Reality check – it’s not the traffic gold rush you think it is… yet.
It seems like everyone uses generative search tools nowadays. Whether that’s ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude or Gemini – it’s all pretty standard for most people.
You may have seen the recent hype around GEO (generative engine optimisation), AEO (answer engine optimisation) or whatever acronym anyone uses for these – ultimately this is the new and fledgling industry of the 2026 search era.
I’ve seen some unbelievably expensive products come out of this space. These are typically the early front-runners of a new industry who release new tools and then hope that cash-heavy big businesses will throw money at them. As a small business owner I can imagine you look at this and go – “oh no, another marketing race where if you have money, you win”.
Well, I’ll give you the honest truth on this one: that early excitement has given way to a sobering reality for most businesses that have thrown money at ‘ranking in AI tools’.
The Reality Check
As with most hype within business trends, there tends to be a massive moment of excitement (or panic) for businesses.
We need to invest in this!
We need to move around our marketing budget!
We need to put all our eggs in this new shiny marketing thing and beat our competitors!
The reality is that, despite everyone asking me as an SEO consultant about how to appear in AI tools, on a data level you needn’t worry at this point. AI search referral traffic is tiny – Conductor’s 2026 benchmarks put it at around 1% of all website traffic across 3.3 billion sessions, and SE Ranking’s 2026 study found just 0.32%.
If you compare that to organic search, which still accounts for around 43% of all website traffic in that same SE Ranking study (Google sends roughly 134 times more visitors than AI platforms), the stark reality is that AI visibility has very little impact on your business at the moment.
Despite this, I imagine that much more business will come from generative AI tools in future, so it’s worth understanding that landscape still – I just wanted to initially relieve any worry that you are behind in any way.
The Truth – AI Success Comes From SEO Success
The reason I feel like I have a stake in this conversation is that AI tool visibility principles are rooted in the same principles as SEO.
Just like Google, AI tools primarily cite websites that do the fundamentals well – a solid site structure, a fast website, a mobile-responsive design, original research and proprietary data, and clear conversion paths (plus much more!). Effectively, AI tools haven’t created a new system for ranking – they’ve just borrowed Google’s. There isn’t a separate playbook for ranking in AI tools but ignoring Google. It’s all part of the same logic and strategy.
Technically you can do a few things that cater to AI visibility – like adding structured data to your website so that LLMs are able to categorise content – but this is an existing SEO play anyway. Quality backlinks still matter as AI citations frequently follow authority signals, and thin content will be ignored. Still all SEO!
The reality is that ranking well in Google still makes you far more likely to be cited. Conductor found that pages ranking first are cited in AI Overviews around 25% of the time, falling to around 10% by position ten, and BrightEdge’s 16-month study found that over half of AI Overview citations now come from pages that rank organically, up from about a third. Page one isn’t the only way in, but the overlap with SEO is growing, not shrinking. What I’m trying to say is that chasing AI optimisation before fixing basic SEO is like painting a house when you haven’t even built the foundations yet.
What I Think Is More Important Than AI Search in 2026
Below I’ve put together a table of the marketing approaches that I believe should come before worrying about AI search if you’re a small business owner. These are tried-and-trusted approaches that have been around for decades and provide real business value.
Marketing Channel Performance
The Channels That Actually Convert
| Channel | Conversion Visit-to-action rate | Control How much you can steer it | Visibility How trackable it is | Impact Real business value | vs. AI Search (my opinion) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SEO (organic search) | 2–5% | Medium | Full | High | Wins easily |
| Email marketing | 5–15% | Total | Full | High | Wins easily |
| Direct traffic | 10–25% | Medium | Partial | High | Wins easily |
| Branded search | 15–30% | Medium | Full | High | Wins easily |
| Word of mouth | 40–60% | Low | None | Very High | Wins easily |
| Reviews (Google, Trustpilot) | 10–20% lift | Low | Partial | High | Wins easily |
| SMS marketing | 20–35% | Total | Full | High | Wins easily |
| Paid search (PPC) | 2–5% | High | Full | Med-High | Wins |
| Paid social ads (Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn) | 1–3% | High | Full | Medium | Wins |
| Local presence (signage, leaflets) | Hard to isolate | High | None | Med-High | Wins |
| Networking & events | 15–30% | Medium | Low | Med-High | Wins |
| Influencer marketing | 1–5% | Low | Low | Med-High | Wins |
| Print & direct mail | 1–4% | High | Low | Medium | Wins |
| Retargeting ads | 1–3% | High | Full | Medium | Wins (slightly) |
| Organic social (brand-building) | 0.5–2% | Medium | Partial | Low-Med | Wins (slightly) |
| AI search (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini) | 0.5–3% | Very Low | Unattributed | Unclear | Baseline |
The takeaway: Almost every established marketing channel probably out-converts AI search at the moment. Effectively what I’m saying is don’t drop the basics chasing the shiny new thing! Build on marketing tactics that already work…
Source: Seed & Solace channel benchmarks
The Bottom Line
To conclude – I’m not saying that as a small business owner you should turn a blind eye to AI search. What I would say is to focus your efforts on the marketing strategies that you have a better chance of being able to control.
When AI search becomes a bigger beast – I’ll let you know 🙂
Sources
- Google Search Central: AI features and your website
- Google Search Central: Optimizing for generative AI search
- Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
- Conductor: The 2026 AEO / GEO Benchmarks Report
- SE Ranking: AI traffic research study (2026)
- Conductor: AI Overviews vs. organic rankings
- BrightEdge: AI Overview citation overlap with organic rankings after 16 months
