Our view on AI
AI is a tool. The judgment is ours.
AI is changing how people search and how agencies work, and pretending otherwise would be daft. Here's where we stand: what we use it for, what we never will, and what it's doing to the traffic websites used to get.
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How we use AI
It helps with the legwork. We do the thinking.
AI is genuinely useful, and we'd be slower and more expensive without it. But, when all is said and done, AI is only a very useful tool. It compresses the hours of reading, sifting, and tidying that take place before real work. The work itself, deciding what your business needs and why, stays with people.
Research legwork
Hours of reading across search results, competitors, and industry data, compressed into something a person can act on that same morning.
Spotting what changed
Flagging movement worth a human's attention, so our time goes into asking why rather than finding it.
The boring middle
Tidying, formatting, summarising, cross-checking. The admin work that used to eat afternoons.
Keeping watch
Constantly checking the parts of your site that matter are working as they should, and flagging it to a person the moment something isn't.
Everything that reaches your site or your inbox has a person behind it who'll answer for it.
We don't flood sites with a thousand thin pages and hope. It doesn't last, and it isn't us.
What happens on your site is a human call, made by someone who knows your business.
AI and search
The easy clicks are disappearing.
When Google answers a question right on the results page, or a chatbot answers it before anyone reaches Google, the click that used to follow doesn't happen. That isn't a small dip we expect to reverse. A lot of that traffic just isn't coming back.
Traffic was always a proxy. Enquiries are the point.
A site can lose informational visits and gain customers in the same year. It changes what we chase: fewer trophy graphs, more of the searches that end in a phone call.
The opportunity
AI doesn't just take clicks. It makes recommendations.
Every AI answer that costs a website a click also names somebody: a supplier, a firm, a plumber, or an agency. That's a referral channel, and most businesses are still focused on the traffic they've lost rather than the recommendations they could win.
Leads that never touch a rankings graph
When a chatbot recommends a business by name, the enquiry lands the same as any other: phone call, form, booked job. We work to be the business it names.
Local results are next
Google is testing AI responses in and around the map pack. When the way people find you changes, the way we work changes with it. Keeping up is the job.
The fundamentals decide who gets named
AI answers lean on credible sources, real reviews and sites that answer questions plainly. The same work that helps a business rank is the work that helps it get recommended.
This page won't change often. The blog does.
AI moves monthly. Our position doesn't. For the latest on what we're seeing, testing, and talking about, read the work.
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Read →Questions we get about AI.
? Is SEO still worth doing now AI answers questions?
For the searches that bring customers, yes. Commercial, local, and brand searches still end on real websites, and AI answers still cite real sources. What's fading is a lot of the traffic that was never going to buy anything to begin with.
? Will our traffic keep falling?
Informational traffic probably will, we won't pretend otherwise, but enquiries don't have to follow it down. That's what we focus on growing, and the number we report on.
? How do we show up in AI answers?
AI answers lean on credible sources, real reviews, and pages that answer questions plainly. The same fundamentals that rank a business get it recommended, and we track how the engines choose as they change.
? What is GEO? Or AEO?
Generative Engine Optimisation. Answer Engine Optimisation. They're new names for getting AI answers to find and recommend you. Our view is simple: whether you call it GEO, AEO or anything else, good SEO already incorporates the lot. The same fundamentals apply, regardless of where the answers come from.
? Do you use AI on our account?
As an assistant, yes: research legwork, checks, the boring middle. The strategy, the recommendations, and everything you see are made by people. The lines above are the lines we don’t cross.
? Is the map pack going away?
Google is testing AI responses in and around local results, and nobody, including Google, knows the final shape. Whatever it becomes, someone will get shown. Our job is making you that someone.
See where AI leaves your site.
Submit your URL. Richard records a 15-minute video walkthrough: what's exposed to AI answers, what still wins the click, and what we'd do about both. No sales pitch.