You're not alone if you've noticed how Google Search and other search engines have recently changed. The introduction of AI technologies like ChatGPT has changed the game for SEO. One day, you're writing blog posts to target keywords and satisfy your human readers. The next day, you're optimizing for artificial intelligence. Scores of SEO bots now crawl your website to gauge how well you've done for AI optimization. This post will help you understand the changes and provide insights into AI search engine optimization strategies to help you consistently rank at the top of AI-driven search results.

One way to prepare for AI search engine optimization is to use AI for SEO. Trailblazer Marketing’s solution ranks number 1 on Google and AI search. Using this tool can help you achieve your objectives for AI SEO, so you can consistently rank at the top of AI-driven search results.

Table of Contents

• Why Optimizing for AI Search Engines Is Critical

• 6 AI Search Engine Optimization Hacks for Smarter Search Rankings

• Validate SEO for $300 - 3 Spots Available per Month | Reserve Your Spot Today

Why Optimizing for AI Search Engines Is Critical

SEO is changing rapidly, and artificial intelligence (AI) is driving that transformation. Gone are the days when SEO was just about stuffing keywords into content and hoping for the best. Today, search engines like Google, Bing, and newer platforms like You.com are powered by AI algorithms that prioritize:

• Context

• User intent

• Relevance

Understanding and adapting to these changes is crucial to:

• Staying competitive 

• Maintaining visibility online

The Differences Between Traditional and AI-Powered Search Engines

Let’s start by getting familiar with how AI-driven search engines operate. Traditional search engines used to rely heavily on keyword matching. AI search engines use more sophisticated techniques like:

• Natural language processing (NLP)

• Machine learning (ML)

• Contextual understanding

They don’t just match words to queries. They understand what users are looking for and deliver personalized, relevant results.

Key AI Technologies in Search Engines

AI search engines use these technologies to deliver more relevant and personalized search results, which is why traditional SEO strategies like keyword stuffing are becoming less effective.

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

This technology helps search engines process human language in a natural way, allowing them to understand user queries as a human would.

Machine Learning (ML)

This allows search engines to learn from user behavior and interactions. The more people search, the smarter the algorithms become, improving their ability to deliver accurate results.

RankBrain

Google’s AI system that helps it process search results by interpreting the intent and context behind each query. RankBrain plays a huge role in ensuring users get the most relevant information.

BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers)

Another critical AI model used by Google, BERT, helps the search engine understand the nuances of:

• Language 

• Context

It focuses on how words relate to each other in sentences, allowing Google to understand complex queries better.

The Most Popular AI-Powered Search Engines

It’s no secret that Google dominates the search market, but it’s essential to be aware of other AI-powered engines that are rising in popularity. Each search engine offers unique features, but they all share a common goal: improving the user experience by delivering better, more relevant results. Google Search Google, which controls over 90% of the global search engine market share according to Statcounter, uses RankBrain, BERT, and other AI technologies to:

• Enhance search accuracy 

• Provide a better user experience

It also powers:

• Google Assistant 

• Voice search

AI Alternatives

Microsoft Bing Bing might not have the same market share as Google, but it’s making strides in AI with its collaboration with OpenAI. By integrating advanced AI capabilities, such as improved natural language processing, Bing delivers more conversational and accurate results.

You.com

You.com is gaining traction for its unique, personalized search experience. Users can customize their search settings and preferences, and the platform offers an ad-free environment, appealing to those who prioritize privacy and a tailored experience. 

DuckDuckGo 

DuckDuckGo is known for its privacy-first approach. While it doesn’t track users like other search engines, it’s also integrated AI to improve search relevance and provide instant answers. 

Perplexity AI 

Perplexity AI is still relatively new but is gaining attention due to its conversational search capabilities. It uses AI models like GPT-3 to answer user queries directly. 

SearchGPT 

SearchGPT (Owned by OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT) utilizes large language models like GPT-4 to understand user intent and offer concise, contextually relevant answers, often accompanied by citations to verify information. It will soon be available to the public.

Why Optimizing for AI Search Engines Is Critical

If you still rely on traditional SEO practices, now is the time to adapt. AI search engines are designed to prioritize user-centric, contextually accurate content. They focus on understanding the intent behind queries, meaning your content must align with what the user is searching for.

Key Statistics

According to Brightedge, “68% of online experiences begin with a search engine”, making SEO a crucial factor in driving traffic to your site. Statista states, “The generative artificial intelligence (AI) market is expected to rise significantly,from 11 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 to nearly 128 billion U.S. dollars in 2024 and more than 1.3 trillion U.S. dollars in 2032”. A study by Ahrefs found that 90.63% of pages get zero traffic from Google, primarily due to poor content optimization and lack of relevance.

