Contributing Analysts: Stuart Kinsey and Luiza Leal
What is GenAI and Why Does It Matter
GenAI or Generative AI refers to a category of artificial intelligence that can generate new content; this includes AI Overviews and LLMs. Unlike AI of the past, GenAI is actually creating content based on what it learns from existing data.
GenAI is fundamentally changing user behaviors and now more than ever your brand’s entire digital footprint matters. Your audience is now asking for recommendations instead of searching and making decisions earlier in the funnel before ever visiting your site. This means, if you are not a part of the GenAI ecosystem, you’re not only losing discoverability but also losing control of your brand perception as these generative engines shape it for you.
At Directive, we are already seeing the effects of this new digital world show up in our clients’ data. That is why we’ve compiled data from more than 80 clients to understand not only how it impacts our B2B clients as a whole, but also how those effects vary based on company size and the level of investment in Organic efforts.
Anecdotally, we were seeing an overall decrease in traffic but an increase in Homepage traffic and overall impressions. Without digging into the data, we weren’t able to really understand the impact of GenAI. Like any good marketer, we began analyzing the data.
Methodology and Source Credibility
To better understand how our clients were being impacted, we aggregated data using Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and SEMrush for 80 clients in the B2B space. Here is a breakdown of the data we gathered.
From Google Analytics, we compared Organic traffic, Organic traffic to the homepage, overall homepage traffic, Organic conversion rate, and Referral conversion rate for the last 12 months compared to the previous 12 months to understand the total impact since AI Overviews were officially launched.
From Google Search Console, we compared Site Clickthrough Rate, Average Position, Branded Clicks, and Branded Clicks to the homepage by looking at May 2024 versus May 2025. Since our access to GSC data only goes back 18 months, we chose a snapshot of when AI Overviews were launched versus now.
From SEMrush, we compared the number of keywords present in the AI Overviews from September 2024 to May 2025. We chose to use September as our starting point because we found that most clients had minimal AI Overview rankings prior to September. For that reason, we chose to compare a different date range for our rankings.
What We Discovered
Finding 1: The Rise of GenAI Highlights the Importance of Your Brand
The data suggests a macro trend: LLMs and AI summaries are rising in influence, with homepage and branded page visits becoming a bigger slice of traffic. Brands winning in GenAI are those with clear brand authority and topical relevance, even if overall organic traffic shrinks.
If your brand consistently shows up as a credible voice in a specific topic area, you’re far more likely to be referenced by LLMs and featured in AI Overviews. Topical relevance, often created through content pillars and keyword themes, signals that your brand owns the conversation in your niche. This not only improves your chances of appearing in GenAI but also reinforces brand recognition and trust when users do engage.
Finding 2: Agility is Benefitting the Mid-Market Segment
We define mid-market clients as having annual Organic traffic between 20,000 and 150,000 visits. These clients average around 70,000 annual Organic sessions. Mid-market is our only size-based segment that is seeing consistent positive growth across all categories, out performing the aggregate of our full portfolio. The result is a healthy and balanced growth across AIO visibility and traditional Organic growth. This is likely because of observed behaviors of clients in this size. Typically, they benefit from being nimble with GenAI implementation and technical SEO improvements while having a team capable of executing on these recommendations.
It is important to note a bias in our data that exists. The mid-market segment represents 45 of our 80 total clients, however less than half of our mid-market segment are currently enrolled in an SEO program with Directive. Therefore, we are confident in our analysis that the agility of this segment is what is leading to their overall success, not just the presence of an Organic strategy.
To continue improvements, this segment should consider testing rich snippet integration, tailored content expansion, and stronger CTA structures on landing pages, core solution pages, and product pages.
Finding 3: Investment in Organic Efforts Continues to Pay Off
For clients who are currently engaged with Directive for SEO we are observing that they are the best positioned for Gen AI since they are benefiting from both AIO optimization and traditional SEO. The continued investment in ongoing content strategy, structured data, and authority-building is paying off. To continue to capitalize on these gains we recommend pushing further into conversational search optimization and exploring AI agent brand mentions for compounding returns. This should be validation to continue to invest in your SEO program, whether in-house or with an agency partner.
Finding 4: SMBs are Capitalizing on GenAI Appearances Where It Matters… Conversion Rates
Our SMB segment is being hit the hardest by GenAI relative to their annual traffic. We are seeing the segment gain visibility in AIO, but losing traditional traffic. From the data, we can surmise that they are likely included in more AI-generated summaries but lacking follow through in site visits.
