If you have noticed your organic traffic numbers shifting lately, you are certainly not alone. 

While the industry often talks about a “search apocalypse”, we think there is a much more exciting story unfolding just beneath the surface. We are moving away from the era of chasing every single click and entering a time where search acts as a ✨premium filter✨ for your brand. This is a chance to rise above the noise and clutter and focus on being the most helpful and trusted voice in your space.

In this episode of Connecting the dots, I sat down with Kristina Bergwall, our SEO Director at Precis, who has spent fourteen (14!!) years guiding brands through the evolution of search. Kristina’s team recently conducted an extensive study into how AI Overviews are reshaping website traffic across the E-commerce, Banking, B2B and Healthcare sectors. By analysing 12 million USD of monthly search value, they discovered that value is not disappearing but is being redirected into a new kind of digital endorsement.

Here is a recap and debrief of our conversation and how you can embrace this change to ensure your brand remains the definitive source of truth in an AI driven world.

The “value intercept” as a premium filter

It is very common to feel a sense of uncertainty when traffic numbers change, but Kristina suggests we view this shift through a much more positive lens. Often, these changes mean that AI is simply assisting your audience by answering their broader, initial questions directly on the search page.

This is the value intercept. It is a brilliant opportunity to let AI manage those busy first steps of a search journey. This ensures that when people do reach your site, they are more informed and ready to engage (read: further down the funnel, closer to purchase). By providing the insights that AI uses to answer a query, you are connecting with your audience at their most influential moment. A brand can have a massive impact without needing a traditional click, simply by being the trusted source of the answer.

The 3 pillars of “answer equity”

How can you help AI discover and share your brand expertise? Kristina breaks this down into three helpful strategic pillars.

1. Scannability (a technical bridge): There is a wonderful opportunity to be cited if you make your expertise easy for models to find. True scannability relies on technical bridges like schema markup and comparison tables. These tools allow models to parse your data instantly (whether it’s a B2B feature grid or an E-commerce product specification) and highlight your brand as a primary recommendation.
2. Authority (a trust advantage): The new search landscape prioritises brands that clearly demonstrate their expertise. Trust signals help your brand be recognised as a reliable source, from expert "Tested & Verified" badges in E-commerce and financial accreditations in Banking, to author credentials like a PhD or a "reviewed by" date in Healthcare. Kristina explains that AI Overviews act as a premium filter, specifically seeking out the most credible sources to share with users.‍
3. Intent (a portable language): To embrace this new era, you must speak the language of your audience. Reworking academic titles into the actual questions people ask makes your content perfectly portable for AI summaries. Following these headers, such as "Which mortgage is right for me?" or "Best running shoes for flat feet", with a direct one or two-sentence answer makes it effortless for AI to cite you as the definitive source.

The commercial win of the long run

From a commercial perspective, this shift offers a unique way to optimise your marketing efficiency. Our research identified a 12 million dollar pool of monthly value currently sitting in AI Overviews, which acts as a helpful benchmark for what we call replacement cost. You can use this figure to justify strategic investments in your digital infrastructure, framing search as a durable asset for your balance sheet rather than a recurring expense. By being the source the AI recommends, you can reallocate your media budget to focus on high intent conversion while the AI handles the educational heavy lifting. This moves your brand from the cycle of paying for every interaction to owning a permanent piece of your market’s trust.

How to apply this to your strategy

If you are looking to lead your market in the era of AI, start here.

• Identify the value intercept: Stop looking only at traffic volume. Measure how often your brand is cited in AI summaries. Every missing citation is a golden opportunity for you to step in and lead the research phase.
• Audit for scannability (yes, this again): Ensure your technical setup matches your marketing vision. If you want to be the definitive authority, your data must be machine readable and effortless for the AI to scrape.
• Clarify your trust signals: Highlight the credentials of your experts. When your content includes clear markers of expertise, the AI can confidently recommend you to your future customers.

Watch the full episode on YouTube or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

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