Embracing Marketing Mistakes

When Google’s AI Stole Their Clicks: How Prohibition Turned a Traffic Crisis into GEO Strategy

• Prohibition PR

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When Google rolled out AI Overviews, Prohibition PR’s founder Chris Norton and co-owner Will watched something shocking: their clients’ sites still ranked high, but traffic plummeted overnight. The cause? AI summaries stealing clicks before users ever reached their pages. In this episode, Chris and Will reveal how a 50% traffic crash exposed the myth that “rankings = revenue,” and how they pivoted to GEO, meaning Generative Engine Optimization. From an awkward AI hallucination that invented a fake client to the discovery that authority beats keyword every time, they share the playbook that rebuilt visibility and leads. Learn how to make your brand the cited source inside AI answers, not the forgotten footnote. This is the new marketing reality: adapt your SEO to AI or risk disappearing entirely. 

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Speaker:

Your rankings didn't tank, your clicks did. Google's AEO just broke the old SEO traffic pipeline model. When an AI panel appeared, even top results lose visibility. Daily Mail data shows clicks a falling 56% on desktop, 48% on mobile, and in some cases click-through rates collapsed by up to 89% when Google's AI answer appeared. This is the biggest shift since Google launched in 1998. Discovery now happens inside composed answers. Translating that for senior marketeers, rankings no longer equal revenue. Inclusion is earned by authority and citations, not just stuffed keywords. Be the brand of the AI overview, typed across every sub question. Stay until the end for the live examples and the checklist that helps you put your brand inside the answer. So let's get into it then. But before we start, we might as well introduce ourselves. My name is Chris Norton. I'm the founder and innovation lead at Prohibition PR. So yeah, I look at all the latest technologies and bits and pieces in the PR industry. I've been working in PR for 25 years. I used to teach on the PR degree, digit the digital PR and integrated PR side of things because of my social media strategy background. And obviously, AI is just as interesting like anything to do with tech and innovation. Will?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, my name's Will. Some of you will probably recognise me. I am the Chris co-owner at Prohibition. And I am the creative and strategy lead. I'm going to take the second half of this presentation and talk about some of the some of the more technical side of things about how we can actually be more visible when it comes to AI.

Speaker:

