Is AI Leading the Discovery Phase of the Customer Journey?

There have been recent debates about whether AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity have fundamentally reshaped the customer journey, with some SEOs believing more people are now using AI for discovery and top-of-the-funnel searches and using Google for late-stage validation.  If accurate, this represents a complete inversion of traditional search behavior.

But before you overhaul your entire digital strategy, let’s dig into what this data really means and whether the buyer journey has actually flipped.

Is AI search taking the lead over Google search in the discovery phase? 

While AI tool usage is undeniably climbing, the narrative of a completely “inverted” buyer journey doesn’t align with broader usage data. 

We’re definitely seeing more users incorporate AI into their buyer journeys, with about 37% of users now starting their searches with AI. But as of right now, this represents about a third of users, with the majority still using Google as their first point of searching.

While AI is increasingly part of the discovery toolkit, Google remains the dominant force across the entire funnel. 

What does this mean for your SEO strategy?

Even if users aren’t completely abandoning traditional Google search, they are increasingly using AI to start and aid their searches, and in the future, who knows if we will see a majority of users adopting AI usage in the discovery phase. 

That’s why it’s essential to ensure your SEO strategy accounts for both traditional Google searches and AI searches. Your approach should account for users discovering you in multiple environments, not just one.

Don’t abandon traditional SEO best practices

We’re still seeing the majority of users opening up Google to start their searches, so you absolutely still need to implement core SEO fundamentals to ensure users on Google can discover your business and website. 

But there’s a critical nuance: With AI Overviews now dominating search results pages, many users are consuming information directly within Google’s AI-generated summaries instead of clicking through to organic results.

This shift makes appearing in AI Overviews just as crucial as ranking in traditional organic results. Key optimizations to prioritize include:

• Adding relevant schema markup to help Google understand your content structure and context
• Creating clear, direct answers to common questions that AI can easily extract and surface
• Strengthening E-E-A-T signals through author credentials, citations, and authoritative content
• Using headings, lists, and structured formatting to organize content in ways AI can parse and present effectively

Build an AI SEO strategy for LLM platforms

As adoption continues climbing, you need to ensure your content appears when users search on platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and other LLMs. This isn’t about replacing your Google SEO work, it’s about expanding visibility to cover emerging search behaviors.

Effective LLM optimization tactics include:

• LLM seeding efforts to increase the likelihood that your content is referenced in AI responses
• Tracking and creating content for common prompts related to your industry, products, or services
• Implementing structured data that helps AI models understand and extract key information
• Creating comprehensive, authoritative content that AI systems are more likely to cite as credible sources

How can you monitor success in the AI search era?

The metrics that matter are evolving. To get a complete picture of your visibility in this new landscape, you need to track performance across both traditional search and AI platforms.

Keep monitoring organic traffic

Organic traffic remains a critical metric because users are still discovering businesses through traditional search results. However, relying solely on traffic data will give you an incomplete picture of your true visibility, especially as AI Overviews and other search engine results page (SERP) features reduce click-through rates (CTR) even when your content is prominently featured.

Expand your metrics to include AI visibility

To understand your full search presence, incorporate these additional tracking mechanisms:

• Impressions: Essential for understanding visibility when AI Overviews or featured snippets reduce clicks. Tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, and Google Search Console provide impression data that shows how often your content appears, even if users don’t click through.
• AI-generated sessions: Google Analytics 4 (GA4) allows you to track traffic from LLMs like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, giving you insight into which users are finding you through AI platforms versus traditional search.
• Prompt tracking: Tools like OmniSEO® enable you to monitor which prompts users are searching related to your brand, products, or services across multiple LLMs. This helps you understand search behavior on AI platforms and identify content gaps to address.

By tracking both traditional metrics and AI visibility indicators, you get a complete view of how users discover your brand across all search environments.

The bottom line: You need an AI SEO strategy

Even though AI usage hasn’t overtaken Google search, the trajectory is clear: Adoption is climbing rapidly, and user behavior is diversifying. If you want to maximize visibility and ensure potential customers can find you wherever they search, whether that’s Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, or the next platform to emerge, you need an AI SEO strategy.

The buyer journey hasn’t fully inverted, but it has expanded. Your SEO approach needs to expand with it.

Start by optimizing for AI Overviews in Google, track your visibility across LLM platforms, and create content that serves users regardless of where they begin their search. The brands that adapt now will own visibility in the AI search era.