Two years ago, the big topic of the future was SGE. Today, hardly anyone is familiar with the term anymore. Not because the issue has disappeared, but because it has become a reality and has been given a different name.
That’s exactly the problem with SEO trend lists: they don’t hold up well over time. Anyone who’s still writing about “Search Generative Experience” today is mainly showing when they last checked in on the topic.
This article takes a different approach. It describes the trends that have actually taken hold and explains exactly what you can do with each one. No bullshit bingo, no nine buzzwords that you still won't be able to make sense of afterward.
If you're just getting started and wondering how to tell if a company is legitimate, we've covered that in a separate post about reputable SEO agencies. The rest of this article assumes you already know the basics.
Key Points at a Glance
- KI-Systeme sind zur zweiten Suchoberfläche geworden. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini und Copilot beantworten Fragen, die früher bei Google landeten. Wer dort nicht vorkommt, kann Sichtbarkeit verlieren, ohne dass ein Ranking fällt.
- Google is answering more queries on its own. AI Overviews and AI Mode are taking precedence over traditional search results. As a result, there are more search queries that don't result in a click.
- Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) baut auf SEO auf. Zum Platz in der Ergebnisliste kommt ein zweites Ziel: in KI-Antworten als Quelle genannt zu werden.
- Trust is the most powerful lever. Verifiable expertise, a recognizable author, and genuine experience trump sheer volume of text.
- The technical foundation remains essential. Core Web Vitals and mobile-first indexing are no longer just a trend—they’re a basic requirement. And when it comes to Core Web Vitals, one metric has quietly changed—and many people are still measuring it incorrectly.
From SGE to AI Overviews: What Became of the Announcement
When Google announced the Search Generative Experience, the industry was divided: Some panicked, while others shrugged it off. Both reactions were wrong.
The term "SGE" no longer exists. What remains is the principle: Google generates its own answer (the AI Overviews) at the top of the search results and includes links to the sources it drew upon.
This changes the equation for you. A search query that triggers an AI Overview is less likely to result in a click on your result. At the same time, a new position has emerged that didn't exist before: the source citation within the Overview itself.
Here's what you can do specifically:
- Check whether an AI Overview appears for your most important search terms. This is the first metric you need to know before you optimize anything.
- Beantworte die Kernfrage einer Seite früh und in klaren Sätzen. Das hilft zuerst Deinen Lesern, und eine klare Antwort kann auch ein KI-System leichter aufgreifen als einen Spannungsbogen.
- Use clear subheadings. A subheading that poses a genuine question is more likely to be recognized as an answer block than one that is just a play on words.
Important to keep in mind: If your click-through rate drops while your ranking remains the same, you haven't done anything wrong. This is now normal for information-driven search queries. If you don't distinguish between the two, you're optimizing in the wrong place.
AI Mode: When a Google Search Turns into a Conversation
In addition to the AI Overviews, there's AI Mode: a search option that works like a chat. You ask a question, get an answer, ask the next question, and Google keeps track of the context.
This changes something fundamental. Traditional search involved a search query and a list of results. A conversation has a flow. Your page is no longer just competing for a single search term, but to be referenced again and again within the flow of a topic.
The conclusion is:
- Topics trump search terms. A website that comprehensively covers a topic will come up multiple times during a conversation. One that has only a single, well-optimized page will be left out after the first question.
- Internal linking becomes part of the structure, not just decoration. If your pages link to one another in a logical way based on their content, the thematic connection is recognizable to search engines.
- Follow-up questions belong on the page. What does someone want to know after reading your text? Answering that question is the real benefit.
ChatGPT Search and the New AI Systems
The question “Are AI assistants the new search engines?” has been answered. They are, at least for some search queries.
SearchGPT, which was originally announced as a standalone product, has been integrated into ChatGPT Search. Other options include Perplexity, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot. These AI systems access web content, summarize it, and cite sources.
The key difference from Google: There's no list of results where you can rank third. Either you appear as a source in the answer, or you don't exist in that answer.
In practical terms, this means:
- Stelle Deine wichtigsten Aussagen so dar, dass sie sich isoliert zitieren lassen. Ein Satz, der ohne den Absatz davor nicht funktioniert, eignet sich kaum als Zitat.
- Belege, was belegbar ist. Quellen machen Deine Aussagen nachprüfbar, und in einer Laborstudie zu GEO waren Texte mit Quellenangaben in den generierten KI-Antworten sichtbarer.