AI Models and Real-Time Search

How do these AI platforms generally work? AI models are trained on data available up to specific cutoff dates. Google’s Gemini 2.0 Pro had a knowledge cutoff in August 2024, while OpenAI’s GPT-4o extended its training data until June 2024. It can change daily. These models rely on real-time data retrieval rather than their internal knowledge base for recent events or emerging trends. Their ability to provide accurate and up-to-date results is directly tied to their ability to access and process new information from the web.

AI Crawlers

That is key. Another thing to note is that AI search engines can build their web indexes. Perplexity AI’s PerplexityBot crawls the web directly, creating its content database rather than relying on Google’s or Bing’s indexes. Even so, AI search engines can and do still rely on search engine results. Website owners who want to control how AI search engines access their content can manage these crawlers in their robots.txt settings. Now let’s discuss how AI search engines are relevant to SEO today.

SEO Success with Trailblazer

Trailblazer Marketing serves as your dedicated SEO team, driving profitable growth through strategic content that ranks prominently in both Google and Bing, as well as AI search platforms like:

• ChatGPT

• Claude

• Perplexity

Scientific SEO Results

Our scientific approach has delivered extraordinary results across industries. It helps companies rank number 1 in Google and AI search, including a B2C SaaS client with a 3,518% increase in non-branded traffic within 21 days. Ultimately, this client generated 2.1M organic clicks and over $700,000 in first-year revenue, far exceeding their $300,000 ARR goal. 

Proven Methodology and Remarkable Growth

Similar success stories include a B2B SaaS client achieving 9,644% traffic growth within 10 months and a mobile app seeing a 65 %+ increase in downloads within 50 days. Our comprehensive methodology sets us apart:

• Long-term planning

• Product-led keyword research

• Competitive analysis

• Strategic backlink building

• High-velocity content production 

Test Drive SEO: Affordable 30-Day Results

Most SEO agencies require thousands per month upfront. Still, our $300 Validate Program lets you test our process with 10 SEO-optimized articles and see actual results within 30 days before committing to a more significant investment. We only have 3 spots available monthly; reserve yours today!

Related Reading

• AI SEO Optimization

6 AI Search Engine Optimization Hacks for Smarter Search Rankings

1. The Shift in Google Search: Understanding AI Overviews

The search world changed considerably when Google unveiled AI Overviews, powered by its Gemini model. With AI-generated responses, users can now receive quick, but comprehensive answers to their queries at the top of Google’s search results. This represents a significant opportunity for businesses to boost organic traffic but is also a considerable challenge. AI Overviews rely on Google’s search index to determine what information to present. They also change how users interact with search results. For SEO professionals, this introduced:

• Opportunities 

• Challenges

AI Overviews

How AI Overviews work Google’s Gemini 2.0 AI model powers AI Overviews, generating instant summaries for certain queries. AI-generated responses appear at the top of Google’s search results, often before traditional organic listings. With respect to market share and adoption, Google still dominates the search market, holding about 87.28% of the U.S. search market. With billions of searches per day, AI Overviews have the potential to reshape:

• Organic search traffic 

• User behavior

SEO Relevance

What this means for SEO Ranking in Google still matters. AI Overviews primarily pull from the search results. A study by Rich Sanger and Authoritas found that 46% of AI Overview citations come from the top 10 organic search results. Anecdotal data from my SEO agency suggests you need to be in the top 20 for a better chance of inclusion in AI Overviews. There are outliers, and some resources cited in AI Overviews will rank outside what we traditionally call being ranked at all. Inclusion in AI Overviews can boost clicks to the cited sources and, according to some research, harm performance for those who don’t appear. 

SEO Imperative

For transactional queries, webpages included in AI Overviews had 3.2 times as many clicks as excluded pages. For informational queries, webpages with a presence in AI Overviews had 1.5 times as many clicks as webpages excluded by AI Overviews. If your content doesn’t rank well in Google, it’s unlikely to appear in AI Overviews, reinforcing the need for strong SEO. There are many opinions on which tactics you need to succeed. I advocate continuing the course with a strong SEO program with a balanced mix of:

• Technical SEO

• On-page optimization 

• Excellent content

AI Control

Website owners can control whether their content is included in AI-generated answers. Google-Extended is an opt-out setting that allows websites to block Google from using their content for AI models like Gemini, while still allowing Googlebot to crawl their site for search rankings. Blocking Google-Extended won’t affect your rankings in Google Search, but it will stop Gemini from using your content in AI-generated responses.

