Optimisation or Reinvention? The Debate Splitting SEO
As AI reshapes search behaviour, Patrick Briggs and Simon Lesser explore whether SEO is evolving or being redefined entirely, highlighting the rise of Generative Engine Optimisation, shifting user journeys, and the growing challenge of measuring success in an answer-first ecosystem.
Topics
Search Engine Optimisation is experiencing its most significant paradigm shift since the early 2000s. The catalyst is not just AI, but the emergence of Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), where answers increasingly replace links.
The industry now finds itself divided.
One camp continues to optimise within the familiar architecture of Google’s “blue links.” The other is pushing to reinvent SEO for a decentralised, answer-driven ecosystem shaped by AI assistants, summaries, and multimodal discovery.
This tension is not new. When Google introduced E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) in 2014, and later expanded it to E-E-A-T with “Experience”, it signalled a shift toward credibility over keywords.
But today’s transformation runs deeper. It questions not just how content is ranked, but where and whether it is seen at all. At the centre of this debate lies a fundamental question: Is SEO evolving, or being rewritten entirely?
Fear vs. Data: The Reality Check on AI and SEO
In boardrooms and strategy decks, one narrative dominates: AI is eating search. But the data tells a more measured story.
“Generally speaking, most clients have a lot more fear/hype with ‘AIO eating SEO’ than actual data to support that fear/hype,” says Patrick Briggs, CEO of Semify.
The anxiety is understandable. AI Overviews and generative answers have undeniably reshaped visibility, particularly for informational queries. Yet, the collapse many predicted has not materialised.
“There are certainly businesses that participate in the informational search universe that have seen their businesses change,” Briggs adds. “But the majority of businesses are still seeing solid traffic and lead generation from SEO and search.”
The nuance lies in where disruption is happening. Top-of-funnel informational traffic, once a reliable pipeline for “nurturable” leads, is shrinking. “AI Overviews have cut a lot of traffic from the top end of the funnel,” Briggs notes.
But he is quick to contextualise the shift: “That funnel didn’t really even exist ten years ago for most brands. So, we will just need to adapt because the market has changed.”
The implication is clear. This is not an extinction event. It is a redistribution of value; One that demands recalibration, not panic.
The “Swirl”: Search, Social, and PPC in Motion
It is tempting to describe the current landscape as convergence, SEO, social, and paid media collapsing into one unified discipline.
But Briggs resists that framing. “I don’t agree with the statement that SEO, PPC, and social are converging,” he says. “Converging… signals that there is an endgame.”
Instead, he offers a more fluid metaphor: A Swirl.
“There has always been a mix of organic search serving social, social serving organic search, and PPC monetising on this interplay,” Briggs explains. “What I see is more of a ‘swirl.’ There is a new twist on how social and search content is interacting. That swirl is AI, and PPC will… monetise it as well.”
Picture it less like lanes merging — and more like currents colliding.
- A Reddit thread informs a search result.
- A TikTok video becomes a discovery engine.
- A paid ad captures intent shaped elsewhere.
In this swirl, content does not belong to a single channel. It moves, mutates, and compounds across surfaces. And AI sits at the centre, accelerating connections, redistributing attention, and quietly redefining how value flows between platforms.
Redefining “Search Success” in a Multi-Platform World
For years, SEO success was easy to explain: rankings, traffic, conversions. Clean lines. Clear attribution. That clarity is starting to blur.
“User behaviour on each search platform has always been dramatically different,” says Simon Lesser, Chief Product Officer at Semify. What works on Google has never quite worked the same way on Baidu or Naver.
The difference now is that AI platforms are introducing yet another layer of unpredictability.
And with it, confusion. “Traditional metrics and KPIs used in traditional search are not a good fit,” Lesser explains. “There is no clear consensus on how to report on AI search yet.”
Inside enterprise teams, that uncertainty is playing out in real time. Some are tracking citations. Others are watching mentions. A few are still clinging to referral traffic — even as it becomes less reliable.
But even those signals feel… incomplete.
“Just as tracking ‘mentions’ on traditional search is not a meaningful measurement,” Lesser says, “judging referral traffic from AI search is likely not the right metric.” So the question lingers: If users get their answers without clicking, what exactly are we measuring? Right now, no one seems entirely sure.
And until that changes, “search success” will remain a moving target, defined as much by experimentation as by outcomes.
The Path Forward for Enterprise SEO
If there’s one thing enterprise teams are beginning to accept, it’s that SEO can’t operate as a side function anymore. But has to be built in from the start.
“An effective SEO strategy must be built into the foundation of a marketing strategy,” says Simon Lesser. “Tacking on SEO after-the-fact won’t work.”
Simple in theory. Messy in reality.
Most organisations are still navigating fragmented systems, different teams owning different parts of the journey, each with their own dashboards, KPIs, and definitions of success. Right now, the problem is the absence of a shared narrative.
“Effective reporting is all about telling a story with data… and this data can’t exist in silos,” Lesser adds. What teams are really asking for now isn’t more data — it’s direction. Not another dashboard, but clarity on what actually matters.
That shift is starting to take shape in small, practical ways:
- Ringing SEO into product and content conversations earlier,
- Aligning metrics across channels instead of defending them, and
- Focusing less on visibility in isolation, more on its role in the broader journey.
AI can support that process. But it won’t fix the fundamentals. Because, as Lesser puts it, “the data fragmentation… is often due to a lack of collaboration and communication.”
And that’s not a tooling problem. It never really was.
ALSO READ: Giving Agents 100% Autonomy Will Only Lead to Failure