- Make sure the text is up to date, not just the backend. A visible date and a clear indication of the current status are more helpful than a silent update.
- Check regularly to see what the major AI systems are saying about your brand. For most companies, the answer is: nothing at all. That’s a gap—not fate.
Generative Engine Optimization: Get Cited Instead of Just Ranking
A specific term has become established for this work: Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO for short. Some also call it Answer Engine Optimization.
Der Name ist weniger wichtig als die Unterscheidung dahinter. Klassisches SEO bringt Dich auf einen Platz in einer Liste. GEO baut darauf auf und verbessert die Chance, dass Du in einer generierten Antwort als Beleg auftauchst.
Was dabei hilft, ist zum größten Teil gutes SEO. Google selbst bezeichnet die Optimierung für seine KI-Funktionen in seinem Leitfaden als „still SEO“, also weiterhin SEO. Anders sind vor allem Ziel und Messung:
| Traditional SEO | Generative Engine Optimization |
|---|---|
| Position in the results list | Mention in the generated response |
| Clicks as a Measure of Success | Mentions and brand references as a measure of success |
| Search Term in Focus | Focus on Questions and Answers |
| Rankings that can be measured using standard tools | Measurement requires its own monitoring |
The honest assessment: There isn’t yet a fully-fledged Search Console for GEO. Google has only recently begun to display initial AI Overview data in its own Search Console, but that covers only a small portion of the picture. In addition, a separate market has emerged: Providers such as Peec AI, Surfer (with its AI Tracker), and others promise to make GEO trackable. A recurring feature in these tools is called “Prompt Monitoring”: The tool continuously asks large AI systems the same questions, logs the responses, and shows how often you or your competitors are mentioned, including competitive monitoring based on the same prompts.
An important caveat: This is a new field—probably the newest one mentioned in this entire article. Tools, feature sets, and accuracy are changing rapidly. What’s true today may be outdated in six months. So be sure to double-check the latest information yourself before committing to a single tool.
A pragmatic starting point: Compile the twenty questions your customers actually ask during the buying process. Ask them to the major AI systems. Take note of who is mentioned. If competitors are consistently mentioned and you aren’t, you’ve got your priority list for the coming months.
Zero-Click: Why Visibility and Clicks Are Drifting Apart
"Zero Click " refers to search queries that end without the user clicking on a result because the answer is already included in the search results. This phenomenon predates AI search: featured snippets, weather boxes, and direct answers have been around for years. AI Overviews are making it even more prevalent.
The consequence is unpleasant, but it's manageable: You need to stop treating organic traffic as your only metric of success.
What you should measure instead:
- Impressions and placement for visibility itself, even without a click.
- Percentage of brand-related search queries. When people search for your name, your visibility makes a difference, no matter where the search originated.
- Quality over quantity of traffic. This trend is likely to result in fewer visitors who are closer to making a purchase decision.
And the strategic conclusion: For purely informational search queries, the results are becoming less relevant. For commercial and local search queries—where people are looking for a provider—users stay on the page because the answer isn’t “42,” but rather a company they want to contact.
Keywords and Search Intent: Where Research Begins Now
Keyword research has changed more than most tools are willing to admit. In the past, the key question was: Which keywords have high search volume with manageable competition? Today, you have to ask a second question first: Does this search query even lead to a click anymore?
This divides your keyword list into three groups:
- Search queries that the search engine answers on its own. Definitions, simple facts, conversions. This is where the value of traditional optimization drops significantly. These pages remain relevant as evidence of your subject matter expertise, not as a source of traffic.
- Search queries with the intent to buy. “Providers of X,” “buy Y,” “cost of Z.” Users stay on the page because the answer is a company, not just information. This is the part of your SEO strategy that directly drives revenue.
- Local search queries. Anyone looking for someone nearby wants contact information and a point of contact. Here, too, the click remains.
The practical implication: Shift your effort from the first group to the second and third. This feels wrong because the largest volumes are in the first group. That’s exactly why most people don’t do it. And that’s exactly why it’s worth it.
On top of that, there’s a shift in format. In AI systems, users formulate complete sentences instead of just two keywords. Your content should therefore address the fully formed question, not just the condensed keyword. A subheading that sounds exactly like someone would ask the question is more effective than one that simply includes a keyword.
