You’ve in all probability heard that Google’s AI search options are tanking natural site visitors.
In April, we reported that click-through charges dropped by 35% throughout 300,000 key phrases. Now, a Pew Analysis examine has revealed that simply 1% of articles cited in AI Overviews really get clicked.
Good manufacturers aren’t ready round for Google to reverse course. They’re diversifying quick, and the methods vary from delicate pivots to short-term channel abandonment.
Listed below are 5 methods manufacturers are diversifying to reclaim misplaced site visitors and income.
Not each zero-click search story begins with the good decoupling of 2025.
Some have been feeling the impression of Google’s self-serving SERP months earlier than AI Overviews actually took maintain.
Seer Interactive
Again in October 2024, Wil Reynolds, VP of Innovation at Seer Interactive, shared that their natural search site visitors was down 41%.
The opposite week I got here throughout one other actually fascinating submit by Alisa Scharf, additionally a VP at Seer.
In it, she stated that Seer gained’t be advising all purchasers to spend money on Search engine marketing or AI—and can, in some circumstances, be actively telling them to tug again and reinvest in different methods.
For context, Seer Interactive is an Search engine marketing, PPC, and progress company.
When these with pores and skin within the sport advise various channels, and report diminishing returns, it’s time to diversify.
This bought me curious as to how a lot Seer is at present investing in Search engine marketing. I DMed Alisa to search out out. She advised me that the Seer group is pondering far much less about site visitors and much more about thought management.
Our biggest lead supply has been referrals, which I feel is the #1 factor a consultancy can attempt to accumulate. Do nice work on your purchasers and they’ll take you with them as they transfer to completely different organizations. I’ll say in 2025, whereas we don’t generate a ton of search site visitors from it, we’re getting found extra from our thought management content material through search. Our posts that cowl how we’re approaching AI Search – how you can affect, measure, and so forth. appear to be exposing us to the sorts of manufacturers we need to discover us.
However Seer’s actual focus is natural social. As Scharf places it:
Site visitors through natural social (largely LinkedIn) might be the supply we’re most targeted on optimizing for. The site visitors quantity is smaller however it’s extraordinarily top quality. I additionally suppose we’ll proceed to be ready to consider completely different layers of affect. You’ll be able to’t deal with only one supply or one channel. There’s a number of chaos within the Search engine marketing {industry} proper now given the entire change. Our ICP is juggling a number of priorities, she’s making an attempt to coach herself on the modifications in search whereas persevering with to hit her OKRs whereas balancing price range cuts and headcount discount. Our greatest guess is to have the ability to construct belief together with her, or depend on the belief we’ve beforehand constructed with our content material, our presence in occasions, and our fame.
Seer’s content material technique is secondary to constructing that belief. Their primary objective is to get as a lot useful, useful content material in entrance of their ICP as attainable in order that if/when she’s prepared to contemplate one in all their paid companies, they’re extremely prime of thoughts.
Thought management gained’t all the time drive quantity, however it may well drive the best individuals to your door—and that’s a commerce value making.
Lars Lofgren
Lars Lofgren is Co-Founder & Chief Progress Officer of Stone Press. Within the packages he runs, he’s deprioritizing Search engine marketing—and has seen loads of manufacturers doing the identical.
As a substitute of pouring price range into bloated editorial groups or chasing diminishing weblog site visitors, Lofgren advises startups to maintain content material stock lean.
A handful of core pages—sufficient to cowl the necessities—and that’s it. No sprawling content material calendars. No weekly publishing cadence. Simply what’s wanted, saved in form.
Like Seer, he’s additionally prioritizing thought management…
As he rightly factors out, thought management doesn’t come simple. Search engine marketing has a playbook—optimize the web page, construct the hyperlinks, monitor the rankings.
I’m oversimplifying issues right here however, usually talking, these fundamentals will take you an extended approach.
With thought management, there’s no such components. You’ll be able to’t count on that if you happen to do “x + y” you’ll find yourself with “z”.
Which means, with diversification, we have to begin getting comfy with the “conventional” or “fuzzy” sort of advertising and marketing that we deserted roughly across the identical time we began pondering Google-first.