Okay. So Prohibition PR is well, depending on what you look at, we're the number one, stroke two, depends on which which statistic you're looking at. I'll actually show you that in a minute on AI. But in uh Yorkshire, so we're the biggest PR agency in Yorkshire. Um we specialize in lots and lots of different sectors from food and drink, higher education, retail. Yeah, we do a lot quite a lot of B2B work as well. So 60% is B2B and 40% is B2C. But you can see here some examples of our experience. But we deliver, we don't just give training, we also actually are executing campaigns for real. So that's enough about us because I want to get into the good stuff. So what is this session about then? That's this is going to be about understanding how AI search is changing discoverability for a brand. Um, we're going to introduce you to the term uh generative engine optimization, so GEO. Um we're gonna look at some strategies to ensure your brand appears in what's known as AI answers, and we're gonna look at the impact on visibility, trust, and customer engagement. This is um an emerging um situation on what's going on, and it's changing regularly, and it's so fascinating. So I'm hoping you guys will will enjoy it. So, what is GEO then? Let's get into this with the with the with your good old uh explanation. So, generative optimization is about uh making your brand visible in AI answers, where authority, not keywords. So SEO is about keywords, this is about authority, drives inclusion. So if you've not got authority, you aren't going to be in the results. Unlike SEO, which focuses on links, geo focuses on being cited um as the trusted source that AI pulls from. So it blends PR, it blends owned content. Welcome back to owned content, by the way, in 2025, uh, and technical readiness to ensure your brand appears in summaries. I did a TikTok video about four months ago and said people were not talking about this. Um and it it's weird because I did a TikTok video and it got about 10,000 views or something, which was quite big for B2B. I couldn't believe people weren't talking about it because I was looking at the data, it just did not make any sense anymore. And I'm thinking, why is Google penalizing itself? So that that's the reason why why I've I've come at it from this sort of angle. So the search land landscape is quietly changing. Well, it was quiet, but now it's getting louder and louder and louder. So um lower clicks are here to stay. So this is an article very recently on BBC News, and it was from uh it reported that DMG Media, which is the owner of Mail Online and Metro and numerous others, said that um said that uh AI had resulted in a fall of click-through rates at as much as nine almost 90%. And that wasn't just um this was sort of hidden away, it's not been released like clearly, you know, being made obvious. It was it was to the um competition and markets authority made in July. So they had to reveal that because obviously that can affect share price with clickability and stuff. This is where people, you know, they're meant they're making their money on the brands. So um there's also a concern that the uh over Google's latest tool, which I don't know if you've seen, but not not very long ago, um Google's uh launched AI mode. So that's not just AI and uh the AI overview that you get, which is we we're gonna cover as well, but AI Mode, which is now obviously combining with bad stroke Gemini, whichever one you want to talk about, uh is now called Gemini, but it was originally called BARD, which shows search results in a conversational style with obviously far fewer links. Uh that's all that's all down to that's all because of what's happened. Um so we're move we're moving into an era of lower clicks and lower referral traffic for publishers. That's what Bauer Bauer Media have said. Um, and that is what I have noticed. So I'm gonna give some examples of real life situation that I've noticed myself. Um, but before we get into that, searches are now different. So I've just shown you an example here. This is something I put into chat GPT yesterday. So it's like, what is um who is the best PR agency in Leeds? And it and it says it depends what you need, consumer, B2B, reputation online. Um there are these are among the strongest PR agencies in Leeds, Prohibition PR, large award-winning, strong and integrated PR media relations. So we we're in there, which is good, and I should hope so because like we we get cited and we've been listed in lots of um national newspapers and reports and things like that for and for our events, we're cited all over the place. But the the point is, this is how you're now getting results. So, my the where this all this idea came to me from was when I started looking at the data. So this is um data, uh this is search traffic to Prohibition PR. So this is when I started noticing it. So this is actual um data from our what we we use uh a CRM called HubSpot. So it's not GA data. I saw it in GA data, and then I've drilled down further into HubSpot because what HubSpot allows me to do is we use HubSpot for you know uh tracking where people come from, which I'll bring on on to in a minute, but it also shows you know, you can see if you know you guys have all come to a webinar, maybe one or two of you might want to do a project with us afterwards, and when we track all that, obviously it's it's better to do. So here you can see that the blue line is sessions and the orange line is key events, such as you know, maybe you drop us a fill in a contact form, maybe you uh chat to our online tool online. Now, interestingly, if you can see the the drop there, there's a massive drop in um in in traffic that correlates completely with the launch of AI overview on Google in October 2024. So we had a drop of nearly 50% in web traffic. This is when I noticed it about week two. This is when I did my video, and I was like, what the well, what is going on? So I had a look, and interestingly, yes, there was a massive drop in traffic, but look at the orange line massive drop in traffic, and there was a corresponding drop in key events, but then suddenly key events go up, so the traffic drops, but key events sort of go up, and that's kind of correct correspondent, is carry kind of if you look at the trend, continued. Yes, traffic is down 50%, but key events are actually up. We're getting more people, uh you know, more people on our website that are of better quality. And then I looked at where people are coming from. So AI traffic to Prohibition PR. You can see here, I'm using us as a live example. Uh, and this is actually up uh quite a lot. So you can see that it was like 44 in January to 2025. Up to last month, it was 200. So it's nearly five times the amount of traffic is coming from uh now. This is probably because we're sited um well, we're look we we we have got our site optimized. Uh, I'm gonna change some things based on a lot of what I've been researching, but this is all it shows you that it what's happened is traffic is has gone down with a bang, but actually the quality of traffic that we're getting is is better. Um, and then this is something that I wouldn't normally show, but I think it's let's I'm in the full you know area of transparency. I want to share it. So this is these two um tables you can see here are um and I'll make these bigger so you can let's see my face and you can see that so um leads by source. So you've got an email marketing that's up by you know, that's if you've received an email from us, webinars. You guys need to come to uh become more more of leads, you slightly down 50%. Uh direct website traffic is up 25%, which is interesting. More people are finding this online directly. Uh organic search though is down uh 50%. Uh what does that say? I think that says 55%. 