How to Measure Success When Clicks Aren't a Reliable Indicator
If traffic isn't a reliable metric, you need an alternative. Otherwise, you're optimizing blindly. More often than not, you'll give up because the numbers look discouraging.
A viable set consists of four levels:
- Visibility. Rankings and impressions for your most important search terms. A stable ranking despite a decline in clicks is not a failure, but rather the expected result of AI-powered search.
- Brand search volume. How many people search directly for your company name? This number increases as your visibility takes effect, regardless of the platform through which the initial contact occurred.
- AI mentions. Are you mentioned in the responses from major AI systems? There’s no standard metric for this, but a recurring manual sample is more than enough to get started.
- Inquiries. In the end, that’s the only number that matters. Everything else is just a step along the way.
The order in which you analyze the situation is important: If search volume drops while visibility remains stable, the problem lies with your website, not with Google. If visibility itself drops, it’s due to content, technical issues, or competition. If you don’t distinguish between these two factors, you’ll often end up addressing the wrong problem.
E-E-A-T and Trust: The Author Becomes Visible
E-A-T stood for Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. The additional “E” for Experience was added at the end of 2022, making it E-E-A-T. Firsthand experience plays a central role in Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines.
In a world where you can generate text at will, that becomes your most important distinguishing feature. Anything that an AI could also write no longer gives you an advantage. But what you’ve experienced, measured, or done wrong—that does.
Specifically, this means:
- A real author with a name, a face, and verifiable qualifications. Not an “editorial team.”
- Real-life experiences instead of summaries. What worked, what didn't, and how could you tell?
- Your own data—wherever you have it. A single real figure from your own project is worth more than ten cited industry statistics.
- Make trust visible. Legal notices, contact information, testimonials, and awards belong where people can find them.
Content Quality Over Content Quantity
The "helpful content" logic has long been part of the core algorithm: Google assesses whether content is created for people or for search engines.
The update, which affected many websites at the time, was not an attack on AI-generated text per se. It affected content that lacked original input, regardless of whether it was written by humans or machines.
AI tools for content creation are therefore not a problem. They only become a problem when the result is published online without being reviewed. The difference between a useful piece of writing and a worthless one lies not in the tool, but in whether someone with expertise has reviewed it.
Here's a simple test: Remove everything from your text that could also appear on a competitor's page. What remains is your actual contribution. If nothing remains, you have the result of your content strategy right in front of you.
For existing websites, a content audit is therefore often more effective than creating new content: consolidate or remove weak pages, and expand strong ones. It requires less effort, and the results are visible more quickly.
Technical SEO: Core Web Vitals and Mobile-First
Technical optimization isn't just a trend. It's the prerequisite for everything else to work at all. Nevertheless, two mistakes are made regularly.
First: Google has changed the Core Web Vitals. Many articles still mention the three metrics LCP, FID, and CLS. In March 2024, Google replaced First Input Delay with INP (Interaction to Next Paint). If you’re still optimizing for FID, you’re working on a metric that no longer exists. The current three are:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint): how quickly the main content becomes visible
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint): how quickly the page responds to user input
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift): How Stable the Layout Remains
Second: Google has completed its mobile-first indexing. Google evaluates the mobile version of your website, not the desktop version. Content that is hidden on a smartphone is essentially ignored in the evaluation. This affects a surprisingly large number of websites where the mobile view has been “streamlined.”
Third: User experience is not a “soft” factor. The Core Web Vitals are the measurable part of it, but not the whole story. How quickly a user finds what they’re looking for on your website determines whether they stay. The 2024 Google leak confirmed what many had suspected: usage data from the Chrome browser is factored into the ranking. So if you neglect navigation, readability, and page structure, you’ll lose not only visitors but also relevance in the rankings.
Dazu kommt ein Aspekt, der rund um die KI-Suche oft überschätzt wird: strukturierte Daten. Schema-Markup hilft Maschinen, den Inhalt einer Seite eindeutig zu erfassen, und für Organisationen, Personen, Produkte und Veranstaltungen ist der Aufwand gering. Laut Google lohnt es sich außerdem weiter, um für Rich Results infrage zu kommen, etwa bei Produkten. Einen Rankingvorteil oder einen sicheren Platz in KI-Antworten verschaffen strukturierte Daten aber nicht, und für seine KI-Funktionen verlangt Google kein spezielles Markup.