In direct response to Google’s click on ransom, some SEOs are locking down their content material.
I’m not speaking full-on blocks. There’s a extra nuanced method gaining traction: restricted entry for customers and crawlers.
Content material gating pale out, however it’s making a resurgence now that individuals need to wrest again management over their content material from AI.
Listed below are two manufacturers which might be taking two contrasting tacks.
GetLatka
We’ve all seen charts like this in our Google Search Console—clicks down, impressions up.
It’s a traditional case of the good decoupling.
This one comes from Nathan Latka, courtesy of an incredible LinkedIn submit by Ivan Palii.
Regardless of an enormous soar in impressions, Latka’s website noticed a major drop in CTR following the rollout of AI Overviews—a drop that prompted the defensive resolution to gate his content material and partially block AI bots.
This was a extremely robust resolution. Massive inside debate. Will watch the info and see what occurs.
His robots.txt file permits crawlers from Google, Bing, and Ahrefs, however blocks every part else.
And by “every part else,” I actually imply every part else. Any user-agent not explicitly whitelisted—together with these powering AI search, AI assistants, and scrapers—is blocked.
That features:
| Class | Examples |
|---|---|
| Google AI | Google-Prolonged, GoogleAgent-Mariner, GoogleAgent-Buying |
| OpenAI / ChatGPT | GPTBot, ChatGPT-Consumer, ChatGPT-Suggestions |
| Different LLMs | Anthropic-Bot, ClaudeBot, CCBot, Bytespider |
Latka has carried out partial indexation by means of subscription popups which implement logged-in entry necessities—that means he solely supplies previews, and hides the total content material behind a paid account. It’s much like the paywall mannequin within the publishing world.
Ivan Palii famous that Latka places the second half of webpage content material behind a login popup, and encourages funnel development with gross sales messaging selling unique instruments, founder interviews, and valuation information.
In keeping with the websites robots.txt, Latka disallows crawlers from accessing any content material that sits behind a login—which suggests the latter half of the web page content material isn’t simply blocked for customers, however for Google and AI too.
By blocking choose bots from accessing that content material, Latka is defending his proprietary information, betting on exclusivity, and steering customers towards subscriptions.
It’s additionally value noting that Latka’s information is his enterprise mannequin—if AI scrapes it, his enterprise dies. That is excessive stakes diversification.
What he may probably lose in passive AI publicity, he may reclaim by means of owned viewers engagement:
- E mail exercise (through gated signup). Every bit of gated content material captures a possible buyer’s contact data, letting Latka nurture prospects immediately reasonably than hoping they’ll discover him once more by means of search or AI instruments.
- Repeat direct visits (through logged-in entry). Customers who create accounts to entry premium content material turn into sticky, returning clients who bypass search engines like google and yahoo solely. This creates a direct relationship and reduces dependence on exterior site visitors sources.
- Proprietary instrument utilization (through LatkaAI). Gated instruments like LatkaAI present worth upfront, making customers extra more likely to spend money on paid companies or consulting.
Partial indexation is as a site visitors diversification technique in that it funnels natural audiences by means of to owned channels like electronic mail lists, web sites, apps, and communities.
In the end, meaning Latka can “work” these leads—turning one-time guests right into a controllable, monetizable viewers—precisely what he must develop his buyer base and generate prospects for his enterprise.
Latka additionally supplies simply sufficient information to rank and subsequently “promote” his resolution in search outcomes, however withholds element in order that AI search can’t over-summarize and steal all his clicks.
The mechanics are acquainted—paywalls, electronic mail gates, login necessities, and content material hidden behind popup varieties. However the intent is new—manufacturers trying to keep management over viewers relationships, reasonably than shedding them to sources that reply person questions and kickback zero site visitors.
It is a sensible technique, however it comes with dangers: whereas blocking premium content material from AI bots may match for some, the tradeoff is proscribed visibility in AI search.
You probably have a robust model that draws loads of guests from different channels, that might not be a lot of an subject.
