Short answer: Yes, but its job has changed. AI answers now take many of the clicks that classic rankings used to deliver. SEO still decides which pages AI systems can find, trust and cite, so it has become the entry ticket to AI visibility rather than the whole game.
What changed in search this October?
On 15 October, Google said it is adding more inline links inside AI Mode and AI Overviews. It is also testing a section for official sites and expanding news carousels to more languages. Use of its Preferred Sources feature has grown more than 7x since January.
On 28 October, Google brought ads in AI Mode to 10 more countries. The list includes India, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. Paid placements now sit inside the AI answer itself.
The same day, Sundar Pichai told investors that AI Mode queries run three times longer than traditional searches. He also said Search query growth is at its fastest in five years.
So people are searching more, not less. They are just asking longer questions and reading the answer before they decide to click.
How many clicks do AI answers really take?
- Pew Research Center (US): Users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits with an AI summary, against 15% without one. Only 1% clicked a link inside the summary.
- Field experiment (ISB and Carnegie Mellon): Showing an AI Overview cut outbound organic clicks by 39.8% across 1,065 desktop users. Zero-click searches rose 34.5%.
- Seer Interactive (53 brands, 2.43 billion impressions): Organic CTR on queries with an AI Overview recovered from 1.3% to 2.4% between December 2025 and February 2026. It still trails the 3.8% seen on queries without one.
Seer’s data holds the most useful detail. Brands cited inside an AI Overview earned about 120% more organic clicks per impression than brands that were not cited. Being in the answer is now the difference between a small loss and a large one.
So what does SEO still do?
AI answers are built from pages a search engine has crawled, indexed and judged trustworthy. If your page fails those basics, no AI system will quote it. Technical health, clear structure and real expertise remain the foundation.
What has changed is the payoff. A page-one ranking used to be the goal. Now it is the qualifying round for being cited, summarised or linked inside an answer. We think of SEO as the base layer, with AEO, GEO and AIO built on top.
Trust also comes from elsewhere. AI systems lean on reviews, forums, video and news. Our working rule: AI recommends the brands people talk about.
Does this play out the same way in every market?
The direction is global, but the pace differs. The US leads: Google now runs follow-up ads inside AI Mode conversations, and most click data comes from there. The October ads rollout to Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines shows Google sees Southeast Asia as ready too. With AI Mode now in nearly 100 languages, local-language content matters in Jakarta, Manila and the Gulf, where Arabic and English pages must agree.
India is the clearest case. Ads in AI Mode went live there in October, yet most brand content is still English-first. In our work with creators across 22+ languages, we see people ask in their language and find few brand answers waiting.
What does this look like for a category leader?
Take Sugar Free, the sweetener brand from Zydus Wellness. It is India’s number one sugar substitute, according to Zydus’s Q1 FY27 investor presentation, citing Nielsen data. It runs celebrity campaigns with Janhvi Kapoor, including “Fitness Ka Pehla Kadam” during the IPL. It wins the shelf. Its website, as we found it on 8 November 2026, does not win the answer.
People ask health questions about sweeteners: is sucralose safe, how much is too much, does it help weight loss? AI answers them from sources that state facts plainly and cite evidence. Here is what Sugar Free’s own site offers.
- Questions without answers. The Ask an Expert page lists nine questions, including “Is SugarFree Safe for consumption?” It shows no answers and names no expert.
- No number for a safe daily amount. The How Sugar Free works and About pages say the acceptable daily intake is printed on the pack. Neither gives the figure. India’s paediatricians’ body quotes one, 15 mg per kg of body weight for sucralose. A number on someone else’s page is the number AI will quote.
- Its best evidence is missing. In 2024 the Madras Diabetes Research Foundation ran a 12-week randomised trial of sucralose in 179 Indians with type 2 diabetes. It found no change in blood sugar control and small falls in weight and waist size. The site does not mention it.
- The hard questions are dodged. The home page meta description says the brand is backed by WHO, FDA and EFSA. Yet in May 2023 the WHO advised against using non-sugar sweeteners for weight control, naming sucralose and stevia. India’s 2024 national dietary guidelines also urge caution, as reported by The South First. The site still says the product can help manage weight and addresses neither document. AI tools see that gap and fill it with other people’s words.
