How AI Search Is Changing SEO

Early this past February I took on what has been the most impactful learning experience I have ever had: an internship with a relatively new start-up, Pigybak. In this position, originally as a market analyst and nothing more, I discovered the world of SEO and GEO mostly by accident. A paid subscription to Semrush, thanks to my university, allowed me to immerse myself into a field of marketing I, formerly, did not even realize existed.

It did not take me long to take on the role of sole search specialist on our four-person marketing team. Upon inheriting this responsibility, the site was already getting around 10,000 monthly users through AI search surfaces. That seemed promising, but the site also had over 100 critical technical errors, a keyword footprint that barely extended beyond branded searches, and content that was not optimized for the way search is evolving. I immediately created a plan: address all technical errors first. A full WordPress audit improved site health from 77 to 89 while cutting errors by 52%. From there, I built a prompt library and AI agents optimized for AEO-based organic search, growing citations from 200 to 416 and brand mentions from 30 to 73 across 50 optimized pages. This implemented a set of clear standards, from brand voice to target audience, that could be applied to all marketing channels. Ultimately, this work expanded the keyword footprint by 215% and increased non-branded traffic from 45% to 56%.

Within 60 days, monthly AI search users grew to 71,000, especially rewarded since the success came during the March 2026 Google Core Update; consequently, their organic traffic increased by 50.8%. This experience conveys the value of AI search in a landscape previously dominated solely by traditional search engines like Google. Search is now equally about understanding where people go to get answers and understanding how to establish brand credibility throughout all of these most popular LLMs.

In a time when it is so easy to create a company, simply have Claude VibeCode a new site in a few hours, marketing is the differentiator between those who actually obtain market share. This is why more modern concepts like generative engine optimization and answer engine optimization have so much influence on the success of corporations. GEO is about making content visible in tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, while AEO focuses on Google’s AI Overviews. Both reflect a major shift in search behavior; rather than offering an endless list of links, users are now getting direct answers crafted by AI systems. This means brands need to create content that is clear, structured, and factually dense; they must also invest in positioning themselves across all platforms as reputable and trustworthy.

AI search is not up-and-coming. It is here, presently changing how people discover brands and businesses. Many SEO and marketing professionals are behind on the importance of this shift, which could lead to their companies falling behind. The companies that want to stay visible need to move beyond just SEO and focus on providing content that also performs well across AI-driven search surfaces. These brands that adapt now will be much more stable long-term as search continues to evolve.