But when your model isn’t fairly as firmly established, blocking bots could reduce off a brand new, comparatively untapped, and extremely changing channel.
That’s why many websites err on the facet of warning in relation to disallowing sure bots of their robots.txt.
A technique GetLatka may simply offset a few of that danger is thru the sheer scale of their execution—in keeping with Ahrefs Website Construction report in Website Explorer, Latka has utilized this block to ~18K pages, which drive ~13K month-to-month natural visits—a determine that’s really rising.
With hundreds of holiday makers hitting this content material each month, Latka has doubtless whipped up sufficient site visitors to attain significant conversion charges—even when solely a small proportion of holiday makers signal up.
Which means the top-of-the-funnel stays open, and content material gates nudge customers to the underside.
This method is smart for GetLatka as a result of:
- They personal the info pipeline: Founder interviews and valuation insights are usually not obtainable elsewhere.
- They’re monetizing it immediately: By way of subscriptions and their very own AI instrument.
- They’re nonetheless Search engine marketing-friendly: The location permits indexing by Googlebot and different main search engines like google and yahoo, so natural site visitors isn’t reduce off—simply AI entry is restricted.
- They’ll probably offset/keep away from visibility loss: Because of the power of their model, and the dimensions of the execution.
Briefly: you probably have distinctive content material, a robust model, and the flexibility to scale, you may simply be capable to afford to dam AI bots.
HubSpot
In an nearly flip-reverse of Nathan Latka’s diversification technique, HubSpot has reportedly began gating content material for customers—however not for search engines like google and yahoo and AI.
As soon as once more noticed by Ivan Palii (who is unquestionably worthy of a observe, by the way in which!), HubSpot started making use of a client-side overlay to content material in June 2025, going by HTML modifications proven in Ahrefs’ Web page Examine instrument in Website Explorer.
From a fast scan of the Hubspot weblog, these lead seize varieties seem like popping up on latest “new information” content material.
![HubSpot blog page titled "How TikTok, Canva, & Other Top Marketing Teams Outperform the Rest [New Data]" with highlighted text and an arrow pointing to it. The page shows a woman working on a laptop with a rocket graphic. At the bottom is a lead capture form asking "Want the full article?" with text about unlocking HubSpot's exclusive research and content library.](https://ahrefs.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/word-image-190408-12.jpg)
The content material remains to be crawlable, however customers have to supply an electronic mail with a view to learn on.
HubSpot’s hybrid-access method lets them entice new audiences through search and AI, whereas concurrently rising their lead nurture pipeline and owned viewers.
Each GetLatka and HubSpot examples mark a return to owned media methods.
A return to owned media
Going again in time, owned media was the dominant mannequin by necessity. Web sites within the early nineties/noughties acted as kind of digital brochures that customers would actively search out.
Earned media (e.g. PR protection) and paid media (e.g. TV, radio, print advertisements) have been costly and tough to scale, by comparability.
However when search engines like google and yahoo, social media, and aggregator websites confirmed up, manufacturers moved from constructing their owned media to renting visibility on third-party platforms.
Now that AI can summarize model content material with out attribution, and shift search conduct away from supply clicks, the main target is again on constructing direct, defensible relationships with audiences—with out the intermediary.
What’s previous is new once more.
Because of AI, we’ll be becoming a member of extra e-newsletter lists, consuming unique content material inside the confines of personal communities, and searching for out un-flattened, untAInted data on channels that perhaps don’t even exist but.
Whereas some manufacturers are pulling again on Search engine marketing funding, others are pulling the plug.
Clients.ai
In keeping with Founder, Larry Kim, Clients.ai has misplaced 72% of its Search engine marketing site visitors during the last 6 months. In his opinion, Google’s AI solutions are squarely to blame.
In response, he’s eradicating funding in content material and Search engine marketing fully.
This isn’t a knee-jerk response. Larry used to run Wordstream, one of many largest advertising and marketing blogs. Search engine marketing has been an enormous a part of his technique over the years.
In keeping with his LinkedIn feedback, it appears he made the choice based mostly on conversion information that exposed the true impression of AI Overviews on his enterprise.
