AI-robotar med datorer

Where have our website visitors gone?

Björn NybergAI4 min läsning

According to Google's data, no "blue link" is ever clicked in 75% of searches. Optimizely states that their customers have lost 40% of page views.

What happens to the web when potential visitors get their answers directly from an AI instead of going to the site themselves and reading? How can we adapt our sites for this revolution in user behavior?

Contents

Has traffic started to decline on your site? - Then you are not alone! When search engines quickly give users the answer they are looking for directly on the search page, there is no reason to click on the link in the results list. More and more people no longer even use search engines but ask an AI directly, which throws out the answer in a few seconds. The decrease in traffic to websites today is therefore not just a technical change at Google and Microsoft but a completely new way of interacting with data and services on the internet.

In two articles, we review how you can think to optimize your site for AI agents and thereby better reach your target audience. In this article, we focus more on the organizational part, and in the next article, we will delve deeper into technical details.

Briefly before we get started

Even if the use of AI has led to a decrease in clicks on links to your site, it can still be wise to double-check that nothing else is disturbing the traffic:

  • Verify that the entire site is up
  • Perform an SEO analysis
  • Perform a competitive analysis

A small dictionary

As always when new technology is on the horizon, new words and concepts follow that we must remember. There are variations of these, and some will surely change or be replaced before they have fully settled, but this is the list we are using today:

Zero-click – Achieving one's goal without having to click on a link or button.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) – Optimization of your site for AI agents.
Agent experience (AX) – Helping AI agents reach available services.
Zero UI – A user flow where interactions in browsers/apps are rationalized away and AI agents can perform the task autonomously

Content is more important than ever

Even if not all users reach your site anymore, there is still an opportunity to get your messages and offers out. When an AI selects which sender's message reaches the user instead of letting the user choose themselves, it should choose your site! It can therefore be a good idea to optimize the content for the AI agents that scan through your site. This is in many respects similar to the SEO work you already do today. There are many different variations of what this is called, but we have chosen the one we think is most common today, and that is GEO.

Optimizing for AI Agents

You get a lot for free by making your site accessible. This makes it easier for an AI agent to read and understand the content. Feel free to read our article on web accessibility.

A rule of thumb is that content that is easy for a human to read and perceive is good for both SEO and GEO. This does not mean that texts should be simplified; instead, they should be formatted in an accessible way. Avoid long sentences with multiple subordinate clauses and triple negatives; these are difficult for both humans and AI agents to understand. Dividing the text into several clear paragraphs is also a good recommendation.

Unlike a search engine, an AI agent can handle images on your site. Therefore, it can be a good idea to test your images by uploading them to some AI services and see if they can identify what the images are meant to illustrate.

One way to incorporate this working method into daily work is to view the AI agent as a new non-human persona using your service; in this way, you naturally integrate the work into your current UX process.

Test your site

Just as with SEO, it is important to test your site so that it cooperates with AI agents. There are several different services online that scan through the entire site and give you suggestions for improvements.

You can also ask some AI services directly and see what they think of your site. Test with slightly different phrasings that you think your future customers would use:

  • “Can you recommend a company that delivers service X in city Y?”.

  • “What benefits do I get from joining this membership club?”.

Or why not ask an AI directly if a page is well adapted?

  • “Is this page well adapted to be understood and recommended by an AI model”?

Next Steps

As shown, quite a lot has already been gained with the accessibility adaptations and the SEO work you have already done. Some adjustments to the content may need to be made. The advantage of this work is that you can get direct answers from the services you are trying to optimize for.

In the next article, we will delve into the more technical aspects of GEO. See you then!