My Reply to my good friend and supporter Suresh (
@bedigisure), Founder of the AISO Blog (
aiso.blog) and Best AI Brands (
bestaibrands.com/andreas-chrâŠ):
The core reason of why top 10 organic rankings no longer deliver the same traffic and results they did 18 months ago boils down to one fundamental shift that Google downplays: AI Overviews arenât just another search feature. Theyâre a completely different product that quietly rewrites the economics of ranking.
Hereâs the breakdown, pulled straight from the logic in my previous post (Google's AI Guide: Itâs All Still SEO):
1. AI Overviews collapse the old Rank â Click â Traffic Funnel. In the pre-AIO world (roughly pre-late 2024), landing in the top 10 (especially positions 1â3) meant users had to click your page to get the full answer. That click was the currency.
Now, Googleâs AI Overviews synthesize the answer right at the top of the results. For millions of informational, how-to, comparison, and âwhat isâ queries, the user gets what they need without ever leaving Googleâs page.
Even if your site is the #1 result and cited in the AIO, the click-through rate drops dramatically. The ranking is still there... but the traffic isnât. Thatâs the âreshapes the value of rankingsâ point my post makes.
2. Google frames it as âevolution of SEOâ because itâs convenient for them. Google says: âJust keep doing traditional SEO add some AI optimization and youâre golden.â.
The reality though is different. Theyâve turned their search engine into a hybrid answer engine. They keep the user on Google longer (higher engagement metrics for them), while the organic results below the AIO become secondary or even decorative.
Itâs technically still SEO (crawlability, structure, E-E-A-T, entity clarity all still matter), but the reward for doing it well has been devalued for anyone whose business model relies on website traffic.
3. GEO vs Googleâs AI Optimization: different games, different payoffs
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) shines for brand awareness on non-Google platforms (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, etc.) because those tools are built to generate full responses and often cite or reference sources prominently.
Googleâs version keeps you inside their walled garden. They control the narrative, the citations, the formatting, and (most importantly) whether the user ever leaves their page. Thatâs why GEO feels more rewarding for visibility in third-party AI, while Googleâs AI optimization feels like itâs mostly helping Google, not you.
Bottom Line
The question isnât âAre we still doing SEO?â The question is: Does position #1â10 still move the needle on traffic and business impact the way it used to?
The marketâs observed reality is No, not at the same level. The fundamentals still matter for visibility, but the traffic multiplier that made top organic positions so valuable has been quietly gutted by AI Overviews. Thatâs the inconvenient truth Googleâs framing tries to gloss over. Itâs not that rankings are dead. Itâs that the payout for ranking has changed, and brands that treat AIOs as just another feature are the ones watching their traffic flatline while they chase the same old metrics.
#SEO #GEO #GoogleSearch #AI
ALT A reply to Suresh by Andreas Christodoulou