How Is AI Affecting Your Business’s Website?

AI is changing how potential customers find and evaluate businesses. People still use Google, but they’re also seeing AI-generated summaries, asking longer questions, and getting recommendations from tools that draw on websites, business listings, reviews, and other online sources.

That shift creates a new challenge for businesses: being easy to find is no longer just about ranking in a list of search results. Your business also needs accurate information, credible mentions across the web, and a website that gives people a clear reason to trust you and take the next step.

More searching doesn’t always mean more website visits

Google says people are searching more often. In 2025, the company reported that “overall queries and commercial queries on Search continued to grow year over year.” Google also said that, for the kinds of searches where AI Overviews appear, the feature was driving more queries.

Yet more searches don’t necessarily translate into more clicks to your website. When Google gives someone an AI summary directly on the results page, they may get enough information to keep browsing—or make a decision—without visiting your site.

A Pew Research Center study tracked 68,879 Google searches by 900 U.S. adults in March 2025. People clicked a traditional search result in 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, compared with 15% when one didn’t.  That means you may have seen a 7% drop in website traffic or more, which could convert to a 7% drop in sales, as a result of the AI summaries siphoning off traffic from your website.

An analysis of 40,000 U.S. websites reported a 2.5% year-over-year decline in organic search traffic in its comparison. Results differ by site, industry, and type of search.

Your online reputation helps people—and AI—evaluate your business

When someone asks an AI tool to recommend a provider, the answer may draw on information from more than the provider’s own website. Business listings, review sites, social platforms, news coverage, industry directories, and community discussions can all help shape what a person sees.

Research from Yext, which analyzed 6.8 million citations across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, found that businesses’ own websites and listings were the most common citation sources in its dataset. Review and social sources made up a smaller share, but still accounted for more than half a million citations.

For local visibility, Google itself says that “more reviews and positive ratings can help your business’s local ranking.” It also describes prominence as how well-known a business is.

For a business, this means your public reputation matters in two ways. Reviews help prospective customers decide whether to contact you, and they give search and AI systems additional information about what customers say you do well. Mentions in articles, directories, and community conversations can add context about your expertise and credibility.

The most useful places to build a presence depend on your industry and audience. A strong starting point is:

• Your Google Business Profile, with accurate details, current photos, and honest customer reviews.

• Relevant review platforms, such as Yelp, BBB, Angi, TripAdvisor, or an industry-specific site that customers in your field actually use.

• Trusted local and industry sources, including chambers of commerce, professional associations, trade publications, and local news outlets.

• Useful social and community channels, such as LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, or neighborhood forums when your customers and potential partners are active there.

The goal isn’t to scatter promotional posts across the internet or manufacture praise. It’s to make sure your business is represented accurately in the places customers already trust, and to earn genuine feedback and mentions by doing good work.

AEO is becoming essential alongside SEO

SEO—search engine optimization—helps your website appear in traditional search results. AEO, or answer engine optimization, helps your business and expertise appear when AI-powered search tools answer a question, summarize options, or recommend a provider.

AEO isn’t a shortcut or a separate trick that guarantees a mention in ChatGPT or Google’s AI results. It’s a practical extension of strong search fundamentals: clear information about your business, useful content that answers real customer questions, consistent business details, and credible evidence that your company is trustworthy.

Your website remains central to that work. In the Yext study, first-party websites accounted for 44% of citations across the AI answers it analyzed. A well-structured site can explain what you offer, whom you serve, where you work, and why a customer might choose you.

But your own site isn’t the whole picture. Make sure key facts—such as your services, location, hours, and contact details—match across your website and business listings. Publish helpful answers to the questions customers actually ask. Then support those claims with authentic reviews, case studies, and mentions from relevant sources.

Pixo offers SEO, AEO, and conversion optimization to help businesses improve their visibility and turn more of that attention into qualified leads. The work can include assessing your current search presence, improving site content and structure, strengthening your online reputation, and measuring the actions that matter to your business.

Website design matters to search engines and visitors in different ways

Google evaluates many aspects of a page and its content as a part of evaluating the trust a website should have. Its guidance says its ranking systems aim to reward helpful, reliable information created for people. Google also recommends a good page experience, including content that displays well on mobile devices, while cautioning that a strong Core Web Vitals score by itself won’t put a page at the top of the results.

Visitors judge your website through their own experience. Can they quickly understand what you do? Does the site work well on a phone? Can they find pricing context, service details, proof of experience, and a clear way to contact you? A site might meet technical requirements and still fail to persuade a potential customer.

Those expectations and the search experience have changed significantly in recent years. AI summaries now compete for attention on some results pages, and customers may arrive after comparing several providers across search engines, listings, reviews, and AI tools. A website that is hard to use or vague about its value gives those visitors fewer reasons to stay.

If your site hasn’t been redesigned in three years, it’s time to evaluate it seriously. That doesn’t automatically mean you need a complete rebuild. It does mean you should check whether the design, content, mobile experience, accessibility, speed, and conversion paths still match how people discover and choose businesses today. Users today, evaluate websites very differently than they did even 5 years ago. 

Make your business easy to find, understand, and trust

AI is changing how people search, but it hasn’t removed the need for a useful website, sound SEO, or a strong reputation. It has raised the stakes for presenting consistent, credible information wherever customers look.

Start by asking: Are the right people finding us? Do search results and AI answers describe us accurately? Are there credible reviews and mentions that support what our website says? When someone lands on our site, can they quickly see why they should take the next step?

Pixo can help you assess your SEO and AEO visibility, improve your website experience, and build a practical plan for attracting and converting more of the right customers.