FAQ-Markup dagegen bringt seit dem 7. Mai 2026 kein Rich Result mehr: Google hat die aufklappbaren FAQ-Ergebnisse abgeschaltet, nachdem sie seit 2023 ohnehin auf Behörden- und Gesundheitsseiten beschränkt waren. Vorhandenes Markup schadet laut Google nicht, und ein FAQ-Abschnitt im Text bleibt für Deine Leser sinnvoll.
Eine Beobachtung aus der Praxis, ausdrücklich als Einzelfall: Bei einem Kunden aus dem Rechtsbereich stellte ChatGPT auf Nachfrage die Seriosität des Anbieters infrage. Nach dem Einbau umfangreicher Schema-Markups (unter anderem Organisation, Personen, Bewertungen) fielen die Antworten anders aus: Dieselben Prompts auf fremden KI-Systemen bestätigten danach die Seriosität des Anbieters, statt sie anzuzweifeln. Ob das Markup den Ausschlag gab oder andere Faktoren im selben Zeitraum, lässt sich daraus nicht ableiten.
Multiplatform SEO: Don't Rely Solely on Google
Many people equate search engine optimization with Google optimization. This has always been an oversimplification and is increasingly becoming a risk.
People search on YouTube, Amazon, Pinterest, in app stores, on LinkedIn, and using AI assistants. Each of these platforms has its own rules, but the same basic logic applies: whoever answers the question most clearly will be found.
The key strategic point here is independence. A channel you don’t control can change overnight. And that’s exactly what has happened in recent years. Email lists, a loyal community, and a well-known brand are the antidotes. They’re unspectacular but effective in the long run.
Branding and Link Building
Link building isn't dead, but its nature has changed. Today, a link is most valuable when it actually reaches people and comes from a context that's relevant to the content.
Interessanter ist ohnehin der Nebeneffekt: Erwähnungen. KI-Systeme lernen aus dem, was im Netz über Dich geschrieben wird, auch ohne Link. Ein Fachbeitrag, ein Podcast, ein Vortrag, eine Nennung in einem Branchenverzeichnis: Alles davon kann dazu beitragen, dass ein Modell Deine Marke mit Deinem Thema verbindet.
The confirmation of a domain-wide authority signal through the 2024 Google leak fits into this picture. Authority is built across pages and by topic, not on a per-page basis.
What You Can Do Right Now
If there's one list of actions you take away from this article, let it be this one, in this order:
- Assessment of AI visibility. Twenty real customer questions posed to major AI systems, with results recorded. Time required: one afternoon.
- Check where AI Overviews appear for your top ten search terms. This will help you determine which pages should still be optimized for clicks.
- Compare Core Web Vitals against the current metrics. Including INP instead of FID.
- Compare the mobile view with the desktop view. If content is missing on mobile, it will be excluded from the evaluation.
- Make authorship visible. Name, qualifications, contact information: on every content page.
- A content audit instead of new content. Clean up first, then expand.
- Incorporate a question-and-answer structure on pages that address informational search queries.
None of these points require a new tool or a larger budget. They just require someone to actually do them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is SEO still worth it?
Yes, but the way success is measured is changing. For purely informational search queries, click-through rates are declining because search engines are providing more answers on their own. For commercial and local search queries—where someone is looking for a provider—the click remains. Anyone who gives up on SEO loses visibility precisely where revenue is generated.
What is the difference between SEO and GEO?
SEO zielt auf eine Position in der Ergebnisliste. Generative Engine Optimization zielt darauf, in einer von einer KI generierten Antwort als Quelle genannt zu werden. GEO baut auf der handwerklichen Basis von SEO auf, anders ist vor allem die Erfolgsmessung.
What developments in online marketing are relevant beyond SEO?
Above all, the shift in search toward platforms outside of Google and the growing importance of proprietary channels: email, community, and brand. Both reduce dependence on a single algorithm.
Do I have to completely rewrite my content for AI?
Only in the rarest of cases. Most of the time, it’s enough to move the main point to the beginning, phrase headings as actual questions, and add supporting evidence. The substance remains the same.
Conclusion
The honest summary is this: The fundamentals haven't changed. Clear content, solid technical execution, verifiable expertise—that was true five years ago, and it's still true today.
What has changed is the standard. Mediocre content used to generate some traffic. Today, search engines answer those questions themselves. What remains is space for content written by someone with real-world experience and for companies that serve as reliable sources.
That's more exhausting than a checklist of nine trends. But it's also the first development in a long time where careful work once again offers a structural advantage.
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