55%. Yeah, it's really hard to read when you're presenting in this mode. It's it's bigger uh to you guys, probably. Uh PPC is up because obviously Google are now using PPC to compensate for that. And I'm going to come on to what that means for you guys because PPC is up, but actually the cost is up as well, because everybody's competing for that. Um, but look at Chat GPT, 500% increase in leads from Chat GPT, and then below that there's a table there, which is new deals. So leads are people that are you know prospects, you know. Maybe some of you guys want to work with us, and maybe we speak, maybe we maybe you become a lead and we speak to you more often. But actual new deals is people that become clients, and and so obviously much lower number, but um quite interestingly, uh referrals up by quite a bit, and um webinars are uh more people are becoming customers from webinars, but also chat GPT is up and uh it is up as well. So more customers from Chat GPT. So fascinating traffic down, quality of traffic up. So what does this all mean? Well, 80% of consumers are now relying, so 80% of we're all consumers too, are relying on zero click results for for at least 40% of their searches. That's from the FT. So um not clicking anymore. People don't want to click. That's what we're looking at. Organic traffic is estimated to shrink by up to a quarter uh overall due to zero click behavior. So people just reading the overview and not clicking, so it's down by a quarter. I actually think it's higher than that, but that that was you know, you've got to remember that we're looking at the latest statistics here. 60% of searches now end without the user clicking through to another site. So people have searched, up comes the result, they're now not clicking the the so yeah, that would correspond with exactly the data that I've just shown you that's completely live up till yesterday. Uh traffic was down 56%, about 60%. So there you go. So a lot going on there. There is a lot going on there. And this is why I thought it was fascinating. The the fact that that Google is sort of killing itself. Like, you know, traffic is down. Like all a lot of businesses rely on traffic, volume of traffic, to sell you guys sponsorships, to sell brand partnerships, etc. etc. And Bill Gates says that AI is moving at speed that surprises even him. So obviously, um Microsoft are you know the owner of LinkedIn, the owner of Windows, they're also um one of the one of the biggest partners with OpenAI, which is owner of ChatGPT, and Microsoft are using um uh I would I like to call it Chat GPT Lite for um Copilot. I don't think it's quite as good, but it's more integrated with Windows, and if you use Windows at work, then but the fact that he he said it's surprising even him, and he says that experts can't tell if it'll replace humans in one year or ten. Well, I don't think it's gonna replace us in one year, but there is a lot going on here already. So I've put here that the silent sacking has already started. So this is this is uh from not too long ago at all. Um the mirror and express owner is to cut 300 jobs um from um uh these are the journal, these are journalists, so they're they're chopping them down. And you can see here that it says it comes from REACH um it comes as REACH continues its um to embrace artificial intelligence tools, which the um National Union of Journalists said raises job concerns, said it was seeking to further clarification on how AI will feature in the restructure. Well, fact AI is featuring in the restructure, it's restructuring jobs, and that's just in the journalist in the world of journalism, which I thought was quite interesting when you're thinking about clicks and looking at how many people are now clicking through to the mail online, the FT, you know, some of them are behind paywalls like the FT and the Times. All this traffic that's dropped off, someone's got to pay somewhere. So it's it's fascinating to me, and it's we're paying with jobs. So, what does this all mean then? Because this is this is what captured my imagination. Well, SEO alone no longer guarantees traffic, you're not gonna get traffic. Well, everybody's traffic's gonna be down 50%. So brand is m most important. Brands must be discoverable in AI answers. So just like I showed you with the example from us searching for the best PR agencies in in in Leeds or Yorkshire or whatever, um clear, well-structured content matters more than keywords. So, in other words, as I said before, content on online content, on-site content, your own content. Is this is this the birth of blogging? Comes blogging comes right back, it's sort of died its death, and I think maybe it's it's gonna come back in a big way. Uh that and obviously video content, which is a lot of content, but content in general, owned content is gonna be really, really important. Trusted sources hugely boost visibility. So hence why we're talking about it, you know, trusted sources talking about you, and so you know, earned media in the the national newspapers, trusted sources, not just any old crap, uh, proper, decent um sites is what's gonna win the day. The power of brand in 2026 is never gonna be more important. This is less about performance marketing now and clicks and vis you know, all that sort of stuff that we used to care about. This is about the power of brand, because that is what AI cares about. It's looking for brands that recommend other brands, branded content, and brands in the media that are recommending so it's really, really fascinating to me. Convenience is beginning to trump caution. So, yeah, people are just taking the the quick win, they're looking at what um content is out there, um, and they're just gonna read whatever the AI overview gives them, and then they're gonna go there. So you need to be a part of that. Consumers uh want one good answer, not 10 links. I mean, we always wanted that, right? We wanted to get, you know, when you did a search, you wanted the answer. Um, but what what I would tend to do is do a search, you get five results, and then you sort of you sort of use your own interpretation as to which of those three results you know you might want to contact, or maybe do wider research. Now though, people are just basically relying on using AI to give you recommendations. We we actually won a as you saw uh in the data, we've won clients off the back of they've just done the research using ChatGPT, found us, found what we've worked on before, and then just dropped us an email and said, Don't worry, you don't need to pitch. Um, we've seen that you've done this, this, and this. We've