- Twelve languages in the menu, English on the page. The site offers Hindi, Tamil, Bengali and nine other languages. The pages we checked carried English content only.
- Errors that cost trust. One section calls the product a 1:1 substitute; an FAQ on the same page says 1:10. The About page says “since 1988” above a timeline starting in 1989. Stray placeholder text sits on one page, and no article names an author.
None of this is hard to fix, and it matters more for a leader: every answer about the category is an answer about the brand. We would start here:
- Answer the nine Ask an Expert questions, each signed by a named nutritionist or diabetologist.
- Publish the ADI figures and a simple daily-use guide.
- Address the WHO and ICMR guidance on one page, citing the MDRF trial and the JECFA and EFSA reviews.
- Translate the core answers into the twelve listed languages, and brief dietitians to say the same in theirs.
Zydus’s own deck shows why this is urgent. Sugar Free dark chocolate is its most searched line, Amazon organic sales have doubled, and online growth is not yet visible in market share data. Demand is moving to search.
How should brands adjust their SEO now?
- Audit what AI says about you. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Mode the questions your buyers ask. Note who gets cited and where you are missing.
- Fix the technical base. Check crawlability, indexing, page speed and structured data. AI systems cannot cite pages they cannot reach.
- Rewrite key pages answer-first. Open each page with a direct two-sentence answer. Use question-style headings and specific facts that are easy to quote.
- Publish in your buyers’ languages. Match each market’s search language, from Bahasa to Arabic to Tamil. Keep facts identical across versions.
- Earn mentions off your site. Brief creators, seek reviews and join forum discussions. These third-party signals feed AI answers.
- Track citations, not just rankings. Watch AI impressions in Search Console and log how often AI tools name you. Report share of answers alongside traffic.
Frequently asked questions
Is SEO dead because of AI search?
No. AI Overviews and AI Mode draw on pages that search engines have already crawled and ranked. Weak SEO means AI tools rarely find or trust your content. What has faded is the old model of ranking first and collecting the click. SEO now earns you a place inside the answer, and that place drives what clicks remain.
Do AI Overviews reduce website traffic?
Usually, yes. Pew found US users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits with an AI summary, against 15% without. An academic field experiment measured a 39.8% drop in organic clicks. The loss is smaller for brands that are cited in the overview itself, so citation is now the metric to chase.
What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?
SEO makes your pages discoverable and trusted by search engines. AEO, or answer engine optimisation, shapes content so it can be lifted as a direct answer. GEO, or generative engine optimisation, aims to get your brand cited by tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. They stack: SEO is the base the other two depend on.
How do I know if AI tools mention my brand?
Start by asking the main AI assistants the questions your customers ask, and record which brands appear. Google Search Console now shows AI impressions, though not clicks or queries yet. For ongoing tracking, social listening and AI-answer monitoring tools log mentions, sentiment and citations.
Sources
- Google, More ways to connect with the web from Search, 15 October 2026.
- Google, Ads in AI Mode expand to 10 new countries, 28 October 2026.
- Google, Q3 2026 earnings call: Remarks from our CEO, 28 October 2026.
- Pew Research Center, Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears, 22 July 2025.
- PPC Land, Researchers find Google AI Overviews cut publisher clicks 39.8%, 1 July 2026 (on the Agarwal and Sen field experiment).
- Seer Interactive, AIO Impact on Google CTR: 2026 Update, 24 April 2026.
- Keywords Everywhere, Google AI Mode Tracker, updated 4 November 2026.
- Zydus Wellness, Q1 FY 2026-27 Earnings Presentation, 4 August 2026.
- BestMediaInfo, Sugar Free launches ‘Fitness Ka Pehla Kadam’ campaign.
- Sugar Free India, home page, Ask an Expert, How Sugar Free works and About us, all viewed 8 November 2026.
- Indian Pharma Post, Sucralose safe to use in small doses; reveals MDRF study, 7 August 2024.
- The South First, Sucralose in children’s drinks: what India’s dietary guidelines say versus the IAP position statement, 11 April 2026.
- PAHO/WHO, WHO advises not to use non-sugar sweeteners for weight control, 15 May 2023.
