From Search Engines To AI Assistants: A New Era Of Digital Visibility

Forbes

3 days ago

Murad Salikhov – serial investor and visionary | Founder of Schwarzwald Capital, empowering fintech and creator economy projects.
For the past two decades, Google has been the kingmaker when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) and online visibility. For some people, if you weren't on the first page of search results, you basically didn't exist. But now there's a new game in town, and the dynamic is shifting faster than many expected.
The big disruptor? Artificial intelligence (AI). ChatGPT, Perplexity, Brave, Gemini—AI assistants are rapidly changing how people find and consume information online. And with that shift, we're entering a new era of SEO, one that has already received a popular name—AIO or AI optimization.
What does this transformation mean for creators and digital entrepreneurs? I am a venture capitalist and fintech entrepreneur with over two decades of experience investing in emerging technologies, including payments, AI and the creator economy. Here's what I think:
How People Search Is Changing
In order to better understand the shift we're talking about here, let's first look back to what traditional SEO is. SEO is the practice of making your content more comprehensible to search engines like Google. It involves keyword research, meta tags, backlinks, website performance and a number of other technical elements. The end goal is to get your site to rank as high as possible in search results when someone types in a relevant query.
But here's what's happening now: Instead of sifting through 10-plus links, users just want one good answer straight away. This is where AI enters the stage. Ask an AI tool like ChatGPT a question, and voila—it gives you a concise, straightforward reply without making you scroll through pages of search results. That's a vastly different experience compared to before.
According to Gartner, by 2026, traditional search engine traffic is expected to drop by 25%, due to the rise of AI assistants. That's a massive shift in user behavior. In late 2024, Google's market share fell below 90% for the first time in over a decade. Meanwhile, OpenAI reported 400 million weekly active users for ChatGPT in February 2025—a 33% jump in just three months.
And let's not forget hybrid platforms like Perplexity and Brave, which combine traditional search results with AI-generated summaries. AI tools are changing the way we find information, blending search accuracy with the convenience of a personal assistant.
With this in mind, here's a simple check that creators can run to assess their visibility. Ask an AI tool a question about your niche: Does your name or brand show up in the answer? If not, it's probably a good time to rethink your strategy.
What Digital Entrepreneurs Need To Know Now
So if traditional SEO is no longer the only (or even the main) path to being seen, what should creators and digital businesses be focusing on?
The name of the game now is AI optimization. Instead of optimizing just for search engines, the goal now is to shape your digital presence credibly and compellingly for AI models.
And these models don't operate like search engines. They don't crawl the web looking for exact keyword matches. Many AI tools can interpret meaning and context, drawing on information from trustworthy sources.
As such, here are a few tactics that could help you adapt:
The way people ask things from AI is very different from how they use search engines. With traditional search engines, we tend to type short, tag-like queries—'best digital wallet 2025,' for example. But when using AI platforms, it often feels more natural to ask a full, detailed question, like we would with a physical person: 'I'm looking for this or that—what do you recommend?'
That means the content you create needs to match that tone, 'explaining' things clearly, with natural language. It's not about stuffing keywords in your headlines. Think along the lines of: 'Would this sound helpful if someone read it aloud?' If yes, you're doing it right, and I've found your chances of being noticed by the AI could go up.
As I already mentioned above, AI tools can pull information from high-quality, credible sources. That's why building authority in your niche now matters more than ever before. It's not just about having a well-optimized website anymore—it's about having a reputation and a recognizable digital footprint.
Collaborate with target media for interviews and podcasts. Contribute to reputable blogs. Show up in newsletters. In my experience, the more your name appears in relevant places, the higher the chance AI models will recognize you as a legitimate source worth citing.
Traditional SEO was built around the idea of giving search engine algorithms clear, structured signals to interpret—things like keywords, backlinks and metadata. These elements served as clues, helping the algorithm connect a user's query to the most relevant pages. It was a system based on indexing and matching patterns.
AI, on the other hand, doesn't work like that. It's not just looking for clues—it's looking at meaning, context and intent behind a user's request. Less 'robot scanner,' more 'researcher.' AI models can analyze tone, coherence, credibility and how well information answers a question. They synthesize information from multiple sources to generate a useful response.
That means your content strategy should focus on depth, clarity and authenticity. Make your positioning clear. Publish regularly, say things that matter and be intentional with your tone. When AI looks for a useful answer, it should find you because you are associated with coherent, high-quality content.
Final Thoughts
In the creator economy, AI is often talked about as a tool to help us make content. But AIO is all about a different take: that AI is now evaluating us. And if you want to stay relevant in the coming days, your job is to be worthy of being picked in its eyes.
Be visible, be vocal and be trusted. Because in the AI era, visibility isn't just about search rankings anymore—it's about becoming the go-to answer when the machines are asked, 'Who's the best in this space?'
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