won business like that now, which is great for us, but and it'll be it'll be good for other businesses. But it's interesting how the world is changing and how people are finding you. Adoption at scale. So it's now mainstream. And when Will was talking about, we were speaking at um we were speaking on digital podcasting last week uh and on generative AI in in Stockholm to about there's about 40 odd agencies around the world. And what amazed me was I I knew that we were using AI, we're embedding AI into, we have been to we've got a full program, we've got our own tools that we used, bespoke that we've had built and everything. I knew we were ahead of the game for because we've been doing it for a couple of years now, but it amazed me how many people are doing it. Like every single person in the room, you know, all the different countries was was was utilizing AI in some capacity and not even in the basic capacity. So it's now wide wide stream, it's embedded in search. So Google's AI uh search as we've talked about, and obviously people are just using it as a as a search tool. Uh and mobile apps, etc. etc. Chat GPT, uh just that one alone has 800 million weekly active global users. It's huge, still only a like a small percentage of how many searches are being done, but you've seen the the change that's happened. Obviously, 50% have gone. AI chatbots account for 80% of UK usage um in yeah, basically in the UK. So why should marketers care? So traffic loss leads to pipeline loss and ultimately impacts revenue. Well, it it does. It hasn't affected us so much, but that's because we're well sighted and we do our own PR and tons of that. But if you're not doing that and you're not sighted in places, if you've relied on other sources for traffic, then yes, this is the businesses that are going to suffer quite heavily and they're gonna need to invest um very, very soon. Um, reputation is increasingly shaped by algorithms rather than um the brands themselves. But I would counter that with brand is what's important, as I said before. I think algorithms are looking at who's trusted, who's a trusted brand, what trusted brands recommend, what trusted media recommends that brand. Um PR builds the trust authority um that AI relies on to determine visibility. This has already been researched, and hard numbers did some research. I've got a report that I can share. I've looked at um various sources, but yeah, basically earned media. So PR is obviously a big area of trust because you're getting endorsed by third-party journalists when they write an article about you. So if you're if you're suffering maybe um with a drop in traffic, what about something proactive, a proactive campaign um about you to help you get cited and just get more brand awareness for you guys because that will help you in search? Um, budgets must shift from SEO to geo to maintain discoverability. That's up to you guys, you know, you're you're the ones that have got the budgets. Um and visibility is now uh directly tied to board level KPIs. So yeah, that's what that's why you should care. But this is bizarre as well. So you it was always like, let's be on page one, let's be on, you know, we we uh prohibition, we appear, you know, top three, top five, page one, of for like 75, 75 different keywords, you know, various things. I showed you a couple before um when I was doing the AI thing. It same sort of thing. But top ranking positions no longer guarantee clicks because if you're not cited or recommended, it's not going to happen. Um, the mail online's click-through uh rate fell from 13% to under 5%, according to Search Engine Land. This is just very recently. Major traffic loss on high-ranking content. Again, mail online, something slightly there's different research that's being done, but the the general message that's coming out here is the newspapers' traffic is dropping massively, and they're the first ones to report it because obviously brands aren't reporting it, but that you'll start to see that as well. And actually, Google said it it's not really affecting search AI. Really? Why have you launched AI search then? Um, I think there's a lot of smoke and mirrors going on, and they're frantically trying to keep people using Google because this is the first big challenge we've had to Google's monopoly. Google's been a monopoly since I've been working in PR. It came out 25 years ago. Pretty much the I I remember using uh Lycos and uh Ask Achieves and you know all those things, and now this is this is the first time since then that someone's actually cut competing for its monopoly, so it's desperately trying to stay relevant, and it still is the big one. So but ChatGPT is flying up there. Um Business Insider has seen a 55% decline in traffic since 2022, highlighting long-term impact for all publishers. So, yeah. And among Fortune 500 companies, click-through rates have dropped nearly 35%, resulting in average uh an estimated um 2.1 billion in lost revenue. So, what's the commercial impact then? So, organic traffic uh decline softens the pipeline and weakens the lifetime value. Paid spend is propping up, including us. We've spent a little bit more on uh Google Pay per click, not loads, but um slightly changed the strategy. But the cost per acquisition on pay-per-click has gone up as well because the businesses that don't get cited are now that's their only source of revenue. So that they're spending more, so you're at markets more competitive. So, yeah, something to consider when you're looking at what to invest in organic stuff. Um, competitors gain share of voice as weaker brands lose visibility. Back to what I was saying brand, brand, brand. Um, and SEO alone no longer guarantees AI visibility, uh, rankings and traffic. PR becomes the primary lever, it's one of the levers. Also, brand advertising, I would say, is a is a good one. More brand. So I'm gonna spend our podcast, which we're gonna cover um, we've got one slide to talk about brand, the power of brand content. Um, I believe that we should do some YouTube ads for our brand for our podcast because brand is where it's at. So, yeah, um, including and PR as well. So, why brand trust why brand trust is at risk? AI hallucinations, and this happened to me the other week. I got an AI hallucination when I interviewed someone on our podcast. Um, the I took the transcript from the interview and it made up the Lilady's company name, and uh which is quite ironic for a show called Embracing Marketing Mistakes. Uh so AI hallucinations can embed false facts into widely consumed answers. Um Bard, Stroke Gemini, listed fake restaurants 80% of the time during early tests. So it was just making things up if it couldn't find stuff. So this is where if you've got a brand, you need to you need to get your brand trust uh to the max if you can to avoid it being risked. If your brand isn't cited, you have no control how how you're being described. So yeah, you need to be people to be citing you. And you uh you risk a single error or admission, which is then scaled across uh millions and millions of queries. So basically, you need to be cited to be um you know respected. So a lot to cover there. I had 30 minutes to cover that.

