Your Website Is Losing Traffic. Here's Why That's a Good Thing.

Picture of James Harper

James Harper

VP, Search

B2B marketing is at a pivotal inflection point, driven by the rise of AI.

While website traffic is declining due to zero-click and AI summaries, this doesn’t mean buyers have disappeared. Instead, they’re initiating their journeys in a new way, through conversational AI engines and autonomous agents. The key takeaway for marketers is to shift from viewing a website as a destination to an “information engine” that fuels both human and AI interactions.

The AI-Powered Business Buyer

Is your website traffic declining? You’re not alone. Across the board, B2B marketers are seeing a drop in organic traffic, but before you panic, let’s be clear: this doesn’t mean buyers have vanished. They’re simply starting their journey in a new place, driven by the rise of artificial intelligence and large language models (LLMs).

AI isn’t killing search; it’s evolving it. Your audience is still there, but instead of clicking through to your site, they’re starting their research with a conversational prompt, a zero-click search, or an AI-powered summary. This shift demands a new strategy, one that transforms your website from a mere destination into an information engine built to fuel both human and AI interactions.

The Rise of Zero-Click Experiences

The data is undeniable. Multiple studies confirm a clear and significant shift in how people find information online:

  • A Bain & Company report found that 80% of consumers use zero-click or AI summaries for at least 40% of their searches, reducing click-through rates by up to 25%¹.
  • SparkToro and SimilarWeb data show that nearly 60% of searches in 2024 ended without any click at all².
  • SimilarWeb also noted a 6.7% year-over-year drop in general search referral traffic from 12 billion to 11.2 billion visits between June 2024 and June 2025³.

This is not a slow burn; it’s a pivotal shift in how traffic is generated and consumed, all thanks to the increasing prevalence of AI Overviews, LLM models, GenAI platforms and other zero-click formats. These powerful engines directly answer user questions, bypassing the need for a click.

  • When a Google AI Overview appears, user clicks on traditional results drop by 47%⁴.
  • In the B2B world, generative AI is actively disrupting website performance by feeding directly into AI agents and shortlists, which may even bypass formal outreach to sales entirely⁵.

Not only is this shift in behavior impacting site traffic, it’s also impacting current paid media performance. With click traffic diminishing, advertisers are competing more aggressively for the traffic that remains. This shift is inflating CPCs and degrading CTRs by pushing ads further down the SERP.

Brand Visibility Is Your Ultimate Goal

In this zero-click world, brand visibility becomes your most valuable asset. When an AI provides a summary, it sources from trusted names and authoritative sources. Your goal is to be one of them. Strong brand equity ensures your company appears in those AI overviews and agentic recommendations, making you part of the conversation long before a potential customer ever visits your site.

Interestingly, while top-of-funnel clicks may be down, homepage traffic from AI Overviews is actually up for many brands—hinting that brand trust surfaces when it matters most⁶. This shift shows that when a user sees a brand they know and trust in an AI summary, they are more likely to seek out your homepage directly to learn more.

AI Optimization Is a Holistic Discipline

Thriving in this new ecosystem requires more than just traditional SEO. Your AI optimization strategy must weave together multiple disciplines to create a unified presence across all channels.

  • SEO: This remains the foundation, ensuring your content is structured, authoritative, and crawlable.
  • Public Relations & Corporate Communications: These teams are critical for building the brand equity and earned references that AI models cite.
  • Content Strategy: Create rich, structured formats like FAQs, clear summaries, and expert-led thought leadership that feed AI agents with high-quality information.
  • Community Management: Foster a strong brand presence where AI tools may source recommendations and insights.

Think of your website not just as a destination, but as a dynamic information engine designed to serve both human and AI agents. Complement your content with distribution spread across third-party content syndicates. Ensure your brand is part of the discussion in the most relevant digital communities.

