So does SEO still work in the AI era, in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google’s AI mode itself?
A massive amount of search has already come to the AI leaders, as this latest data from SEM Rush and Sparktaro show:
SEO may not be dying, but “GEO” for AI search is exploding as you can see above. So … what’s working to get folks to read your content and see you in generative search?
SEMRush did a deep dive across 5,000 keywords, 150,000 citations, and 4 of the AI search platforms (it left out Claude).
There is a ton of detail in the study, but my top takeaways:
#1. “GEO” is Very Different From SEO, But If You Are in The Top 10 For Classic Google Search, You Likely Will Be for AI Search, Too
if your domain gets a lot of top 10 Google rankings, it’s very likely that you’ll get a lot of AI citations as well. This shows correlation not causation, but it also consistent with what a lot of us are seeing. Even if your SEO is “down”, it’s still working
#2. But The Overlap Between SEO and AI Search / GEO is Much More at Domain Level Than The URL Level
In other words, traditional Google Search Top 10 results often show up in AI search, but not the same posts. Other content and posts at the same domain. The conclusion certainly seems to be you need more breadth of high quality content per domain. As the “canonical” URL content from Google Search isn’t going to necessarily show up in AI search,
#3. AI Search Only Shows 3-7 Citations Per Query. So You Really, Really Want to Come Up High
Being #1 in SEO was always the goal and at least “above the fold”. Being #1-#3 is even more important in AI search / GEO.
#4. Yes AI Search Has Made Reddit, Quora, Yahoo! and More More Important
We knew this, but SEMRush’s data is helpful here. Reddit, Quora, Yahoo and other channels that many of us don’t even use anymore are key to AI search.
#5. ChatGPT Finds Articles Well Beyond The Top 10 on Google Search, And Even the Top 20
As noted above, the correlation between domains that Google NS and AI search rank is fairly high. But the specific URLs aren’t. It’s most extreme with leader ChatGPT. Most of ChatGPT’s citations in that study sample were pulled from URLs ranking beyond position 21+ on Google natural search (!)
The Takeaways:
- What works for classic SEO works for AI Search / GEO, Mostly. The correlation is real. Just not as well.
- Breadth + quality really matter. Most ChatGPT “GEO” is from articles that come from “below the fold”, place 21+ in Google search!
- Get going. You need more great, broad, deep content. You knew that.
- If you haven’t changed anything, except a decline, but the world may not be ending. SEO is correlated to GEO. It’s not just not a perfect one, and one that favors deep, specific links,.