Speaker 1:

Quite a few people were just wanting a bit of an overview of um how they can actually identify um how how much how visible they are in AI search in effects. Do you want to do you want to talk through that?

Speaker:

Um we're gonna have to use a f a few online tools because it's like that's like saying it's like if you said, How does my website appear in SEO uh SEO rankings? Like we we've got a report that we'd set up for a client and then it shows you for you've you your hundred your hundred terms where you're appearing. The the complex thing here is uh especially with things like perplexity, which is an it's an AI search tool, and now good Google's launched its own, and they're all they all use different things and have different um levels of um different levels that give it sort of different um what's the word I'm looking for? Like strength of where you're going to appear. And but they all do use your branded content, branded video, um and any so yeah, your content on your site, and email um anything that's like uh sort of uh press releases and PR type content it loves, third party, so uh the media. But yeah, I think what you need would need to be done is is a formal audit to audit where you and your phrases are now and then how to improve that and then create a campaign or some sort of positivity around your brand to help you be cited more, and that's that those citations will then mean that you're more picked up by the all of the other you know, the four AI bots. We're we're currently in a situation where not one of them Chat GPT is the biggest, but Gemini's close. Um, and you've got you've got um uh Claude as well and perplexity, and it's like it's like the VHS, you know, um Betamax war or the CDs and uh minidisc and who who's gonna win win the day, or are we just gonna have a couple? Is it gonna be Apple and PC? So um, but an audit is what what we need to do and look at each each company is gonna be different, and what what you're trying to rank for and what you want to come out for is gonna be different, and therefore how you're gonna be what you want to be cited for is gonna be different. So uh yeah, it's uh there's no one answer that would answer all, but an audit is what needs to be done first.