Take note: Research shows that inclusion in AI Overviews can be more volatile than the organic search results.AI Overviews aren’t replacing traditional search but changing how search results are consumed. The strategy remains the same: Optimize for Google Search, and AI Overviews will follow. 

2. Google's AI Mode: What It Is and Why It Matters

In March 2025, Google announced AI Mode, an optional feature designed to offer a more AI-driven search experience. Unlike standard Google Search, where AI Overviews appear alongside organic results, AI Mode allows users to toggle into a search environment where AI-generated answers take center stage. 

How AI Mode Works 

A separate search option where AI-generated responses are more detailed, conversational, and visually enhanced. Reminiscent of Bing’s Copilot toggle. AI Mode combines advanced model capabilities with Google’s best-in-class information systems, and it’s built right into Search. You can access high-quality web content and tap into fresh, real-time sources like:

• The Knowledge Graph

• Info about the real world

• Shopping data for billions of products

It uses a query fan-out technique, issuing multiple related searches concurrently across subtopics and multiple data sources and then brings those results together to provide an easy-to-understand response,” according to Google (announcement link above).

AI Mode

Google told Search Engine Land that, like AI Overviews, AI Mode surfaces relevant links to help people find webpages and content, and that Google teaches the model to decide when to include hyperlinks in the response. If users want to take action on a website (like booking tickets), then links would be useful. AI mode will also decide when to prioritize visual information, such as images or videos, for queries like how-to searches.

AI Ranking

What this means for SEO is that Google says that AI Mode “is rooted in our core quality and ranking systems, and we’re also using novel approaches with the model’s reasoning capabilities to improve factuality. We aim to show an AI-powered response as much as possible, but in cases where we don’t have high confidence in helpfulness and quality, the response will be a set of web search results.” AI Mode is now in testing whether it will impact click-through rates in the same way as AI Overviews remains to be seen. AI Mode signals an ongoing shift towards AI-dominated search results. For now, the importance of ranking well in traditional search remains the same.

3. Meet Gemini: Google's New AI Chatbot

Gemini is Google’s competitor to ChatGPT and other generative AI tools. It functions as both an independent chatbot and the power behind AI Overviews in Google Search. Over the coming months, Google plans to upgrade virtually all Assistant-enabled devices, from phones to smart home gadgets, to use Gemini as the default assistant. This shift shows Google’s long-term commitment to AI as a core part of search and user interactions.

How Gemini Works

Gemini pulls from Google search results and third-party content partners like AP to generate responses, integrating search rankings into its answers. Gemini can also personalize results based on a user’s:

• Google search history

• YouTube activity

• App usage, making responses adaptive rather than purely search-driven

 Market Share And Adoption 

According to Statista, Gemini ranks No. 3 on the most downloaded gen AI apps globally as of January 2025, with approximately 9 million downloads. Similarweb data shows that most users are aged 25 to 34 (approximately 30%), with the second highest usage among 18- to 24-year-olds at about 21%. What this means for SEO Ranking in Google Search is still crucial. Gemini pulls from Google’s search index and sources data from content partnerships. Consider content optimized for:

• Natural language queries

• Structured data to help enhance context 

• Education-focused content (where teaching something is front and center)

When Gemini personalizes responses based on user history, visibility in Gemini answers may vary between users. Suppose a user frequently engages with a particular brand’s YouTube channel. In that case, Gemini might be more inclined to mention or draw from that brand’s content when that user asks a related question. Click-through rates from Gemini remain uncertain, as Gemini doesn’t always provide direct links. According to one study, Gemini comes in third for referral traffic compared to ChatGPT and Perplexity. Visibility in Gemini means business as usual in terms of having an excellent site that can rank in Google Search, but it also adds complexity with Gemini’s:

• AI-driven personalization 

• Conversational search trends

4. Bing Chat: The New Face of Microsoft Search

Bing was the first major search engine to integrate AI directly into its results, launching Bing Chat in February 2023. It’s no surprise Bing beat Google here, as Microsoft has been a big investor in OpenAI since 2019.