Our informational pages have been changing round 0.1-0.2%. They have been all the time low changing however they made it up in quantity. A number of hundred thousand Search engine marketing periods are actually gone. It is a loss as a result of it’s actually onerous to focus on informational prime of funnel queries in different channels.
The economics are brutal however easy. Informational content material that when drove a whole lot of hundreds of periods is now producing a fraction of the site visitors, and not one of the conversions.
For Larry, it’s not merely a case of shifting down-funnel to focus on transactional key phrases.
In his opinion, informational queries represented the final “clear” SERP atmosphere the place natural outcomes may compete towards paid placements. AI Overviews basically eradicated that benefit.
Transactional key phrases for Search engine marketing have been beforehand extensively populated by the paid search outcomes. So certain, you may make investments there however even if you happen to win the highest spot, you’re pushed under a half dozen advertisements. Informational queries have been this tremendous particular final greenfield SERP the place you didn’t have that dynamic of being underneath a ton of advertisements. It hurts given how a lot I invested in that however it’s additionally the fact of the state of affairs.
As a substitute of counting on natural search, he’s shifting towards channels that provide extra management and clearer attribution.
That features paid campaigns, outbound emails, and industry-facing property—however most notably, conversions.
With Clients.ai, he’s monitoring nameless guests already touchdown on his website, and changing that passive site visitors into usable contacts.
At present he’s much less about filling the funnel, and extra about placing it to work.
“We’re targeted on changing the site visitors we do get (from all channels, together with Search engine marketing) into correct, usable content material with Clients.ai’s web site customer ID… We’ve stopped creating or repurposing content material that’s designed to look in search outcomes. Content material remains to be produced for different channels: Advertisements, Emails, Business Stories, and so forth. However the thought of utilizing generative AI to provide you with web page content material then publishing it to the web site then getting individuals to hyperlink to it — that’s lifeless, sure.”
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And with occasion information, you may observe completely different funnel flows and optimize conversion paths.
Some entrepreneurs are responding to AI-driven modifications by producing extra content material, not much less.
Single Grain
In a latest webinar, Eric Siu of Single Grain used Warren Buffett’s well-known “cigar butt” analogy to explain post-AI-Overview search—there are nonetheless just a few puffs left within the channel, however entrepreneurs want to maximise them.
His go-to resolution is bottom-of-the-funnel programmatic content material.
We’re focusing much more on transactional content material. Possibly, a pair years in the past, between 70–80% of the content material that you just revealed in your web site was informational content material. Possibly 20–30% of your content material was transactional content material. At present, I really suppose that’s flipped… And so what we’re doing now at Single Grain, even for our purchasers, is we’re focusing extra on programmatic content material. We’re creating templated [transactional] pages.
Utilizing Manus and Clickflow, his group builds templated, conversion-focused pages at scale, full with AI-assisted copy, customized CTAs, case research, and podcast embeds.
Siu is assured that AI-led programmatic content material gained’t be penalized, offered it meets person intent, provides actual worth, and includes a human-in-the-loop.
When purchasers come to us, they are saying ‘Oh, we’re not comfy with AI content material’ from a safety or model security standpoint… Google has stated up to now they’re not OK with AI content material, then they modified their stance. They ended up saying ‘AI content material is OK so long as it helps human beings’… The way in which we take a look at it now, is you could be utilizing completely different instruments on the market [to create AI content]… and you’ve got a human-in-the-loop. We see that as the way forward for advertising and marketing.
Our personal analysis backs this up: after analyzing 600,000 webpages, we discovered little proof to counsel that AI-generated content material harms Google rankings.
However this isn’t nearly rating in Google. For Siu, programmatic content material helps him wring the remaining worth out of search, whereas additionally gaining new floor in AI.
He believes publishing in quantity throughout the net will increase his odds of surfacing in what are successfully infinite, customized AI SERPs.
The extra content material you’re publishing… the extra pictures on objective it’s a must to seem in LLM outcomes. And simply keep in mind, every time there’s an AI consequence, there’s not only one SERP, or just a few SERPs, now you have got a whole lot or hundreds of various permutations, and also you’re simply making an attempt to extend your likelihood of displaying up finally.