Speaker 1:

Um, okay, so um this is gonna get a little bit more practical now, and and as Chris mentioned, I mean this is a really fast-moving discipline. I mean, we can probably do another on this topic in three months' time and and and things will have changed again. This is current thinking, and this is kind of certainly from our experiences of of what works um when it comes to GEO. So um I'm gonna talk about the authority gap. Now, this is where it can get a little bit tough. So AI overwhelmingly favors those high authority sources um when it makes those decisions about what to recommend. So surprisingly, social media barely counts here. It's it's less than 1% of influence. Um, in fact, um on the other hand, things like Wikipedia, directories, and credible media get a kind of disproportionate weight in the other side. So smaller brands who haven't got that authority footprint risk invisibility, um, and ultimately authority equals visibility, um, which is uh what we want. When we say uh, you know, by the way, social is less less than 1% of influence, that's in the context of GEO. That doesn't mean there isn't a value in social media in terms of building communities, engaging people directly, um, etc. etc. So, as I said, the more authority you've got, the more visibility you've got when it comes to AI. And ultimately, um, brand and trust is the new gold rush here. Um, so I'm going to talk about how we can build that trust in the context of um GEO. When we talk about authority, um, we wanted to kind of reference that podcast. I mean, this is a really good example of um high authority content, and it it you know it really supports um uh how um you know how the agency is is is um ranked when it comes to AI. So our Embracing Marketing Mistakes podcast, there's something like 150 episodes now. It's been going for several years. We've had 150,000 downloads um across all major podcasting platforms. It's got a huge footprint across social media in terms of video views, 450,000 video views, um, and it's highly reviewed and it's consistently ranked um as one of the most popular marketing shows. Now, this is exactly the type of authority that um uh AI, GEO will look for. This is a huge time investment, though, you know, and and this isn't always going to be possible for everybody, but this is an example of that kind of multifaceted um authority content that will um stand you in good stead. So um the big question is um if visibility depends on authority, how do we actually go about building that visibility? Um and the answer lies in signals. Now, signals is a is a term, you know, the more you kind of learn about this discipline, the more you read up about it, the more you will hear this. Um ultimately, signals are the cues that AI uses um when it decides who it should trust. So, what are the signals? Um let's break that down in a bit more detail. So, signals show credibility, consistency, and verifiability um across the web. So they're a little bit like a trail of breadcrumbs that AI follows, essentially. And they come in a number of forms, on which I'm gonna dive into in in more detail, and it does get quite technical. And this is absolutely something when we start talking about kind of on-site structure that you would need to probably involve your web dev company um in. But essentially they come from three main forms on-site structure, off-site citations, and technical accessibility. And the reality is if you miss some or all of these signals, then it's going to affect the visibility of your brand. And if you miss all of them, then you could risk being completely invisible when it comes to AI. Um, so why do they matter? Um, so as a reminder, AI doesn't rank links, it rather chooses sources that it trusts. So the stronger your signals mean the more inclusion you're likely to have. And missing signals can risk invisibility. So the strongest signals are things like earned media. External validation, I'm going to dive into some of these and things like traditional PR. Current thinking, whoever you talk to ranks PR as one of those factors that AI absolutely absolutely looks for. So clear, consistent signals increase the likelihood of being surfaced in answers. So let's dive into some of the specifics a little bit more. First of all, on-site signals. So how does AI read your content? So on your own site, essentially the way it's structured is everything. So you need to look at things like clear headings, FAQs, schema markups, all facts need to be properly referenced and kept up to date. That's super important. It's a little bit like the world of SEO when the site needs to be structured in a certain way in order for search engines to be able to properly crawl it. More information on on-site signals. Author transparency is a really interesting. So having, you know, if you're doing blog posts or expert content or anything like that on your website, you know, make your experts visible. And that means things like showing their names, their biographies, their credentials, even things like quotable snippets that AI can easily extract, all of these things really, really help. Essentially, what you're doing here is giving AI a menu of kind of trustworthy, well-sourced facts that it can pull from when it comes down to its search. And again, it's you know, it's almost this return to really good quality, well-researched, well-written, well-referenced content on your website, which is a which is a great thing for us as communicators. Other off-site signals, um, we've talked about earned media coverage, articles, features, press mentions, and credible publications, albeit those credible publications are um losing web traffic and potentially losing uh readers, which is an interesting challenge. I've actually got a Daily Mail um case study