Also available on:

Apple

Spotify

Transcript

Search is changing fast. With AI summaries now appearing at the top of search results, the traffic patterns businesses have relied on are shifting dramatically—and taking traditional revenue models with them.

Our CEO Paxton Gray sat down with SEO advisor Kevin Indig to discuss his groundbreaking study on how people actually interact with AI overviews. Indig's team tracked 70 real users through eight search tasks, capturing 29 hours of "think aloud" sessions and analyzing over 400 AI overview interactions.

"I will go so far as to say that my mental model of SEO changed significantly as a result of this study," Indig shared. His research doesn't just document how people use AI search features—it offers a roadmap for how brands need to adapt to stay relevant in this new reality.

Trust Comes First, Then Relevance

The most powerful insight from Indig's research is how people evaluate search results. Rather than simply looking for relevant information, users apply a two-step filter: first asking "Do I trust this brand?" before considering "Will this answer my question?"

This makes trust the primary driver of attention—not just one factor among many. "If you haven't built some sort of preconceived notion in the mind of your users, you're almost invisible," Indig explained. "It's kind of like an uphill battle for you to get clicks or even attention."

This turns traditional SEO thinking on its head. For years, we've focused on pleasing Google's algorithms, but Indig's research suggests we've had it backward. What matters most isn't how Google perceives your trustworthiness, but how users do.

To build trust directly into your digital presence:

• Include transparent citations and source links
• Showcase author credentials and editorial standards
• Use trust badges and high-quality visuals
• Ensure your design feels current and professional
• Make information easy to find and navigate

These elements signal that "there is an actual expert behind creating the content"—exactly what people are looking for when deciding where to spend their attention.

Building Trust Across Platforms

Trust extends far beyond your own website. Indig's study revealed that people actively seek validation on platforms they view as more objective than brand sites.

"Users will intentionally seek out platforms where they expect an unbiased answer," Indig noted. "Reddit is the number one platform where consumers expect unbiased and uncommercialized answers, where they think that another human gives them a true answer."

YouTube serves a similar purpose, as video content with real people feels "much harder to fake, especially when you're showing a face into the camera." Users bounce between AI overviews and these trust-validation platforms before making decisions.

This pattern creates both challenges and opportunities. While you can't directly control these platforms, establishing an authentic presence there is becoming essential for visibility and credibility.

The takeaway is clear: SEO professionals need to expand beyond traditional website optimization to include:

• Valuable Reddit contributions that demonstrate expertise
• Video content featuring your actual experts
• Presence in industry-specific communities
• Engaging with mentions of your brand across platforms

As Paxton pointed out during the conversation, this mirrors how many people already search—adding "Reddit" to their queries to find authentic conversations instead of overly optimized content.

"Clicks Are Empty Calories"

Another revelation from Indig's research challenges how we think about traffic metrics. The study revealed that users exhibit "scavenger hunting" behavior, clicking multiple results to validate information rather than finding complete answers in one place.

A full 86% of participants skimmed both AI overviews and traditional search results, rarely reading content thoroughly. "People click on all sorts of results, either to vet them, to gain more confidence in their opinion or decision, to double check," Indig explained. "It's like scavenger hunting."

This suggests that traffic metrics are becoming increasingly unreliable indicators of success. As Indig puts it: "Clicks are empty calories... just a means to an end."

Yet there's encouraging news in this trend. While AI overviews are changing search behavior, they're not eliminating the importance of traditional results. The study found that only 20% of users got their "final answer" from the AI overview alone. The remaining 80% still clicked through to other results—predominantly organic listings—to complete their task.

This offers hope for SEO professionals concerned about traffic decline. As Paxton noted, "We've seen that same across the board. Clients will have traffic go down, but purchases will stay the same or even go up in some cases."

What we're witnessing may not be the end of organic search, but rather a filtering mechanism where AI handles basic information while more valuable, decision-oriented traffic still flows through to websites.

Different Age Groups Use AI Search Differently

One practical finding from Indig's research shows a clear demographic divide in AI search behavior—a pattern that should inform how brands prioritize their efforts.

"I have always up until now been very skeptical about the value of creating very detailed personas for search," Indig admitted. "Because search is intent driven... all audiences are mushed together in the same search. Not anymore."

The study revealed that younger users (generally under 35) are significantly more likely to:

• Read and trust AI overviews
• Get their final answers directly from AI summaries
• Use platforms like Reddit for validation

Meanwhile, older users (especially those over 50) often ignore AI overviews entirely. They scroll right past them and click on the traditional blue links they're familiar with.

This split means you might need different strategies depending on who you're trying to reach. Got a younger audience? You probably need to focus on showing up in those AI overviews and building a solid Reddit presence. Marketing to an older crowd? The classic SEO playbook might still work just fine.

"We need to add some new dimensions to how we research topics and set priorities," Indig pointed out. Your audience's age should inform not just how you write or what tone you use, but the entire channel strategy you build.

Content That Still Breaks Through

The rise of AI search is rapidly commoditizing certain content types that have long been SEO staples. Essentially all kinds of evergreen content is now commoditized. The classic playbook of SEO—creating guides and "what is" articles—just doesn't work like it used to. AI can now deliver this information more efficiently, faster, and with context tailored to the user.

This poses an essential question for content creators: What types of content still work in an AI-dominated search environment?

The answer lies in creating material that AI cannot easily replicate or synthesize from existing sources. Indig points to "data stories" as particularly valuable—content built around new research, unique data, or original analysis that provides insights unavailable elsewhere.

"Data-driven content, studies, research analysis... any kind of primary data or secondary data that is really well analyzed or maybe cross-referenced with other data, those are the pieces of content that are impossible to replicate," he explained.

This shift is already visible in the industry. In the last two to three months, there's been a strong trend of companies focusing heavily on creating this kind of original, data-driven content.

The transition won't be easy for many organizations accustomed to producing high volumes of basic informational content. But the alternative—continuing to create easily replicated material that AI can summarize without sending users to your site—is increasingly untenable.

New Ways to Measure Success

As search behavior evolves, so too must our approaches to measurement. When asked what metric he would focus on if building an SEO strategy from scratch today, Indig's answer was clear: "Revenue impact."

This focus on bottom-line outcomes rather than traffic metrics reflects a broader repositioning of SEO from a pure performance channel to something more akin to brand marketing. "What makes me very hopeful is that this AI push is hopefully the last rope to cut to detach us from this performance component and finally position SEO more as this kind of brand thing," Indig explained.

This shift may actually resolve long-standing tensions around attribution that have plagued SEO teams. As Paxton noted, brands often "argue themselves to death" trying to measure the precise impact of specific SEO activities—time that could be better spent creating valuable content.

The disruption caused by AI search, while challenging, presents an opportunity to refocus on what truly matters: understanding your audience and creating content that serves them, rather than obsessing over algorithmic signals.

"I feel like the core principles of marketing is understand that audience and figure out what message and channel strategy can craft to meet their needs," Paxton reflected. "And we got lost, I think in the digital marketing world in general, because Google inserted themselves in the middle of that relationship."

Perhaps the greatest insight from Indig's research is that AI search, despite its complexities, is pushing the industry back toward these fundamental marketing principles—a development that may ultimately benefit both brands and the people they serve.