Top project management tools for teams”)

For every result, I recorded:

• Which domains appeared in top results
• Which were cited or mentioned inside generative answers
• Whether those sites used structured data (schema.org), factual tone, and author authority

To quantify this, I introduced a simple metric:

AIO Visibility Score (AIO-VS) = (Citations × 2) + (Mentions × 1) + (Link Presence × 1.5)

This helped me compare traditional SEO visibility with how often sites appeared inside AI-generated responses.

The results in numbers

Engine Overlap with Google High-AIO Content Share Gemini (52%/61%) Perplexity (47%/65%) ChatGPT (Web) (44% 68%)

A few patterns stood out:

• Generative engines referenced fewer domains overall.
  Visibility is consolidating, fewer sites get mentioned, but those that do appear repeatedly.
• Structured, factual, brand-owned content wins.
  Sites using schema markup, transparent authorship, and data-driven text earned higher AIO-VS scores.
• Affiliate and keyword-stuffed sites disappeared.
  Even when they ranked high on Google, they were ignored by generative engines.

In short and to show you big picture for what I mean:

We make a search we get millions of results inside pages, we ask we get direct answer inside our chating context, here’s how the machines interpret the internet differently than Google.

That’s mean that machines have started rewriting the web, and they prefer clarity over cleverness.

SEO to AIO with new visibility layer

We’re entering a new discipline: AIO (AI Optimization).

SEO taught us how to speak to crawlers.
AIO teaches us how to speak to large language models.

LLMs don’t rank they reason.
They prioritize trust, structure, and context, not just links or density.

If SEO was about being found,
AIO is about being understood.

That’s a fundamental shift in digital visibility — from algorithmic relevance to semantic credibility.

Implications for Creators and Brands

1. Structure your content: Use clear HTML, schema.org markup, and FAQs. Make your data readable for machines.
2. Build factual consistency: LLMs penalize vague or contradictory information. Verify your claims and cite sources.
3. Focus on brand authority: Consistency, author transparency, and real expertise are the new backlinks.
4. Track AI citations: Visibility now depends on whether AI systems mention or quote you not just if Google indexes you.

That’s exactly what I’m building with a platform that helps creators understand and optimize how AI systems perceive their content.

What is the new metric that matters

Traditional SEO asks: Where do I rank?
AIO asks: Does AI trust me enough to cite me?

That subtle difference defines the new visibility economy.
When a user asks an AI question, only a handful of voices get summarized, those voices become the new “Page 1.”

Visibility is no longer about impressions.
It’s about inclusion in the AI’s reasoning process.

Bigger picture

This research shows a glimpse of a web in transition:

• AI assistants are becoming the new interface to information.
• Traditional SEO is losing direct visibility.
• Structured, expert-driven content is rising in importance.

In time, every website will need to measure not just human traffic, but AI visibility how often its content appears in generative summaries, citations, and LLM outputs.

The web is evolving from searchable to summarizable.
We’re entering the age of AIO (AI Optimization), where the goal isn’t to attract clicks but to educate algorithms.

If SEO was about visibility in Google,
AIO is about visibility in AI memory.

This early study is just the beginning.
As generative search expands, understanding how machines interpret our content will become one of the most valuable skills on the internet.

The next race for attention isn’t fought on search results it’s fought inside the answers.