The short versiontap to open or close
- If your traffic dipped this year, you’re not alone. In our research, 11 of 16 kinds of service businesses saw Google searches fall back this year after a big year before it.
- People still want what you sell. Searches are higher than three years ago for 13 of those 16 services. Demand didn’t disappear.
- What changed is the top of the page. Google now answers many searches with AI before showing a single website. When it does, websites keep just over half their usual clicks (8% of visits instead of 15%).
- The attention didn’t vanish. It spread out. It now lands on the links, on the AI answer, and on tools like ChatGPT. If your site isn’t built to show up in all of them, you’re losing customers you never see.
- It’s not theory for us. Two of the newest businesses to reach out to Stand And Stretch this fall found us by asking ChatGPT.
- Search is splitting in two: the links, and the answer above them. Keep ranking, and start working on being the name the answer mentions. That’s AEO, answer engine optimization.
If your traffic dipped this year, you’re not alone
This year we kept hearing the same question from business owners: “My site hasn’t changed. Why are fewer people finding it?” So we went looking for the answer the way we would for any client: rule things out one at a time, with data, until only one explanation is left.
We looked at sixteen kinds of service businesses across home services, luxury and specialty work, from plumbers and roofers to med spas, wedding photographers and piano teachers. Then we tested the usual suspects.
Suspect one: the economy
The first instinct in a slow stretch is to blame the economy. We compared five years of search interest for all sixteen services with gas prices, inflation, unemployment, consumer sentiment, retail sales and consumer spending.
We found no reliable link. We ran 1,056 comparisons. Some looked convincing at first, but they came from things trending at the same time, not from one driving the other. Once we accounted for that, only 16 held up, fewer than chance alone would produce.
The ad market says the same. The largest agency forecast expects US ad revenue to grow 11.9% in 2026 (WPP Media, June 2026). Businesses are still spending to be found.
Suspect two: demand
Here’s what Google’s own search volumes show. For most services, the year from September 2024 to August 2025 was a boom, and this year pulled back from it. But step back three years and the picture is healthy: searches are up for 13 of the 16 services. People still want what you sell.
So if this year felt slower than last year, part of that is last year being unusually big. That’s worth knowing. It isn’t the whole story.
Suspect three: the season
Every business has a rhythm, and they’re not the same. Landscaping searches run about a third above average in spring and fall well below it in winter. Wedding photographers peak in May. HVAC repair has its own highs and lows.
Know your season and plan around it. But a seasonal dip comes back every year. What we were seeing didn’t.
Suspect four: the competition
Maybe someone else simply took the spot? In one niche we track closely, we followed the top three competitors all year. All three lost most of their search visibility at the same time, by roughly the same shape: down 75%, 65% and 62% in the number of searches each one ranks for. Nobody won that fight. The whole field lost it together.
When everyone in a field falls at once, the cause isn’t in the field. It’s on the page they’re all competing for.
What changed: the answer moved above the links
So we looked at the page itself. On 8 of 8 searches we checked in that niche, Google showed an AI answer before any website. The links are still there. They just start further down, under an answer that often ends the search on its own.
That matters because of what it does to clicks. Pew Research found people click a search result on 15% of visits normally, but only 8% when an AI summary appears, and they click a link inside the summary just 1% of the time (Pew Research Center, July 2025). Ahrefs found the top-ranking page earns 58% fewer clicks when an AI Overview sits above it (Ahrefs, February 2026).
Put simply, AI is taking nearly half the clicks. When Google answers first, websites keep just over half of what they used to get. That attention didn’t disappear. It spread across more places: the links, the AI answer, and tools like ChatGPT. If your site isn’t built to show up in all of them, you’re losing customers you never see.
Google isn’t losing. It’s splitting.
This is where the story usually gets told wrong. Google isn’t fading. It handles 86% of US searches and 91% worldwide (StatCounter, August 2026), and about 95% of ChatGPT users still use Google (Similarweb data via Search Engine Journal, July 2026).
What’s changing is where the answer happens. Search now has two halves: the links, and the AI answer above them. And more people skip the links altogether and ask an AI tool directly.
Who the AI names
In that same niche, we asked ChatGPT and Gemini who to hire. ChatGPT named a handful of individual businesses, and not always the ones that rank highest on Google. Gemini pointed people to big marketplaces and directories. And when ChatGPT answers general questions in that field, the sources it leans on are places like Wikipedia, Reddit and industry directories, not the businesses’ own websites.
That’s the gap. The business that gets named isn’t always the one that ranks first. It’s the one the AI has the clearest, most quotable information about.
Why we’re taking our own advice
This isn’t a trend we’re watching from a distance. This fall, two of the newest businesses to reach out to us found Stand And Stretch the same way: they asked ChatGPT. Neither came from a Google search. Neither came from an ad.
That’s the other half of search working in real life. The answer named us, and the conversation started there. So we’re running the same AEO work on our own site that we recommend here, starting with an audit of every page.
What to do: build for both halves
The good news is you don’t have to choose. Google’s own guidance says that optimizing for AI search “is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO” (Google Search Central, July 2026). The work that gets you named in AI answers also helps you rank.
- Answer the real questions, in plain question-and-answer form. A short FAQ on your most important service pages, marked up so machines can read it, is the format AI answers quote from.
- Tell machines exactly who you are. Structured data that says what you do, where you do it, and what you’ve done.
- Show up where AI looks. Directories, review sites, industry listings and the places people discuss your field. Every industry has its own version.
- Meet the new searchers. If people in your field are searching for an AI version of what you do, write the honest guide to when a human wins.
- One page, one answer. A clear page for each service, each with its own purpose, so both Google and AI tools can tell exactly what each one answers.
- Plan around your season, not the headlines. Build in your slow months so you’re strongest when your season returns.
Not sure which of these matter most for you? That’s what our free site audit is for. It shows how your site stands in both halves of search and helps you determine your next steps.
The bottom line
Search isn’t going away. It’s splitting in two. The businesses that keep ranking and get named in the answer will win both halves. The ones waiting for AI to settle down will find the answer was written without them.
How we did this: search volumes are Google Ads data, US, September 2022 to August 2026, via DataForSEO; the economy comparison used five years of Google Trends search interest against Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED) data; ranking and AI-answer data come from DataForSEO Labs, live Google results and DataForSEO’s AI Optimization tools, checked in September 2026. Search volumes are Google’s estimates, and AI answers vary from one ask to the next.