Is AI cutting into your SEO conversions?
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Since March 2025 in the U.S. (and May elsewhere), many sites have noticed an uncomfortable pattern: organic conversions slipping. It’s easy to blame falling traffic from Google’s intensified AI Overviews.
But purchase intent doesn’t just vanish. Does it?
If your conversions are holding steady, congratulations. If they’re not, the reasons may be more layered than you think.
In today’s Memo, I’m breaking down the 5 biggest forces I see behind SEO conversion declines across industries:
Loss of TOFU traffic (and why it matters more than you thought)
Platform shifts pulling demand into other ecosystems
Channel shifts from organic to paid search
Attribution leakage that hides organic’s true impact
Macro factors pressuring conversion rates
I’ll also walk you through the signals to check, how to measure each, and—inside the premium section—the exact process I use to identify which drivers are hitting a site the hardest.
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Is AI cutting into your SEO conversions?
How have your SEO conversions changed since Google intensified AI Overviews?
If they've grown - all the power to you!
If not, I’m seeing 5 underlying reasons that could be contributing to their decline across industry types:
Loss of TOFU traffic
Platform shift
Channel shift
Attribution loss
Economic change
Sites that are noticing an SEO conversion drop have seen it since 2025 (March in the US, May in other countries).
It's logical to assume that the reason is a decline in organic traffic - makes sense - but purchase intent doesn't just vanish.
Have your conversions gone to other sites, or could there be another explanation behind their decline?
Let’s dig in.
1. Demand activation
For decades, SEOs have created top-of-the-funnel content (like “what is x” or “why you need x”). This kind of content often has an unclear impact on the bottom line.
Now that organic clicks are dropping, conversions are dropping (to a lower degree) as well.
Was top-of-the-funnel content more impactful than we thought all along?
I first raised that theory first in the AI Halftime Report:
AIOs are really mostly TOFU queries. In that case, TOFU content always had more impact on the bottom line than we were able to prove and we can expect the traffic decline to level off.
Or AIOs impact way more than MOFU and BOFU queries as well (which is what I think), and we’re in for a long decline of traffic. If true, I expect revenue that’s attributed to organic search to decline at a lower rate - or not at all for certain companies - since purchase intent doesn’t just go away. Therefore, revenue results would relate more to our ability to influence purchase intent.
That's where my concept of Demand Activation elasticity comes in.
In economics, price elasticity measures how much demand changes when prices change.
In Marketing, Demand Activation elasticity describes how much eventual purchase behavior changes when you influence someone early in their journey.
Think about Demand Activation as how many potential customers you influence to buy from you.
If the “elasticity” is high, being visible at the very top of the funnel creates a disproportionate downstream impact on revenue, even if you can’t directly attribute it in analytics.
If this turns out to be correct, it’s an argument for earning AI Visibility.
If Demand Activation has the impact I think it has, being visible in ChatGPT, AI Mode & Co has stronger downstream effects than we can directly attribute. I’ve certainly seen more high-pipeline deals and purchases come from ChatGPT for some of my clients.
To illustrate the concept, let’s consider an economic example.
I've been searching for an excuse to write about the economic impact if Germany were to open stores on Sundays for a long time: Would people buy more if they could, or would purchases simply spread out across more days?
Studies by the EHI, IFO and IW Köln show that people in Germany would actually buy more if stores were open on Sundays, especially non-food items. [1, 2, 3]
Stores in Germany do open a few Sundays a year.
And during those rare occasions, people shop more, especially for impulse buys.
Some research suggests that it's mainly driven by events and tourism in higher spend areas, but looking at EU neighbors with an open-Sunday policy, like the Netherlands, we see consistently higher incremental retail spend.
To bring it back to Search, exposure early on in the user journey (as in “more open Sundays”) might have a stronger downstream impact (like more top-of-funnel visits) than we thought. Therefore, it could be critical to be broadly visible in LLMs.
Signals to check:
1. TOFU traffic decline vs. MOFU/BOFU
How to measure: In Search Console, filter queries using a TOFU regex (remove branded terms). Compare YOY clicks for TOFU vs. MOFU/BOFU.
2. Branded search volume change
How to measure: Use Google Trends or a classic keyword tool (Ahrefs, SEMrush) to track branded search volume over time. Correlate drops with TOFU traffic declines and conversions from organic.
3. Assisted conversions drop
How to measure: In GA4 or another MTA model, compare YOY assisted conversions from organic search. A sharp drop suggests TOFU content was influencing downstream revenue.