The SMB segment has seen the biggest hit to annual traffic but has seen a 75% increase in organic conversion rates and 92% increase in referral conversion rates.
Where this segment continues to outperform the broader portfolio is in conversion rate improvements. Both their Organic conversion rate and their Referral conversion rate have grown 75% and 92% respectively. Despite the overall decline in site visits, the type of visitors that this segment is receiving is highly qualified and is exhibiting the pre-qualification and decision-making behavior we expect with the rise of GenAI.
However, this segment can generally benefit from improving their website foundation to make traffic gains and build upon their conversion rate momentum to scale their conversion velocity.
Finding 5: Enterprise Brands Can Benefit from CRO
Convert the demand you’re generating. You don’t need an AI strategy to add conversion points to high-value pages but this can be an element that is often overlooked or deprioritized. CRO helps Enterprise brands turn that exposure into measurable outcomes by aligning landing pages with the intent shown in LLMs, running experiments to refine CTAs and layouts, and ensuring a seamless experience for users influenced by AI.
By investing in CRO, you can make each visit count by transforming passive visibility into a growth engine.
Finding 6: Your Audience Will Convert From ChatGPT (and Other LLMs) But For Now, You Have to Ask Them If They Did
Many clients have driven and converted leads that have self-reported their referral pathway as an LLM like ChatGPT. This is validated by the overall increase in conversion rate from referral traffic that is in line with the increase in LLM traffic to clients in our portfolio.
In order to better understand the impact of LLM visibility on your lead and pipelines, consider adding self-reporting to your lead form or your sales discovery process. This allows a formal way to track and measure your appearance in LLMs on your pipeline.
Finding 7: Your Clickthrough Rate is Not an Indicator of Success
Referred to as “The Great Decoupling”, the rise of AI Overviews has had a measurable impact on Search performance. Across our portfolio and segments, brands are seeing impressions continue to rise while clicks are declining, sometimes rapidly.
This means content is being surfaced and viewed more often, but users are less likely to click through to the source, as the AI Overview satisfies their intent within the search interface itself. (Bonus points to us for not saying Zero Click here. Oh, wait…) This shift poses a challenge for marketers as traditional performance metrics like click through rate and traffic become less reliable indicators of success.
Another byproduct of this shift is the type of content that performs well, especially for B2B businesses. Top of the funnel queries are where we are primarily seeing AI Overview appearances that either don’t click through to the site or when they do, result in high bounce rates and low quality leads. Instead, a focus on bottom of the funnel queries can not only improve your site’s click through rate from AI Overviews, but also allow you to show up better in LLMs and be a part of more buying decisions.
Finding 8: Positions Have Declined While AI Overviews Appearances Continue to Grow
The average position reported from Search Console has fallen 9% across all clients. This is likely a large contributing factor to the decline in Organic traffic in conjunction with the amount of real estate now taken up in the search results by AI Overview and paid placements.
However, despite the drop in Organic rankings we have seen a surge in AI Overview queries that our clients rank for. Across the portfolio, we’ve seen an 82% increase in AI Overview appearances since September 2024. For SEO clients, this represents an average of 2,559 AIO keyword appearances. This remains fairly consistent across segments with the exception of Non-SEO clients seeing the smallest gains in AI Overview rankings with an average of 65 AIO keyword appearances.
This represents a fundamental shift in strategy to add a focus of visibility and authority, not just rankings and traffic. Impressions without clicks now become a piece of the puzzle for brand awareness instead of strictly demand generation.
Finding 9: Traffic Should Not Be Your Primary Indicator of Success
To put it plainly, traffic is quickly becoming a vanity metric in the age of GenAI and marketers must move away from legacy KPIs as indicators of success. The search landscape no longer requires a website to inform users and instead act as an answer engine themselves. This is a fundamental shift in consumer behavior. Your goal as a marketer is to inform, influence, or be cited by GenAI. Not just generate clicks.
Instead, your measure of success must change to include:
- Share of search and visibility
- Audience engagement
- Conversions and pipeline revenue
Turn Insights Into Advantage
Generative AI is quickly shifting the search landscape and it can be difficult for teams to stay on top of the changes. A multi-faceted approach is the key to outperforming your competitors. Strategic creativity, efficiency, and a unique point of view can help your brand stand out among the crowd and be favored by LLMs and AI Overviews.
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Macy Myhill
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