High-Quality Content Will Never Die

Despite the changes, the fundamentals of marketing still apply: high-quality content wins. Google’s EEAT framework—Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness—is now more critical than ever. Early evidence shows that AI models disproportionately pull from sources with strong EEAT signals, such as expert-authored content, cited research, and reputable brands.

Key considerations for marketers:

  • Depth matters: AI can summarize generic information, but it struggles with nuanced thought leadership, unique data, and original insights.
  • Credibility wins: Citing real experts, showcasing certifications, and publishing case studies strengthens brand trust and signals authority to both humans and AI models.
  • Consistency builds authority: Content published across your owned, earned, and shared channels reinforces your brand’s visibility in AI outputs.

While AI-generated summaries may answer quick questions, business buyers still turn to high-quality, branded content to validate use cases, compare solutions, and gain the confidence they need before making a purchase.

Optimizing For Your Human + AI Audience

When you create and optimize content, consider three distinct areas of focus and consumption by both humans and AI:  SEO, GEO and AEO. SEO is designed to help humans find your content in traditional search.  GEO and AEO are two subsets of AIO (think inbound vs. outbound). Each serves a distinct purpose within the content ecosystem.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization

GEO

Generative Engine Optimization

AEO

Answer Engine Optimization

Definition

The practice of improving a website’s visibility in traditional search engines (Google, Bing) via organic rankings.

The emerging practice of optimizing content so that it’s surfaced, cited, or summarized accurately in AI-powered generative search(e.g., ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini).

The practice of structuring content to be selected as direct answers in search engines (featured snippets, voice assistants, zero-click answers).

Primary Goal

Drive traffic to a website.

Drive visibility & inclusion in AI-generated results.

Drive exposure & authority by being the trusted direct answer source.

User Interaction

User clicks links from SERPs and visits sites.

User often sees summarized answers directly in chat/AI engines (less clicking, more referencing).

User receives a short, authoritative answer without necessarily visiting the site.

Key Tactics
  • Keyword research & mapping
  • On-page SEO (title tags, headers, content)
  • Technical SEO
  • Link building
  • Content freshness
  • Optimize content for accuracy, depth, and authority
  • Ensure structured data is clear
  • Build EEAT signals (Expertise, Experience, Authority, Trust)
  • Encourage citations by AI engines
  • Create content that answers broader, conversational queries
  • Use structured data & schema markup
  • Create concise, FAQ-style content
  • Target featured snippets
  • Focus on natural language for voice search
  • Provide clear, direct answers
Content Format Focus

Blog posts, landing pages, long-form content, technical pages.

Rich, context-aware content: explainer articles, authoritative guides, multi-modal assets (text, video, charts).

FAQs, how-tos, short definitions, concise and structured answers.

Metrics of Success
  • Organic traffic
  • Rankings
  • Click-through rate (CTR)
  • Conversions from search
  • Mentions/citations in AI answers
  • Brand visibility in AI summaries
  • Referral traffic from AI engines (if present)
  • Share of voice in AI-generated results
  • Featured snippet/voice search placement
  • Visibility in answer boxes
  • Brand credibility as “the source” of answers
Examples of Platforms

Google Search, Bing, Yahoo

ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude

Google Featured Snippets, Bing Answer Box, Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant

Agentic Buying and the Role of Multimodal Content

The next frontier in B2B is agentic buying, where AI agents autonomously research, shortlist, and even make preliminary contact with vendors on behalf of a human buyer. Imagine a future where an AI agent, tasked with finding a new CRM, doesn’t just “search” but autonomously shortlists vendors, compares features, and even generates a list of qualifying questions for a sales team—all without a human ever visiting a product page. Your content must be structured to be a part of that agent’s “data set” from the very beginning.

AI models are also becoming increasingly multimodal, processing more than just text. This means your podcast transcripts, video subtitles, and even infographics can be key sources for an AI to pull from. B2B marketers should view every piece of content, regardless of format, as a potential input for an AI engine. A software firm’s podcast discussing the future of supply chain automation, for instance, could be transcribed, indexed, and cited by an AI when a logistics manager asks a conversational query about new tech solutions.

