Your Site in the Age of AI
How people are searching is changing. Learn how to optimize your website for AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity.
Search behaviour is changing. Google traffic is down across most sites we look after, and more people — particularly younger users — are using ChatGPT and Perplexity to find things instead. This post covers what we're seeing, what to do about it, and a couple of Craft features we've built that help.
What's happening to search traffic
Google is increasingly a "zero-click" product: the answer is on the results page, and the user doesn't click through. At the same time, AI-powered search (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google's own AI Overviews, Claude) is taking a growing share of queries.
The effect on most client sites is the same: organic traffic is down, but the traffic that does arrive tends to convert better (more on this below).
How AI search works differently
AI search doesn't rank ten blue links. It generates a prose answer and cites the sources it drew from. Getting cited is the new "ranking" — and what gets cited isn't quite the same as what Google has historically rewarded.
A few things that seem to help:
Depth over breadth. Shallow overview pages don't get cited. Longer, specific answers to specific questions do. If you have a page that covers a topic properly, keep adding to it rather than spinning up thin posts on adjacent topics.
Clean metadata. Titles, meta descriptions, and structured data still matter, and more than they used to. They help AI crawlers work out what a page is actually about.
Schema markup. Especially FAQ schema, which maps directly onto the question-and-answer shape of AI results. If you have genuine FAQ content, mark it up.
A legible site structure. Logical navigation and URL hierarchy help crawlers (human and machine) understand how your content fits together.
Reconsidering gates. Gated content doesn't get read by AI crawlers, so it doesn't get cited. If lead capture is the goal, there are usually better places to put the gate than on your best content.
Traffic goes down, quality goes up
Several clients have reported the same pattern: overall sessions down, but the visitors who do arrive are further along. They've already read a summary in ChatGPT or Perplexity and clicked through deliberately, usually for something specific. Conversion rates on those sessions are higher than the Google baseline was.
That's not a consolation for the traffic drop, but it's worth knowing before you panic at the analytics.
The thing AI can't do
AI content trained on AI content gets thinner over time. Original perspective, first-hand experience, and specific numbers from your own work are the things worth writing — because they're the things the models can't generate and the things they're most likely to cite.
Craft AI features we've built
We've added two AI features to Craft for clients on our maintenance plans:
- Automatic alt text generation — generates descriptive alt text for uploaded images, which helps both accessibility and SEO.
- Brand tone of voice assistant — checks new content against a defined brand voice for consistency across pages.
If you'd like either turned on for your site, let us know.
Where to start
A technical audit is usually the right first step. We look at:
- Existing schema markup and opportunities to extend it
- Metadata quality across key pages
- Site structure and internal linking
- Anything blocking proper indexing
Emma is Operations Director at Mutual, leading client services and overseeing the ongoing management and optimisation of client websites. With over 20 years of agency experience and CIM marketing qualifications, she brings both strategic grounding and practical depth to digital performance.
Her optimisation work spans SEO and generative engine optimisation (GEO) — helping clients maintain visibility not just in traditional search, but in AI-generated answers and overviews. She works closely with clients to translate business goals into measurable improvements across search performance, content, and user experience.