2. Platform shifts
Another explanation is that conversions are happening more on other platforms instead of Google Search.
While Google’s ad market share has grown over the last five years, search behavior has diversified across multiple ecosystems:
TikTok, YouTube, Reddit, LinkedIn, Instagram, niche forums - all of which have their own “search” layers.
YouTube has long been the second-largest search engine in the world.
Reddit is now the second-largest site in the US (only Wikipedia is bigger), and Google is surfacing Reddit content more prominently, except in e-commerce.
The biggest shift, however, may be to LLMs.
ChatGPT alone sees 2.5 billion prompts per day. [4] While many prompts are additive to Google Search and exploratory in intent, it’s unlikely there’s no overlap with purchase-driven queries.
Why this is happening now:
Google’s increased integration of Reddit results (high-trust user content) changes click patterns.
New LLM model releases (ChatGPT o3, Gemini 2.5) improve quality and speed, keeping users inside AI environments longer.
AI-first platforms are beginning to feel less “experimental” and more like a default research tool.
Signals to check:
1. Referral traffic from non-Google search platforms
How to measure: In GA4, track YOY referral traffic from YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, LinkedIn. See if gains coincide with Google organic losses.
2. Share of search activity across platforms
How to measure: Use Similarweb, Statcounter, or GWI to compare platform-specific search volumes and market share over time.
3. Self-reported attribution
How to measure: Ask users to fill out a short survey about where they first and last saw your brand after signing up or buying.
3. Channel shifts
It is also possible that the clicks that would have gone to organic search are now going to paid search. The logic is simple:
When AI Overviews or zero-click results satisfy most of the informational need, the only prominent offers left are often ads.
If users still want to explore a product or service after reading an AIO, they might be more likely to click the sponsored result than scroll further to organic links.
The timing matches AIO rollout phases. If we see Google reporting strong Search revenue growth while organic traffic declines, it is a sign the demand has not disappeared - it is just being monetized differently.
Alphabet’s Q1 2025 10‑Q [5] reveals that paid clicks from Google Search either grew or hit 0% growth in the last 10 quarters, but never declined.
Impressions (from Google Network), on the other hand, saw the opposite trend.
Whenever paid impressions drop, paid clicks go up because lower ad inventory means advertisers need to pay more for traffic.
Q2 2025 earnings [6] highlighted that Search ad revenue grew 12% year‑over‑year. Industry benchmark data reveals that the average Google CPC in 2025 lands at $5.26 - up approximately 13% year-over-year. [7]
So, less ad inventory leads to higher CPCs and more paid clicks. Since we don’t know how many AI Overviews Google shows ads for, we can’t say with certainty that more clicks are going to ads as a direct result, but the data does show that more clicks are going to ads.
Signals to check:
1. Organic vs. paid search traffic share
How to measure: In GA4, compare YOY sessions from organic search vs. paid search. Look for paid’s share increasing as organic drops.
2. Paid search impression and click growth
How to measure: Pull impressions and clicks from your Google Ads account (or industry benchmarks) over the last 12 months and compare to pre-AIO periods.
3. CPC and CPA trends
How to measure: In Google Ads or industry benchmarks, track YOY CPC and CPA changes in your vertical. Rising CPC with organic decline suggests mix shift.
4. Attribution shifts
One (popular) possibility is that the influence of organic search has not changed much, but the way we measure it has.
Essentially, classic attribution methods are broken.
In the classic model, the path was:
Search → Click → Landing Page → ConversionNow, the path may look more like:
Search (or AIO) → Brand Recall → Direct Visit → ConversionAI Overviews answer the user’s question before the click, so when they are ready to buy, they bypass the search click entirely and go straight to the homepage or an app.
In analytics, that conversion shows up as direct traffic, not organic search.
Attribution leakage has always been a challenge for SEO, but AI-driven summaries and brand mentions make it worse.
Because it's a demand capture channel, consider that SEO takes much more time between first and last touch to convert users than the default 90-day lookback window.
Often, the last touch is prone to paid channels because advertising tips people over the edge.
Also, it's not uncommon for users to switch devices during a purchase cycle, making attribution way harder. Lastly, most attribution tools are geared towards advertising.
If you only track last-click conversions, you may underestimate the true contribution of search visibility.
Signals to check:
1. Direct conversions are up while organic conversions are down
How to measure: In GA4, compare YOY direct channel conversions vs. organic. Look for inverse movement.