later on to look to kind of talk around the in more detail the challenges they're facing, but also the strategies they're employing in order to get around that. And lots of other publishers and lots of other brands are kind of going on a similar journey. Um when it comes to kind of citations and references, that's really important. So, you know, you need to make sure your brand is um secured directory listings, you know, and obviously you've got things like Wikipedia, but there's many other kind of directory listings, um, and and backlinks really um you know, should be you know viewed not necessarily for SEO rankings, but for um consistency. Um and then ratings and reviews as well. And again, this is something um you know kind of continually talked about in the world of comms, but um when it comes to GEO, ratings and reviews um rank very, very highly, particularly those kind of product, local or service reviews that demonstrate trustworthiness. So, you know, whether that's um, you know, Google reviews, even social media reviews about your your product or service, that again will stand you in very, very good stead. So you need to look at some sort of ratings and review strategy proactively. Uh let's carry on. So, you know, how else AI reads your content, third-party directories and listings I've talked about, backlinks uh I've talked about um as well. So um 61% of AI brand mentions from editorial media sources. So that's a hard numbers statistic. So, you know, we keep kind of talking about the power of PR, the fact that PR is hugely influential here. But at the end of the day, there's external research demonstrating, you know, if if you are getting um authoritative brands name mentions in mainstream high authority media, then that's likely to have a major impact on the way you show up in AI search. So if you're doing PR, carry on doing it because it's certainly um certainly helping. And that's probably one of the reasons why when we look at our own journey, yes, we've had this kind of drop in um uh search traffic, but actually it's not massively affected our leads, and that's because we've got a really strong public relations footprint in the trade press, in the marketing press, um, and so on. Okay. Um this is where we get a little bit more technical. And I mentioned, you know, inevitably this this as with as was with the word of SEO many years ago, you know, this is absolutely um something where you will need to involve technical specialists in. So the kind of technical signs um that make um AI accessible, um, you know, there's very much a technical layer, and you need to really make sure AI can call your site, you know, and and content first and foremost shouldn't be hidden behind logins or paywalls or things like that. I know paywalls is more of a media um concern, but certainly kind of login pages where you might need to register to access content, gated content. You know, ultimately the less of that, um the better AI can call your site. Um we need to look at what's called LLMS.text files, um, which help guide search engines. Again, that's something your web devs can sort out. Essentially, they're special text files that allow websites to be understood more effectively by artificial intelligence and large large language models. And you know, we need to get those um uh installed on our websites. Um and then um moving on, source consistency, um, facts and URLs need to be consistent, broken links need to be fixed. A lot of these are kind of website hygiene factors, to be quite honest. Um, but essentially, any kind of technical barriers in the context of uh GEO risk making your brand invisible. So having that kind of website audit and addressing those hygiene factors on your site is super important. So I talked about a case study, um, and Chris kind of mentioned this um in brief, but I wanted to kind of go into it in a bit more detail. And this is an example of what's happening with the Daily Mail um and how they've addressed it. Now, yes, this is a media outlet, slightly different challenges to brands, but this is a challenge that many brands are facing um at the moment. So there's some really interesting learnings. So um the problem, the challenge, if you like, uh their click-through rates dropped by 56% on desktop and 48% on mobile. For a website like the Daily Mail Online, that's an absolute disaster. And if I was their SEO or their iCommerce director, I'd have probably been hauled in front of the managing editor and asked to explain that. So that's the challenge, and many brands are facing similar challenges. So um, what are they seeing? Essentially, um uh they ran a study of 5,000 keywords, um, even when they ranked number one, um, once the you know, for a particular keyword, once the AI overviews appeared, clips, uh clicks dropped massively, even for those um those those terms where they ranked number one. So um an example they gave was uh Nor Alphaler News, who I believe is a um film producer. Um so they went from 6,000 clicks to about a hundred clicks overnight, even though they had the same ranking where they rank number one for that. So AI captured the traffic um essentially, it or cannibalized the traffic, and that's the new reality, you know. And and if you're a brand and you rank number one or number two for a certain term, the chances are you're gonna you're gonna stop ranking for that because AI has taken that traffic away. Um, and um, yeah, like like I mentioned, like Chris mentioned, this this is not an isolated situation. It's not a case of the Daily Mail being the only publisher or the only brand facing these kind of issues. Everybody's in the same boat, and this is only going to become more and more of an issue over the coming year and um and and onwards, even though there's sure to be