Have you changed your sites to be ready for AI-first search?

[MichaelCorfman]

We all know that AI is changing the way users interact with Google search results. And many of us incorporate the use of AI into the way we work.

For this week's poll I ask if you have already made or plan to make any changes in the content you offer on your site in order to fare better in a world where the use of chatbots is becoming increasingly common, and where plain old-fashioned Google searches commonly show an AI overview before Google's traditional search results are presented.

If you have made changes, or are planning to make changes, I invite you to share your plans in a post.

Following are some thoughts on the topic in an article posted on Search Engine Land.

11 actionable tips for the Google AI Mode era

Michael

[Emiliana Rostowicz]

Personally, I’ve already started making changes to my sites. At first, it was just minor technical adjustments, but now I’m testing new types of content focused on natural language queries. I’m observing how AI bots (especially ChatGPT and SGE) respond, and I’m already seeing some interesting results. I believe that in the coming months, I’ll need to completely rethink the structure of some articles, as the old SEO approach is becoming less effective.

[bramgl]

Currently in the process of making my sites ´more AI friendly´. Not only from a technical point, but even more when it comes to content. Based on what I´ve seen and read, we need to change the way we present the content to our visitors to stay on top of the game. If not, it´s going to have a very negative effect on your rankings (speaking about own experience )

[Casinosti]

Indeed, content need to match how questions are actually asked. Still early days, but definitely feels like a shift in how we need to think about search visibility.

[NoDepositCasinos]

I’ve made some changes, but not solely to optimize for AI-first search. I try to keep my sites updated in terms of both content and technical aspects to stay relevant over time, and AI is one of the factors to consider when making those updates, but not the only one. Whenever possible, I prefer to take a more conservative approach. Everything is changing so fast, and I feel that reacting to every change might do more harm than good to my work.

[ocreditor]

I’ve made a few minor adjustments, but honestly, nothing groundbreaking has changed. At the end of the day, it’s really more of the same: if the content is strong and valuable, AI just like traditional search engines, will recognize it and provide exposure. Quality content is still king!

[gabornagy]

I usually wait to see how things evolve. From my experience, no matter what changes come along, the most important thing is keeping the content relevant for users, interesting to read and up to date.

[luckypanda]

I haven’t fully restructured my sites yet, but I’m looking into how AI pulls and rewrites content. For now, I’m focusing on improving internal linking and making the content clearer and easier to grab.

[iso2009]

Just saw this thread now.

My 2 cents: we are fighting an already lost battle. Chatbots will be the ones propagating information in the next years (in terms of summaries). AI Overviews in Google are probably sending 5-15% of the traffic they should send (compared to how many times they appear), while the last info from CF is that 1/250 people in chatgpt click on a "source" - that's a Cloudflare report. Clodflare even introduced a default robots.txt that blocks AI agents.

I'm not sure if you noticed it, but the web is dying slowly (now) and it will speed up as consumer behaviour changes - I'm seeing this all around me, I don't need any report to understand the situation.

I use google to check my rankings, look for movie reviews, look up persons (mostly wikipedia) and local searches. That's it. The rest is on chatgpt (I happily pay $20/month and I get in return $2000/month savings at least). And right now I haven't installed gpt on my phone - when I will do that, my google searches will be even less.

We are dying, we are the "paper" newspapers when websites appeared.

And to answer your question, no, I don't want to optimize for AI agents, it's plain stealing with nothing in return. I have hundreds of chatgpt visits monthly. With an estimate (let's say 200) and a ratio of 1/250, I am probably getting 50k impressions per month in chatgpt, and receiving 200 users. That is assuming it regurgitates with a source attached (which we don't know).

If you content is valuable and people will pay for it, hide it behind a paywall and buy ads. If not, well, I'm sorry for you - try to make money as quickly as you can.

As a conclusion, most people say the web ecosystem has to remain in place because this is what feeds AI. Of course it will remain in place and it will feed AI - but for money. And the money flow will not reach you, because you're too small.

Since I don't have casino review sites, in 2026 I will hide all my crucial content behind paywalls and move to mobile apps. Will keep the sites as long as they will receive some traffic, but for me the trend is clear - web is dying.

The ten blue links will be gone or irrelevant for many, and the AI will bring nothing in return. Shift focus to socials, where people will still hang out. Move on to apps as products. And maybe this is a bold statement, but affiliate marketing will be dead for many of us, just the big guys (of every niche in the earth) will make some money as affiliates.

I hope I am wrong, and in the end nevermind me, but this time I can clearly see a huge thunderstorm coming.

[TheGooner]

They're hitting my site at 15-20 urls per minute - and giving nothing back. so they're banned.
I've blocked all the chatbots - via their user agent - it's simple enough to do.

If they want to pay (say) 1c per hit whether it's for training or human use then they can access my site.
Otherwise they don't get the info for free.

[iso2009]

They're hitting my site at 15-20 urls per minute - and giving nothing back. so they're banned.
I've blocked all the chatbots - via their user agent - it's simple enough to do.

If they want to pay (say) 1c per hit whether it's for training or human use then they can access my site.
Otherwise they don't get the info for free.

Good man!

Btw, I blocked them in robots.txt and they still managed to hit one of my APIs ("Open"AI being the most persistent). Eventually it stopped.

[TheGooner]

Robots.txt is a suggestion rather than a restriction and OpenAI have said that they simply ignore it.

I spent 2-3 days trying to find a human email contact (chats are just the chatbot that have zero information) to ask why they were hitting my site at a peak rate of around 3000 to 4000 per hour, but could not find any way to "talk" to OpenAI at all.

After I started logging the bots I saw my match preview URLs being hit 3000 to 6000 times each (20 to 30 URLS) for over 100,000 AI bot hits over a weekend so I got into htaccess and blocked ChatGPT, openAI, Perplexity, Claude et al.

There is no "intelligence" in this wave of hits.

[Sherlock]

As robots.txt is just a suggestion, so useragent is just some text string, who can be carried by anyone.

AI is not intelligence, it is LLM.

[TheGooner]

As robots.txt is just a suggestion, so user agent is just some text string, who can be carried by anyone..

And AI bots currently self identify correctly ... so it's a simple and valid way to detect them and 403 / 429 them.
Clear?

[Sherlock]

What I am trying to say is that many scrapers very likely identify as robots (at least some of mine).
One more reason to block them.

But whether AI bots always identify as AI bots is unknown.

Currently someone, AI or disguised as AI, is hacking my AI produced code.

[dannyx]

I haven't made any changes yet, but I'm monitoring the situation.
ChatGPT (and other AI) definitely generates additional organic traffic. I believe that becoming independent from a single source of traffic, i.e., Google, is definitely a good thing. I'm counting on an increase in organic traffic from GPT and other AI software.

[TheGooner]

ChatGPT (and other AI) definitely generates additional organic traffic.

That's a big statement Danny.
What sources have you got to back that up? Even anecdotal evidence would be interesting.

My experience is that it just runs though the site - farming the same work out to each of over 100+ different ip centres and they all hit the same thing over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, ...


and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over,

and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over,

... well .. you get the picture.

[CasinoVVV]

Looks like one option is missing here – a site that is mostly or fully AI-driven.

Do you agree this is already a real direction

[universal4]

And with extreme luck, the visitors you get might be mostly AI.

But getting to the thread topic, if AI was that smart they should do a great job on your content if the content is written for visitors.

Changing the content, or site structure specifically for google AI, would break one of google's own rules to not write for the bots/etc but write for visitors.

And Paul's example of how hard some of their bots are hitting is not a good outcome and shows that the future of bots and spiders could be far worse.

Rick
Universal4

[DanHorvat]

Hah - website with AI-generated content that gets mostly AI hits.

Personally, I started valuing humans much more than I used to. When I need an answer about something, I no longer trust the Internet results. I search for an offline human who has the expertise, the answer, and an opinion on top.

So basically I'm back to the '90s.