How Bing Chat Works 

Powered by Microsoft’s Prometheus model, which builds on OpenAI’s GPT-4. Generates AI summaries based on real-time Bing search results and external data sources. AI-generated responses appear at the top of search results, sometimes before traditional web listings. You can also click on Deep Search for more in-depth AI-powered answers. These answers are also linked to sources found on the web. There’s a Copilot toggle in Bing for a more interactive, fully powered AI search mode. Market share and adoption Bing accounts for about 7.48% of the U.S. search market. While small compared to Google, Bing’s market share may grow more in the future due to its early adoption of AI-powered search and the reliance of other AI platforms on Bing results. 

What this means for SEO 

Unlike Google’s AI Overviews, Bing Chat is more likely to cite sources outside the top-ranked pages, but ranking higher still increases the likelihood of inclusion. A study by Rich Sanger found that over 70% of URLs included in Bing Chat summaries rank in the top 20 Bing search results. Bing may present a growing opportunity as AI search adoption increases. Bing may no longer be an afterthought in many companies’ SEO strategies. You should continue to have a robust SEO program that considers Bing's ranking signals.

5. ChatGPT Search: What You Need to Know

ChatGPT search is OpenAI’s initiative to enhance traditional search by integrating AI-powered real-time web search into ChatGPT. It was initially launched as the SearchGPT prototype in mid-2024 and later incorporated into ChatGPT, allowing users to access live search capabilities rather than relying solely on pre-trained knowledge. By October, OpenAI fully integrated SearchGPT into ChatGPT, enabling it to perform real-time web searches and provide more current, sourced information for user queries. This positioned ChatGPT search as a direct competitor to traditional search engines, offering users an AI-powered alternative to platforms like Google and Bing. 

Here’s the kicker: It still relies on search engine results. 

How ChatGPT Search Works

Powered by a fine-tuned version of GPT-4o, post-trained using synthetic data-generation techniques. This includes distilling outputs from OpenAI’s o1-preview model wherein some responses are AI-synthesized rather than directly retrieved from the web. SearchGPT pulls data from multiple sources, including third-party search providers like Bing and direct content partnerships that supply proprietary information. Market share and adoption ChatGPT is the most widely used text generation AI tool, holding nearly 20% of the global generative AI user share in 2023, according to Statista. According to TechCrunch, ChatGPT’s weekly active user base doubled in six months, and 400 million weekly active users now rely on its search capabilities.

What This Means For SEO

Since SearchGPT relies on Bing’s indexing system, ensuring your content ranks in Bing is essential. Content not indexed by Bing is unlikely to appear in SearchGPT’s responses. Chatter in the SEO industry suggests that SearchGPT might favor trusted, high-ranking sources in Bing, but also relies on sources outside the top rankings in Bing. SearchGPT’s responses can include clickable sources, potentially driving traffic back to a site. A study analyzing traffic data from 391 SMB websites found that ChatGPT’s referral traffic increased by 123% between September 2024 and February 2025, making it the largest referrer among AI-driven search engines. 

ChatGPT Traffic

ChatGPT has been sending more traffic to education and technology sites, with more than 30,000 unique domains receiving referrals by November 2024. ChatGPT's conversational nature is changing how users search and consume information. Continuing to emphasize helpful content can only make a website more competitive. In the early days of SEO, search engines were highly susceptible to simple manipulation tactics. ChatGPT’s AI-powered search may be vulnerable to manipulation, with tests showing that it could be influenced to return misleading or biased results. ChatGPT could be the biggest threat to search engine usage. However, SearchGPT’s reliance on Bing means SEO strategies must prioritize Bing to improve the chances of being surfaced in AI-generated results as well.

6. Perplexity AI: A New Kind of Search Engine

Perplexity AI is an independent, AI-powered search engine that blends large language models with real-time web data to provide concise AI-powered responses with direct citations. The citations feature is one of the more compelling aspects of Perplexity.

In an interview with Lex Fridman, Perplexity’s founder Aravind Srinivas said, “When I wrote my first paper, the senior people who were working with me on the paper told me this one profound thing, which is that every sentence you write in a paper should be backed with a citation, with a citation from another peer-reviewed paper, or an experimental result in my own paper. 

Perplexity Principle

Anything else that you say in the paper is more like an opinion. “It’s a simple statement, but pretty profound in how much it forces you to say only right things. We took this principle and asked ourselves, what is the best way to make chatbots accurate, is force it to only say things that it can find on the internet, and find from multiple sources.” Launched in late 2022, it has positioned itself as an alternative and direct competitor to traditional search engines like Google.