more twists and turns in the way this develops um in the future. So clearly this affects audience engagement. Um, you know, unless the Daily Mail um addresses this, they can get less traffic, which means fewer readers, it means lower session duration, decreased ad impressions. It's potentially catastrophic, if not existential, for the Daily Mail online. Um ultimately loyal readers might not see the updates, it diminishes subscriber values. It's got loads and loads of impacts in loads of different areas, as you can imagine. So clearly, the Daily Mail needed to get around this. Um, and this is based on interviews with their kind of their e-commerce team and their search team, and they've they've been surprisingly candid actually about the kind of tactics and the strategies they've done to um to address this, and no doubt that was to reinsure uh reassure rather investors um and the board that they are addressing this and they are on top of this. So um they've looked at um making sure their content as is as AI friendly as possible. That said, some of their content still sits behind, I think it's called Daily Mail Plus, uh, which is a kind of subscription page, but the majority of their content isn't behind the paywall. Um, they've really kind of looked at um promoting their content through multiple channels. So surprisingly, newsletters um are one are hugely influential when it comes to GEO. Chris and I were just talking about that before the session. Um, partnerships, whatever it might be, they're looking at many, many more channels in which to build authority around their offering. And we're seeing this as a shift, um, you know, the this kind of border shift um in um, you know, these these publishers investing in content that sits on social, um, multimedia teams, etc. etc. So they're looking at um many other channels outside of what they've traditionally been doing. The kind of key takeaway here, um, if you like, is yes, we want visibility when it comes to GEO. Um, that depends on authority. So we need to be in the business of building authority for our brands. Now, we keep saying this, this is very much an emerging discipline. What we're talking about here is based on kind of um the the latest thinking. This is sure to change and take many twists and turns over the coming year. But as it stands, you know, we need to be looking at um authority. So make sure we start structuring content on our websites in ways that um AI can track and AI likes. So headings, FAQs, quotable snippets, building the authority of experts on our website. We need to look at building authority, and this is almost a return to kind of the old school way of building authority. PR press, getting proper listings and directories, citations, getting reviews, multiple sources that build that authority um around our brand. Um, the technical side, LLMS.text, indexing, no paywalls, etc., etc. Expertise more than anything, um, will again come to the fore. So we need to attribute authors and experts, and we need to get them out there as much as possible in the context of our companies. Um, and we need to refresh existing content. So facts need to be clear, current, and extractable. It's not rocket science, to be quite honest, um, but um, you know, we it it it's a lot of kind of best practices that um you know we as brands need to start rolling out. And that's it in a nutshell. This is a top-line overview, I'll be honest. You know, it's a big discipline. It's like trying to, you know, it's like trying to imagine 10 years ago, 20 years ago, trying to explain SEO in the in the case in the course of 50 minutes. So it's a big conversation and it's evolving rapidly. You know, if you want to discuss it any further, we'd we'd love the opportunity. We've actually developed a product um in to to help brands. Um you know, it's not an execution project, it's to help brands better understand um where they're at in the market, really, and and and practical steps to what they can do. And if you've um you know spoken to us before, we you know, we we had a product called the Prohibition 360, which was a kind of a an a brand insight deep dive. This is this is a I guess a bit of an iteration of that. So it's a GEO audit and strategy, and essentially we would work with you to essentially benchmark your visibility against your keywords, contrast that against how you're ranking in terms of SEO, addressing those kind of traffic uh drops, um, and we'd do a technical web audit to look at how well structured your website is. That's the kind of line in the sand to understand um where you're at and how serious the issue is. And we would then work, and we've delivered this for a few brands already. We then work with a brand to basically develop a 12-month GEO content strategy. So, how can you take your existing content, your existing expertise, and deliver that in a way that's going to benefit your visibility when it comes to a GEO, and that might be thought leadership programs, it might be a reviews program, it might be tweaking the way you publish content on your website. And then the final bit of that is putting a framework together so you can actually measure how visible you are when it comes to GEO. Um, and you can you can do that quarterly. And um, all being well, at the end of the program, you'll be much, much more visible, which addresses the um continual drop in traffic.

Speaker:

Uh anyway, right. Well, we will catch you. Um, we'll see you around and uh yeah, we'll see you on the podcast and see you in the places, and obviously see you at the next GEO event. Thanks, guys. Thank you.

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Chris Norton

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Will Ockenden

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