Primarily based on this logic, programmatic content material diversifies publicity by giving not simply Google, but additionally AI techniques, a larger quantity of brand name materials to attract from.
Nerdwallet
In keeping with Steve Toth, Nerdwallet’s programmatic content material helps them to eke as a lot site visitors out of natural and AI search as attainable.
Nerdwallet programmatically create verticalized and localized instruments—like mortgage calculators for various areas—to scale their website visits.
And, because it stands, they’re seeing optimistic progress throughout all AI surfaces.
I dug a bit additional into Nerdwallet’s website, utilizing Ahrefs Website Construction and Web page Examine instrument, and located that Nerdwallet’s mortgage calculators aren’t really new pages.
However I did discover 539 web new programmatic pages underneath Nerdwallet’s “Insurance coverage” folder—largely designed round variations of well-liked, high-value transactional key phrases like “finest automobile insurance coverage firms” and “least expensive automobile insurance coverage”.
The addition of those pages has introduced in 1.1M extra natural site visitors, and $12.4M in natural site visitors worth during the last 12 months.
This considerably offsets site visitors shortfalls throughout the remainder of the positioning—and in a panorama the place the default expectation is site visitors decline, that sort of progress is to not be sniffed at.
In the event you’ve been studying up on AI Search engine marketing currently, you’ll in all probability have seen a number of dialogue across the efficacy of making “finest” lists and advice content material to engineer AI visibility.
It appears this content material is working for Nerdwallet proper now.
Going by our Web page Examine instrument, the vast majority of their programmatically created “finest” and “low-cost” insurance coverage pages have been revealed in late April, 2025.
Since then their “insurance coverage” based mostly AI Overview citations have elevated by a wholesome 16%.
Like Single Grain, it appears Nerdwallet are scaling content material in an try to construct visibility throughout each search and AI surfaces.
Relying solely on Google is dangerous—we now know that each one too nicely. Algorithm updates and SERP modifications can tank site visitors.
Search In every single place Optimization spreads the danger throughout a number of platforms and helps manufacturers construct a extra resilient acquisition funnel.
“Search all over the place optimization” is the concept of optimizing your content material and presence, not only for conventional search engines like google and yahoo like Google, however for each platform that has a search bar—together with YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Amazon, Pinterest, app shops, inside website search, and even AI assistants like ChatGPT.
It’s basically about branching out to new channels. You don’t must be all over the place, simply all over the place your clients are.
Tally
Tally has bought search all over the place optimization proper. They reached $3M ARR in a matter of months, with AI as their lead acquisition channel, because of being current in “AI’s supply materials”.
That’s to say throughout boards, Reddit, blogs, and user-generated content material (UGC).
You’ll be able to’t put all of your attain in a single platform’s palms anymore.
Diversification seems to be like displaying up on your clients, wherever they flip up on-line.
Tally succeeded as a result of they did exactly that.
By specializing in real buyer engagement, they constructed their model and inadvertently positioned themselves completely to indicate up in AI-driven conversations.
Wrapping up
These eight firms all deal with the identical core problem: constructing direct viewers relationships as an alternative of relying on third-party visibility that may vanish in a single day.
The widespread thread is viewers possession—manufacturers are adapting their Search engine marketing methods to personal their audiences by means of lead lists, social followings, and branded communities reasonably than renting them from platforms like Google.
That stated, even with site visitors drops of 20-40%, Search engine marketing is nonetheless one of the dependable advertising and marketing channels on the market. It’s nonetheless predictable, nonetheless compounds over time, and nonetheless delivers focused site visitors at scale.
As Ryan Regulation factors out, Search engine marketing has developed from a “magic cash faucet” to an especially good advertising and marketing channel with some new limitations.
The businesses above aren’t abandoning Search engine marketing as a result of it stopped working—they’re diversifying as a result of they acknowledge that no single channel, nevertheless efficient, ought to be their whole progress technique.