The Future of Advertising: Contextual Is Coming

AI platforms aren’t just changing how people find information; they’re also creating the next frontier for digital advertising. The monetization models are already in motion, and the changes will be significant.

  • Contextual ads will replace keyword targeting. Instead of bidding on keywords, advertisers will compete to appear alongside AI-generated answers in contextually relevant ways.
  • Brand trust will drive ad placement. AI will likely prioritize ads from brands with credibility and authority, rewarding marketers who invest in strong EEAT signals and brand equity.
  • Creative will shift toward conversation. Ads may appear in chat-like formats, offering helpful recommendations, product comparisons, or interactive prompts.

This new ad landscape is already taking shape on leading AI platforms:

  • Perplexity: As one of the first AI-first platforms to embrace advertising, Perplexity offers a glimpse into the future. Its model focuses on sponsored follow-up questions and sidebar video ads. Since Perplexity’s core function is to provide direct, cited answers, its advertising is designed to blend seamlessly with the user experience. This format, which is primarily a CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) model, is suited for brand awareness and reaching users at the moment they are actively seeking information on a topic relevant to an advertiser’s product.
  • Gemini: As Google’s powerful multimodal AI, Gemini is poised to transform the existing Google Ads ecosystem. Gemini enhances Google Search with “AI Overviews,” which can include contextually relevant ads. The AI analyzes complex, multi-intent queries to identify commercial intent, allowing for more relevant and effective ad placements. Google states that search results with AI Overviews can generate ad revenue comparable to traditional search results. AI Mode and the conversational Gemini experience currently have begun limited testing of sponsored ads, powered by Performance Max and AI Max ad units.
  • ChatGPT: Currently, OpenAI’s flagship conversational tool does not offer advertising opportunities. Its monetization model is primarily driven by subscription tiers (ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Enterprise) and API usage. While this may change in the future—with some analysts speculating that ads for free users are a possibility down the road—marketers cannot currently purchase ad space within the platform.

Other AI platforms are testing monetization through ads and it has become clear that we can expect to either subscribe to AI models or expect ads to subsidize their use. The early ad models are indicating that context is key and we are definitely moving away from the keyword based targeting that has powered search for decades.

According to Insider Intelligence, nearly 65% of marketers expect to shift budgets into AI-driven contextual ads by 2026⁷. Now is the time to prepare by experimenting with contextual targeting, building AI-ready creative assets, and securing budgets that allow for early adoption when these ad formats officially roll out.

Strategic Recommendations for B2B Marketers

The landscape is changing, but your audience is still waiting to be reached. By adapting your strategy now, you can position your brand for success in the AI-first world.

Actionable Strategies:

  • Establish AI-ready content: Use structured data, clear summaries, and schema to feed AI agents with high-quality information.
  • Invest in Brand & EEAT Signals: Publish expert-led, credible, and unique insights that AI engines can easily surface.
  • Optimize Holistically: Align your SEO, PR, and content teams to reinforce a consistent brand presence across all human and AI channels.
  • Track New Metrics: Measure success beyond traditional traffic metrics. Look for visibility in AI overviews, branded CTR lifts, and conversion quality.
  • Use Paid Search Strategically: Target nuanced commercial intent and use paid campaigns to complement AI discovery with deeper, more detailed information.
  • Get AI Ad-Ready: Begin building contextual creative and test conversational ad formats in preparation for the coming shift in digital advertising.

How is your organization adapting its content and search strategy to meet buyers in this new AI-powered landscape? Contact Just Global today to discuss our AI Answer Engine Visibility Report and how our team can support your brand’s continued growth.

See how visible your brand really is in AI search.

Get your AI Answer Engine Visibility Report and Content Strategy

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