Is SEO dead now that everyone uses AI?

No. Some searches now send fewer clicks, and that part of the claim is true. But both Google and Microsoft say the work that gets a page found by their AI answers is built on the same foundations as the work that gets it ranked, and neither says those foundations have stopped mattering. Where they differ is in what to call the work and how to measure it, and that disagreement is the most useful thing in this whole debate, so we have left it as it is rather than smoothing it over.

This is part of our series on marketing myths, checked, which tests things small businesses are told against what the people who run the systems actually publish.

What is true: fewer clicks from some searches

The best measurement we found is American. Pew Research Center analysed the browsing of 900 US adults who agreed to share it. In March 2025, people who saw an AI summary on a Google results page clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits, against 15% of visits when there was no summary. They clicked a link inside the summary itself on just 1% of visits.

In the UK, Ofcom's Online Nation 2025 says about 30% of searches now show AI Overviews, and that ChatGPT had 1.8 billion UK visits in the first eight months of 2025, up from 368 million a year earlier. So the shift is real, and it is happening here.

What those figures do not show is that search has stopped mattering. They show that the answer increasingly arrives before the click, which is a change in how search pays off, not the end of it. We looked at what that means for a small business in SEO in 2026.

What Google says: it is still SEO

Google's guide to its generative AI features on Search, last updated in July 2026, answers the question directly. Asked whether SEO is still relevant, it says: "In short, yes!", because its AI features "are rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems" and draw on pages from its search index.

It then addresses the new vocabulary head on. It notes that "AEO" (answer engine optimisation) and "GEO" (generative engine optimisation) are terms "you may see used to describe work specifically focused on improving visibility in AI search experiences", and says: "From Google Search's perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO." Google's guide goes further, telling readers to "Prioritize effective SEO strategies over 'AEO/GEO hacks'". For Google, it says, you can ignore tactics such as "chunking" content into small pieces, creating AI text files such as llms.txt, or "pursuing inauthentic mentions". And it points anyone considering third-party AEO or GEO services to its guidance on evaluating SEO advice.

Google's separate page on AI features and your website says the same in fewer words: there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special schema.

What Microsoft says: GEO is its own practice

Microsoft describes the same shift differently. In February 2026, Jordi Ribas, its corporate vice president for Search and AI, wrote on the Bing blog that grounding, the process that connects an AI answer to current web pages, "is driving the emergence of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): the practice of understanding how content participates in AI-driven experiences". He added: "In an AI-first world, visibility is no longer defined only by rankings or clicks." He described the new reporting in Bing Webmaster Tools as "a first window into a broader GEO toolset".

Bing's webmaster guidelines keep the two terms side by side. Their first section is headed "SEO Fundamentals Still Apply to Grounding and AI Experiences", and says Bing and Copilot "rely on the same core crawling, indexing, and ranking foundation as traditional search". Later they define GEO as work that "focuses on content eligibility for grounding and reference in AI responses", and warn that "SEO does not guarantee rankings or traffic, and GEO does not guarantee grounding or citations in AI experiences". They also note that "A decline in clicks does not always indicate a loss of visibility."

Where they genuinely disagree

It is tempting to say they mean the same thing in different words. On the foundations they do: both say AI answers draw on the same crawling, indexing and ranking as ordinary search, and neither promises anyone a citation. But three differences are real.

The name, and what it implies you should buy. Google folds the work into SEO and warns against "AEO/GEO hacks". Microsoft names GEO as a practice in its own right and is building tools for it. If you are offered a separate GEO service, Google's position is that there is nothing separate to optimise for on Google; Microsoft's is that there is something distinct to understand and measure.

What counts as success. Microsoft says outright that visibility is no longer only rankings or clicks, and that being cited in an answer counts. Google now reports AI visibility too: Search Console's generative AI performance report, rolled out to all sites on 31 August 2026, shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode. But Google presents that as part of Search performance, not as a separate discipline.

How much of the work is new. On Google's account, very little: write useful, original pages and let its ordinary systems do the rest. On Microsoft's, enough to have its own name and its own toolset, even though the guidelines put the same SEO fundamentals first.

Our reading, and it is only a reading: for a small business the practical difference is about measurement, not method. Both engines say their AI answers draw on the pages their search already finds and ranks, so the work is the same, and what changes is that you should now count citations as well as clicks.

What the other assistants say

Very little beyond access. OpenAI says site owners should allow its search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, "in order to appear in search results". Anthropic says blocking Claude-SearchBot "prevents our system from indexing your content for search optimization". Perplexity says PerplexityBot "is designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity". None of them publishes how it chooses which sources to cite.

What to do

1. Keep the foundations. Pages that can be crawled and indexed, one clear page per service, the answer near the top. If important pages are missing from Google or Bing, work through why first.
2. Let the search crawlers in. Check your robots.txt allows Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, unless you have a reason to block them.
3. Count citations as well as clicks. Open Search Console's generative AI performance report and Bing's AI Performance report, and note the numbers each month.
4. Do not pay for hacks. Google says it ignores llms.txt files and chunked content. Ask anyone selling GEO what they would do that is not SEO, and what evidence they have that it works.
5. Decide with your own numbers. Whether SEO pays for your business depends on your searches and your margins; we set out how to check in is SEO worth it for a small business?

If you would like someone to check where your site stands, our SEO audit and first fixes is a fixed £2,500: a technical audit with the fixes that matter most made, the searches worth going after, and improvements to your most important pages.

A quick check

The ticks are saved in this browser.

• My important pages are indexed on Google and Bing.
• My robots.txt lets the search crawlers in.
• I have looked at Search Console's generative AI performance report.
• I have looked at Bing's AI Performance report.
• I measure enquiries, not just clicks.
• Nobody is charging me for llms.txt files or chunked content.

Where the evidence is thin

• UK click data. The Pew figures are from 900 US adults in March 2025. Ofcom measures how often UK searches show AI Overviews, not how often people click. We could not find an independent UK study of clicks.
• Whether GEO tactics work. We found no published evidence that tactics sold as GEO, beyond ordinary SEO, increase how often a site is cited. Google says its systems ignore the best-known ones.
• How assistants choose sources. OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity publish how to let their crawlers in, not how they decide which pages to cite. Anyone who claims to know is guessing, or selling.

The verdict

False, with a true part. SEO is not dead: both Google and Microsoft say AI answers are built on the same foundations as search. Fewer clicks from some searches is real. Google and Microsoft genuinely disagree about whether the new work deserves its own name, and the useful response to that disagreement is to measure citations as well as clicks, not to buy a second service.