Google and AI: SEO is Not Dead, It's Evolving

As Google introduces its AI-generated summaries in France today, news publishers are bracing for an inevitable decline in organic traffic. However, for Ruben Sebag, co-founder of the SEO/GEO entity at Datashake, this transformation does not signify the end of SEO. On the contrary, it compels companies to make their SEO strategies more rigorous, strategic, and aligned with the new dynamics of response engines.

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Recently, the marketing director of a French scale-up posed a direct question: should we maintain the SEO budget? There was no discussion about adapting or exploring GEO, just a query about its current relevance. This question, asked with an almost resigned tone, seemed to already have an implicit answer.

Our response was affirmative. And it wasn't just a reflex from a consultant trying to preserve their business, but a conviction based on our regular observations. We find that the sources cited by AI Overviews largely correspond to the top organic positions on Google. In other words, the AI, which is supposed to supplant SEO, actually relies on its results. This point is crucial and deserves exploration, but first, a bit of context is needed.

July 22, a Turning Point

On June 29, Google sent a letter to French news publishers, revealed by Ouest-France, announcing the imminent arrival of AI Overviews and the conversational AI Mode in France. This feature, launched in the United States in May 2024, is already available in over 200 countries and territories, covering more than 40 languages. It has even been active in French in Belgium and Switzerland since March 2025. The delay in France was therefore not due to technical or linguistic obstacles, but to legal considerations. Between neighboring rights and fines from the Competition Authority (€500 million in 2021, €250 million in 2024), France enjoyed more than two years of respite. During this time, many leaders anticipated the disappearance of SEO, hence the importance of this commentary.

The Scary Numbers Are True

The available studies on the subject are unequivocal. The Pew Research Center, after analyzing nearly 69,000 searches, found that with the display of an AI summary, the click-through rate on traditional results drops from 15% to 8%. One quarter of users (precisely 26%) leave their session after reading the summary, without visiting any site. Ahrefs measured a click loss of 34.5% on the first position in April 2025, a figure that climbed to 58% by the end of the year. Additionally, Rand Fishkin revealed, using data from Similarweb, that 68% of Google searches in the United States now conclude without any clicks.

It would be dishonest to downplay these figures. What is frustrating is how they are often brandished at conferences without ever delving deeper into the studies. Because on the next page, there are always details that nuance this alarming picture.

What We Find on the Next Page of Studies

First of all, AI Overviews do not appear systematically. According to SparkToro, they show up in about one in five searches. The distribution is far from uniform: according to an analysis by Seer Interactive on nearly 50,000 queries, 36% of informational queries trigger an AI summary, compared to only 8% of commercial queries and 5% of transactional ones. Ahrefs also found that out of 300,000 keywords studied, 99.2% of those triggering an AI Overview were informational in nature. Crucial queries for revenue, where users compare prices, seek a provider, or wish to make a purchase, are currently largely spared. When examining commercial queries one by one, as we did with this CMO, the situation is far less dramatic than what conference presentations suggest.

Moreover, the zero-click phenomenon is not a novelty introduced by artificial intelligence. Fishkin has documented it since 2019, when the rate was already around 50%. It reached 60% in 2024, even before AI summaries became significant. Featured snippets, knowledge panels, weather forecasts, directions: Google has been capturing clicks for a decade. Fishkin, who is not known for his complacency towards Google, asserts that brand searches, local queries, and high-intent transactional searches continue to benefit from SEO.

However, it is important to remain vigilant: this protected perimeter is not guaranteed forever. Semrush observes that the proportion of commercial and navigational queries triggering a summary is gradually increasing. The spared zone exists, but it is slowly shrinking. This underscores the importance of acting now rather than waiting for it to disappear completely.

Why We Answered Yes to This CMO

Let’s return to the correlation between search engine results and AI citations, as it is essential to understand our response. AI Overviews function through augmented generation by retrieval: before drafting, the model queries Google's index and selects a few sources deemed reliable and usable. It does not start from scratch but relies on an existing hierarchy, the result of fifteen years of SEO. Our follow-ups confirm this weekly: the cited content is predominantly that which is already well-positioned.

Being cited pays off. According to Seer Interactive, brands mentioned as sources in an AI Overview receive about 35% more organic clicks compared to those that are not, and impression analyses suggest that a cited brand captures about twice as many clicks as a non-cited brand. These visitors have already read the summary and thus arrive further along in their thinking. What the market calls GEO is not a discipline replacing SEO, but a demanding SEO: thematic authority, identified authors, verifiable expertise, clean structured data, content organized in blocks that the machine can extract neatly. What is truly disappearing today are generic keyword-stuffed contents. Few will miss them.

The real challenge, which we undertook with this CMO, lies elsewhere: measurement. Starting today, dashboards will become muddled, with impressions rising and informational clicks declining. New indicators will need to be tracked:

• the share of citations on strategic queries (in Google, but also ChatGPT and Perplexity)
• the exposure of transactional queries
• conversions from generated responses

Google Search Console already integrates AI responses into its metrics. The tools exist; the decision to use them must be made.

What Remains to Be Negotiated Collectively

A word about what Google's letter cautiously mentions. The three commitments made to the approximately 450 publishers under neighboring rights agreements (right of withdrawal, transparency on impressions, compensation for reused content) resemble a French victory.

However, the right of withdrawal is a difficult choice: withdrawing protects your content but erases you from the place where responses are now formed. As for compensation per impression, the Press Alliance is calling for a collective agreement before the launch, doubting that it will compensate for lost clicks. Meanwhile, the Munich court ruled in late May that these summaries constitute content unique to Google, engaging its direct responsibility, including AI errors. Google has appealed, but the principle established is staggering: the engine becomes a media that feeds off ours and assumes responsibility for what it publishes. This debate deserves more than a private letter to publishers. It should not serve as an excuse to do nothing before September.

France has had a rare privilege: to observe other markets face challenges for two years, with precise data on affected queries and cited sources. Companies auditing their exposure this summer, query by query, will approach the rollout with a genuine head start. Others will discover the issue in their October reports, and many will blame SEO for a shipwreck of which it was actually the life jacket. My profession has taught me one thing: when everyone announces the death of a channel, it is often the best time to invest seriously in it. SEO has not been condemned by artificial intelligence. It has just gone through a job interview, and it has been promoted to the official supplier of answers.