The shifting landscape of Google Search and AI Content Generation

When I wrote the first version of this post in 2024, Google had just rolled out AI summaries at the top of the results page and everyone was busy screenshotting the funniest failures. It felt like a new interesting and exciting feature bolted onto the thing we all knew. It also offered some food for thought, namely – is Google the same tool that it was before this update?

Two years on, it turns out the feature was the new product, a product that on the face looks the same but actually works fundamentally differently.

Well, most recently in May 2026 (announced at I/O), Google made AI Mode the default search experience worldwide, rebuilt the search box for the first time in 25 years and introduced background agents that keep searching on your behalf.

AI Mode had passed a billion monthly users by then, with query volume doubling every quarter since launch and AI Overviews serving around 2.5 billion people a month.

Classic blue links, the index of all websites that houses the information people need, still exists.

For many people, though, they are no longer where the value of the platform actually sits. Serving a good answer immediately is now the primary goal of the platform, along with gathering increased ads revenue to fund the cost of more AI answer generation.

So, in 2026 the question is no longer “how do I rank on Google?”.

The question now is “does Google’s answer mention me? … and does anyone need to visit my actual website anymore?”.

The answer to this question, for many organisations, especially smaller ones, is … not really.

SparkToro’s June 2026 study, using Similarweb clickstream data, found 68% of US Google searches ended without a click in the first four months of the year, up from 60.45% in 2024.

In plain terms, for every 1,000 searches only 276 clicks now require a website endpoint. That means 724 out of those 1,000 searches are fulfilled by Google and do not require any website links AT ALL.

AI Overviews now appear on more than 20% of searches. Where they do, click-through rates fall by close to 60%.

Google search traffic to publishers fell 33% globally in the year to November 2025, with Discover referrals down 21% on top of that. Chartbeat’s 2026 data shows small sites lost 60% of their search referral traffic, medium sites 47% and large sites 22%. Small publishers have been hit roughly three times harder than the big ones.

So, smaller independent sites have been hit hardest and are being shown less and less.

This sounds very doom and gloom I know, but the truth is that there is a clear path for improvement ahead for organisations of all sizes.

The March 2026 core update re-weighted signals clustered around three things: whether content contains anything that exists nowhere else, whether the author has a verifiable track record in the subject and whether the domain has earned consistent authority in a defined area rather than publishing shallowly across many.

Google search does not penalise AI-assisted content as a category. Content that is AI-assisted, substantially edited by a named human expert and grounded in an original point of view does fine. Structuring content effectively around user needs is also a powerful approach, leading to better engagement for those who do reach the website.

So, to get surfaced and (more importantly) to get people to your website, focus on these areas:

Say something only you can say. Your own client data, your own numbers, your own results, the thing you learned the hard way last March. Original information is the one input a language model cannot generate for itself.

Put a real name and place on it. Named authors with a verifiable track record in the subject now measurably outperform anonymous or house-account content. If your blog is written by “Admin”, fix that first. Location is also becoming far more important – linking your services to a specific place increases the likelyhood you will appear within that context – local packs, “near me” suggestions and locally focused citations.

Structure for extraction. Clear headings, direct answers near the top, sensible schema, clean internal linking. You are writing for a reader and a retrieval system at the same time, and the retrieval system is less forgiving.

Change what you measure. Sessions alone will keep telling you a story that gets worse every quarter, even when the business is fine. Track brand search volume, direct traffic, citations and mentions in AI answers, and the quality of the leads that do arrive. Fewer, better visits is now a normal shape for a healthy site.

In 2026 it seems that organisations are still trying to understand exactly what AEO means and what impact it has on their business. Its true to say that over the past two years there have been winners and there have been losers.

Often the wins are attributed to good SEO practices, readiness relating to Google updates and businesses responding to changes around SEO, integrating AI into their business and becoming more savvy (or just seeing returns following some form of action or another they have taken).

The truth is that the AI landscape has evolved. Google is more focused than ever on ads. Where businesses and good SEO were aligned with the platform, now the alignment has shifted towards good data sources connected to specific fields, original and personal content and smaller numbers of high quality users (as opposed to users at scale).

Need to talk to someone who can help? 

Now, perhaps more than ever before, the pace of digital change has the capacity to greatly affect business. If you need support and help getting onto the right track, we would love to help.

We work with a variety of organisations across multiple sectors to understand how to connect with their audience and use digital tools to improve the way their business operates. Our team work as digital partners with organisations to provide cost effective and valuable insights that ensure they are able to respond to changes effectively.

If you would like an open and honest conversation, completely free of obligation, then get in touch with us.