This is a guest post by Andrew Cock-Starkey from Optimsey, a Cambridge-based SEO consultant.

SEO Tips – Keeping Up With The Evolving Search Landscape in the Post-AI Era.

AI Overviews in Google, ChatGPT, “Hey Gemini” and the wave of Claude bots everywhere – a lot has been changing in how people interact with the worldwide web.

If you look at the data from your website chances are you’ve noticed some big shifts there too. Most websites have seen their search impressions (when you show up in the search results) surge upwards and their clicks (when someone actually clicks on your website in search) go in the opposite direction.

In SEO its been branded, somewhat dramatically, ‘The Group Decoupling’:

There are a lot of reasons this is happening. A big one is those AI Overviews which appear at the top of Google’s search results. If you were looking for the opening hours of The Cambridge Chop House, previously you’d Google something like “Opening hours Cambridge Chop House” check the top result, click it and see on their website when they open. Now AI Overviews give you the answer without you having to click through:

Even those carefully crafted blog posts you wrote are being packaged up and delivered right at the top of the results, often alongside your competitors, like this:

It’s no longer good enough just to rank #1 on Google – now you need to be cited as the source for AI systems too (it may not surprise you to know that there’s a lot of overlap in how you achieve both those things!). Then there are the people using their AI bot of choice who probably aren’t even searching as much any more – they’ll be having a conversation with ChatGPT or Claude that may end up with them asking about padel coaching and getting a whole different set of recommendations based on the information that AI tool has about them, their history in previous chats etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

At the moment the amount of people going to websites or businesses via AI bots is tiny compared to the amount of traffic Google search sends. As a way to visualise it: it’s equivalent to OpenAI boss, Sam Altman, standing next to the Empire State Building. And the Empire State Building is the traffic from Google. But it is growing and things are changing. Even between the time I wrote this and the time you’re reading it chances are some or all of the popular AI systems will have rolled out a new version of their chat software, tweaking the way they work and how they find their information.

How To Keep Up With It All?

Keeping up with all the changes in search can feel like trying to keep a dog in the bath. So many things are changing, so quickly it’s hard to know what to pay attention to next. And everyone has advice: “SEO is dead.” “GEO is the new SEO.” “AEO is the new GEO.” or “You can rank in ChatGPT/Claude/Perplexity with this one simple trick!” Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

So how, as a busy marketer or business owner, can you possibly keep up with it all amongst the other 103 plates you have to keep spinning?

One way is the Optimisey SEO events in Cambridge, sponsored by Brand Recruitment. I get some of the sharpest minds in the world of search to come and share their knowledge. Attendees are a great crowd of knowledgeable and friendly folks too so there are great networking opportunities too. There’s no selling, just sharing and – thanks to the support of sponsors like Brand Recruitment – they’re 100% free to attend. There’s even pizza and a few drinks too!

They take place every other month, at The Bradfield Centre in north Cambridge. The next one is on Wednesday 24th June 2026. There are events scheduled for September and November if you can’t make that one. Whatever your level of SEO knowledge – from total novice to gnarled expert – you’ll leave with ideas on how to help your business gain an edge in search visibility, be that in Google, ChatGPT or wherever it is that your customers are searching for you.

Find out more about the events at: optimisey.com/events.

For information and insight into any potential SEO recruitment plans, please don’t hesitate to contact digital recruiters Brand Recruitment.