How Perplexity Works 

Perplexity AI operates as an independent search engine, actively crawling and indexing the web to provide real-time, AI-generated responses to user queries. Instead of building a massive index like Google’s, Perplexity prioritizes indexing high-quality, frequently searched topics based on user behavior. Focusing on trusted and helpful sources optimizes accuracy and truthfulness while maintaining efficiency. Each response includes direct source links, differentiating Perplexity from AI chatbots that provide answers without attribution.

Market Share And Adoption 

Perplexity reportedly had 15 million monthly active users by early 2024. While still small, Perplexity holds approximately 6% of the AI search market, and is growing. Backed by Jeff Bezos and NVIDIA investors, Perplexity’s valuation jumped from $500 million to $9 billion in under a year. What this means for SEO is that Perplexity relies on trusted web sources. You must have an authoritative presence on the web. One study showed that 60% of Perplexity citations overlap with the top 10 Google organic results. Other research indicates that Perplexity has a group of favored, authoritative web sources from which to pull. 

Perplexity Factors

Because Perplexity is an independent search engine, ranking factors will differ from those of Google or Bing. Content formatted in a certain way may have a leg up, including:

• Clear headings

• Well-organized sections 

• Succinct answers like FAQs embedded in your content

Perplexity’s model quickly understands and extracts all of these.​ While Perplexity links to sources, data suggests referral traffic is still relatively low. Perplexity AI is another contender that could continue to gain traction in AI search and take users away from major search engines. It’s important to remember that it still relies on sources across the web, optimizing an authoritative site with the right content for an essential step in visibility.

AI Future

The future of AI search and SEO While some predict that the rise of AI will reduce search engine volume significantly (Gartner predicts a 25% drop by 2026), the importance of having a reputable website with trustworthy, optimized content remains critical for the foreseeable future. Time will tell which AI wins the game. With many AI platforms facing legal challenges (like Google’s AI Overviews and Perplexity’s lawsuits), legal decisions will likely shape the winners and how AI search ultimately operates. Which AI search engine should you optimize for right now? It’s best to gather research on the potential for referral traffic and the audience demographics using the AI search engine.

Strategic Optimization

Does it align with your industry and business? For those AI search engines that require extra SEO effort on top of what you’re already doing, ensure it’s worth it. Track your referral traffic to see if any patterns emerge. It’s known that Google is the dominant search engine, so continuing to optimize for Google is key.

Traffic Impact

The situation is not perfect, however. While some websites report increased clicks from things like AI Overviews, others are losing big time.  Research shows that for queries where AI Overviews appeared in Google, organic CTR fell sharply from 1.41% to 0.64% year over year. A study examining AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others found that they send 96% less referral traffic to news sites and blogs than traditional Google Search.

Emarketer data echoes this: Some data already suggest a basic hierarchy of referral traffic coming from specific AI search engines. One study found ChatGTP to be a clear winner in referral traffic overall, but things fluctuate based on industry.

Industry fluctuations per AI engine

Image credit: “SMB websites see rising traffic from ChatGPT and other AI engines,” William Kammer, Search Engine Land as we continue to see this play out, we can relax, knowing that the fundamentals of SEO will not disappear. The approach may change, but the foundation is the same: Put the user first, make a great website optimized for the platforms your target audience uses, and continue to adapt to the different ways you can remain visible in search.

Related Reading

• AI Search Optimization

Validate SEO for $300 - 3 Spots Available per Month | Reserve Your Spot Today

Trailblazer Marketing serves as your dedicated SEO team, driving profitable growth through strategic content that ranks prominently in both Google and Bing, as well as AI search platforms like:

• ChatGPT

• Claude

• Perplexity

Scientific SEO Results

Our scientific approach has delivered extraordinary results across industries. It helps companies rank number 1 in Google and AI search, including a B2C SaaS client with a 3,518% increase in non-branded traffic within 21 days. Ultimately, this client generated 2.1M organic clicks and over $700,000 in first-year revenue, far exceeding their $300,000 ARR goal. 

Proven Methodology and Remarkable Growth

Similar success stories include a B2B SaaS client achieving 9,644% traffic growth within 10 months and a mobile app seeing a 65 %+ increase in downloads within 50 days. Our comprehensive methodology sets us apart:

• Long-term planning

• Product-led keyword research

• Competitive analysis

• Strategic backlink building

• High-velocity content production 

Test Drive SEO: Affordable 30-Day Results

Most SEO agencies require thousands per month upfront. Still, our $300 Validate Program lets you test our process with 10 SEO-optimized articles and see actual results within 30 days before committing to a more significant investment. We only have 3 spots available monthly; reserve yours today!

Related Reading

• Generative AI Search Engine Optimization