On the shelf behind me, there’s a book called “Get to the top of Google”. Amazingly, it is 17 years old, and it has been invaluable in helping me achieve a high ranking for my website. Every business wants to be at the top of Google, and for many, the only way to accomplish this in recent years has been through advertising, for which click-through rates are abysmally low.
Back in 2008, when the book came out, if you searched for “Get to the top of Google” you would have immediately seen several links to websites that could help. The adverts were tucked out of the way on the right side of the window.
Now, when you search for the same phrase, you have to scroll down the page for quite a while before you see your first organic (non-advertising) link. In the same way that people have rarely gone beyond the first page of Google results, it is likely that people will not scroll down the page either these days. In other words, those much-coveted “top of Google” listings are quickly becoming worthless.
This issue was the focus of a webinar I attended this week from a leading authority on search engine optimisation. The event was organised by the online magazine, Search Engine Journal, which is widely respected as an authority on everything to do with online search. The webinar was designed to help businesses get to grips with the impact of artificial intelligence on search.
When you search for anything on Google these days, the top of the page is usually taken up with an overview of the topic you have been searching for, constructed by Google’s AI system, Gemini. It turns out that increasing numbers of people are only looking at the Gemini output and not clicking on anything in the search results list. According to the webinar, 60% of all searches on Google in 2024 ended without a click, which is up from 26% in 2022 for desktop searches. You can expect a significant rise in 2025.
As if this were not enough of a problem, paid clicks from ads decrease by 28% when Google displays the “AIO” (Artificial Intelligence Overview). The tech consultancy, Gartner, has predicted that by 2028, the amount of organic search will decline by 50%. They are also suggesting a 25% reduction in overall search engine use.
Getting to the top of Google is no longer going to help your business. Even if you do manage to get to “the top”, you’ll be beyond the bottom of the screen since the AIO and the paid-for adverts fill the space above you. Few people will bother to scroll to find you.
From now on, if you want to be at the top of Google, you have to be one of the links inside the AIO. And that means the whole notion of keywords and “SEO” (search engine optimisation) are pretty much things of the past. If your marketing agency is talking to you about keywords and using phrases like “off-page SEO” or “on-page SEO”, then sack them and find an agency that understands about getting into AIOs.
To get your website into the handful of links that are included within the AIO, you are going to have to establish your authority in your subject even more than you might do at the moment. It means even more in-depth content, long-form articles, explainer videos and so on. There’s also an added problem. According to Advanced Web Ranking, the AIOs only contain, on average, around half a dozen links. That means intense competition for those places.
This may all seem depressing, but these changes simply highlight the need to adopt the principles Google advocated over 20 years ago. One of their most well-known engineers, Matt Cutts, was making the case for writing for humans and not for search engines. Even so, a whole industry grew up over the last 20 years, emphasising keywords and trying to “game” the Google algorithm. Yet, Google repeatedly stated that the best way to reach the top was to think “people first,” a principle it still emphasises today in its documentation for website owners.
The same is inevitably going to be true for getting your weblinks into those Artificial Intelligence Overviews at the top of a search page. If you write for people, forgetting keywords and emphasising reliable content in a variety of forms, then Gemini will spot you. And, just as before, getting those all-important links depends on high-frequency content addition. You thought that was a tough ask to help you get up the normal search results. Thanks to AIOs, that job has become a whole lot tougher, especially as Google’s Gemini prioritises “freshness”.
Unless you respond quickly, there is a real chance your website will disappear from view – and along with it, your business. Artificial intelligence has completely rewritten the web search environment. As Activate Consulting point out in their latest report, people are even moving away from search engines to search directly inside ChatGPT or Gemini – places you cannot exploit. So what can you do about this? Start learning what you need to do to act fast. A useful starting point would be to attend a webinar on this very topic, organised by PR Newswire on July 9th. See you there..!
