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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- AI traffic grew 66% in 2025 but remains under 0.15% of visits.
- AI citations can build exposure even without direct traffic.
- These tactics can improve your visibility in AI search.
You’ve been quietly losing traffic from organic search even though your rankings haven’t changed. Does that mean traditional SEO no longer works? No. But should you then treat AI as a black box to simply accept and ignore? Also no.
All the things that used to score points with traditional search engine algorithms, like backlinks, website authority, performance optimization, and quality content — they haven’t just stopped existing. AI search just treats them very differently, which is at once both better and worse.
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Sometimes, that means good content is more likely to be cited by AI tools, even if your website doesn’t have a high domain authority (DA) ranking. Yet it also means that most visitors will get their questions answered without ever leaving the AI platform, since the AI pulls all the information from your website into its responses without requiring users to click into your site.
Luckily, that also means you get more opportunities to show up as a useful rebsite. As long as you’re being cited by AI search engines, people will notice your brand, whether or not they register as inbound traffic
With that in mind, I’m going to share some advice for earning more citations from AI search platforms without throwing SEO to the curb. I’ll also share tools to help you measure your AI search visibility without breaking the bank.
How much has AI changed search engines?
According to Semrush’s recent analysis of more than 50,000 websites, AI traffic grew by 66% in 2025 compared to the previous year. But AI still accounts for less than 0.15% of total website visits.
That means two things. First, AI is taking a lion’s share of search engine traffic away from websites. At the same time, not all of that traffic is being rerouted to websites through AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google Gemini. Instead, AI platforms now serve as both the first port of call and the final destination for these internet users, enabling them to find everything they need without ever leaving the app.
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(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET’s parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)
What’s worse is that websites that have been focusing on traditional SEO are suddenly finding that AI tools don’t treat them with the same priority. Search engines used to look for websites with a rich library of content and demonstrated authority in a topic. AI values that too, but more importantly, it looks for text that answers a user’s question precisely and immediately.
Moreover, AI search engines require more targeted optimization than technical SEO typically provides. Along with a robots.txt and a sitemap, you might also want to consider having a dedicated llms.txt file for agents and bots trying to crawl your site.
All of these are separate problems that, together, contribute to lower traffic and visibility from AI tools. But there are ways to solve them.
How to check whether AI engines are citing you
There are a few ways to assess your visibility on AI search, depending on how much time and money you are prepared to spend.
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- The easiest way to do this is to go to ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI Mode and ask 10-15 questions that you’d expect your content to show up for. Make a note of who gets cited and how many times. It costs nothing and takes very little time.
- Many tools, like HubSpot’s AEO Grader, are absolutely free to use for a quick analysis, which can give you a decent idea of your brand’s presence in AI search engines.
- If you have Google Analytics set up on your site, you can filter your referrals for traffic from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, etc. If you do this over several months, you can see whether your presence is improving or worsening.
- Once you’ve outgrown free tools, consider investing in a paid AEO analytics platform like Semrush One or Otterly.AI. You can get a limited plan for as little as $29/month to get started.
What actually earns an AI citation
There are several things you can do to increase your chances of being cited by LLM-based generative AI platforms, according to a study Georgia Tech, and the Allen Institute for AI at the 2024 KDD Conference. They tested nine content visibility tactics across 10,000 search queries, achieving improvements of up to 40%. Here’s what they found to be working:
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- Make sure your robots.txt file doesn’t block AI crawlers like GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI), PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot (Anthropic), and Google-Extended by default. Many popular content management systems do this, which hurts your rankings.
- AI models extract passages, not entire pages of content. When you begin a new section, lead with a self-contained opening sentence with a clear statement before adding any nuance or context.
- Citing numbers and sources adds credibility to your content, which helps it rank better with LLMs. Vague statements and claims often get deprioritized during verification.
- Create a simple llms.txt file at the root folder of your site’s directory. This is a low-cost experiment proposed by Answer.AI’s Jeremy Howard, though it has not been corroborated by any major AI companies or AEO platforms.
- Build a brand presence that extends beyond your website. LLMs like to pull content from a mix of sources, including YouTube videos and Reddit posts. Having a strong social media presence is a good way to get AI search engines to see you during queries.
My thoughts on optimizing for AI search
As the Semrush study clearly shows, there’s a lot of misinformation and propaganda floating around about AI search and SEO. While it’s true that websites are losing a lot of traffic to AI platforms, referral traffic from these tools doesn’t account for nearly as many clicks as they claim. Still, there are plenty of benefits to being cited by AI, even if that doesn’t lead users to visit your website directly.
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If you’ve been serious about traditional SEO, you’ll find that you already have all the things you need to get started with AI search optimization from existing platforms like Semrush or Ahrefs. More dedicated tooling for analytics and visibility also exists, but not everyone will need it. Also, it’s worth keeping in mind that the basic principle of creating useful and informative content hasn’t changed. But there are things that AI tools approach differently when it comes to researching answers to user queries, which can help you show up in more responses.
Artificial Intelligence
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- US workers are the world’s biggest AI skeptics – and it’s not just about job loss
- I used ChatGPT to build a free PDF editor because I didn’t trust it to change my files – it’s glorious
- How to audit what ChatGPT knows about you – and reclaim your data privacy
- I tried Google Drive’s new AI cleanup tool to fix 14 years of storage clutter – here’s the result
