Google’s AI Overviews now appear above traditional rankings and absorb a growing share of clicks before users ever reach your website. ChatGPT and Perplexity recommend specific brands in their answers without running a search results page. Voice assistants return a single answer, and if that answer is not your brand, someone else wins the customer.

Traditional SEO agencies have not caught up with this shift. They optimize for blue links in a world that is increasingly giving answers instead of links.