2. Branded search stable or rising
How to measure: Use Google Trends or a keyword tool to track branded search queries. Stability with organic session decline suggests clicks are being skipped.
3. Multi-touch attribution still shows search influence
How to measure: In GA4 (data-driven model) or a dedicated attribution tool, check if search remains a common first or assist touchpoint even when last-click conversions fall.
5. Economic impact
Are SEO conversion rates down because people simply have less money?
There is credible evidence that macro conditions in the U.S. are weighing on conversion rates:
1. Price sensitivity and promotion dependence
Adobe reports that shoppers were unusually price elastic during the holiday season of 2024. A 1 percent drop in price produced a roughly 1.03 percent rise in demand, indicating elevated sensitivity to discounts. That effect implies conversions were heavily promotion-led. [8]
Adobe’s Digital Price Index shows online prices have fallen for 33 straight months through May 2025, suggesting merchants are discounting to stimulate demand. Sustained discounting typically lifts conversions only when price cuts are material, and it compresses margins. [9]
2. Consumer caution and mix shift
Salesforce’s Shopping Index commentary notes U.S. shoppers “buying less,” prioritizing essentials, and trading down in 2025. It also cites 0 percent U.S. ecommerce sales growth in Q1 2025, consistent with softer sensitivity to purchase. [10]
Consumer confidence has improved slightly but remains soft relative to 2024, which tends to dampen conversion rates. [11]
3. Household finance constraints
The New York Fed reports total household debt at a record $18.39 trillion in Q2 2025, with delinquency rates up from earlier periods and credit card balances at $1.21 trillion.
Higher borrowing costs and rising delinquencies constrain checkout conversion, especially for lower-income cohorts. [12]
4. Observed conversion pressure in digital benchmarks
Contentsquare’s 2025 Digital Experience Benchmark finds online conversion rates fell 6.1 percent year over year, attributing much to experience friction.
In context with the macro signals above, this supports a broader environment where it is harder to turn visits into orders without heavier incentives. [13]
But…
Overall, U.S. ecommerce dollars are still growing in many periods, including +5.6 percent year over year in Q1 2025 and strong holiday spend, so demand has not collapsed. Growth is being “bought” through price cuts and promotions, which can mask weaker underlying conversion propensity. [14, 15]
Also, you could argue these economic conditions have been in place for a few years.
Why would they impact SEO conversions so much now?
Signals to check:
1. Organic conversion rate trend vs. other channels
Track monthly SEO conversion rates alongside Paid Search, Direct, and Email.
If all channels decline in parallel, macroeconomic pressure is a likely driver.
If Organic drops disproportionately, AI Overviews are adding to the decline.
2. Correlation With Economic Indicators
Compare Organic CR trends to macro metrics like CPI, inflation rate, Consumer Confidence Index, and online price trends (Adobe DPI).
Look for statistically significant correlations, like CR rising when CPI falls or confidence increases.
If patterns are similar across Paid Search and Direct, macroeconomic factors are likely influencing purchase readiness.
3. Promotion Elasticity
Measure CR lift during promotions vs. baseline for Organic, Paid, and Direct traffic.
A bigger lift than in prior years - especially if mirrored across channels - indicates conversions are increasingly discount-driven, a sign of macro pressure.
Verdict
If you’re experiencing a decline in SEO conversions in 2025, it’s likely not due to one specific reason.
In fact, it’s likely that all 5 options are playing into SEO conversion drops across the web.
To what degree each option has an impact matters from site to site and industry to industry.
That’s why it’s so important to run the analysis I recommend in each section above for your own data. (And for premium subscribers, I give more tactics on how to measure shifts below.)
Future implications
AI Mode will intensify the downward trend of SEO conversions.
I don't think SEO will decline to 0 because a small fraction of people will still click, even in AI Mode.
And Google won't show AI Mode everywhere, because adoption is generational (see the UX study of AIOs for more info). I think AI Mode will launch at a broader scale (like showing up for more queries overall) when Google figures out monetization.
Plus, ChatGPT is not yet monetizing, so advertisers go to Google and Meta - for now. And that’s my hypothesis as to why Google Search is continuing to grow.
At least for the time being.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens next in the coming months.
Premium section: 3 tactics for measuring shifts
In addition to the analyses recommended above, I’m going to walk you through 3 tactics that make my life easier when I’m looking for drivers of SEO conversion drops.
This is my exact process. Let me know if you have any questions about how to make it work for you.
Tip 1: Measure TOFU content in Search Console
To see only TOFU queries/content in Search Console, I like to use a long RegEx: