You can own page 1 on Google and still be invisible where the buyer actually decides
I am not going to tell you SEO is dead. Anyone who says that with a straight face is selling something.
But here is what I keep seeing.
Your buyer is not starting on Google anymore. They ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini. One question, one answer, and the shortlist is written before they ever open a browser tab.
I read in a January 2026 study that 37% of consumers now start their search with AI instead of Google. That was a rounding error 2 years ago.
Here is the part that surprised me. Ranking on Google doesn’t get you into the AI answer. Ahrefs looked at 15,000 queries and found 80% of the sources AI tools cite do not even rank in Google’s top 100…isn’t that crazy!
You can own page one & still be invisible in the room where the (purchase, starting point, source of truth & so on) decision gets made.
So stated simply. If you are not in the AI answer, you are not even being considered.
You do not need a big budget to start. You need to stop getting in your own way.
Some basic things that actually matter:
1. Check that you are not blocking the AI crawlers in your robots.txt. Most companies that are invisible are doing it by accident, or on purpose to keep scrapers out, and they killed their own citations without knowing it.
2. Put up an llms.txt file. A plain business card for the models. Almost none of your competitors have one yet.
3. Build credibility off your own site. Reviews, real mentions, even Reddit. The models read what the internet says about you, not just your homepage.
4. Write so a model can quote you. Clear answers near the top. Honest comparison pages. Give it a clean & easy path to find you.
Google is still most of search, & I am not pretending otherwise. AI is the new first step, not the whole journey. But new first steps are where decisions narrow.
The cost of waiting is not a line item. It is the quarter the leads quietly dry up & nobody can tell you why.
Try it yourself this week. Ask ChatGPT to recommend a company like yours & see who it names. That is your new front door.
So I will turn it to the room. Who here is already tracking AI citations, and what has actually moved the needle for you?