SEO Isn't Dead. It's the Foundation of AI Visibility.
For two years the story has been that AI would kill SEO. A study of 403,000 AI prompts just found the opposite. The single strongest signal for getting recommended by AI was appearing on Google's first page.
Every few months someone announces that SEO is dead. The latest version says that once everyone asks ChatGPT and Google's AI for recommendations instead of scrolling through search results, ranking on Google will not matter anymore.
A large new analysis says that is backwards. The work that gets you found by AI turns out to be, in large part, the same work that gets you found by Google. Here is what the data actually shows, why it makes sense, and the honest limit that most of the excited coverage leaves out.
The Study
The analysis was run by Ben Wills, a marketer and engineer who founded the SEO data tool OppAlerts. His team looked at 403,000 prompts across 10 different AI models, spanning roughly 100 industries, including many local-service categories, and measured which real-world signals correlated with a business being recommended in the AI's answer.
Take a common business query: best legal services for businesses. The strongest signals for showing up in the AI's recommendation included:
- Appearing in Google's search results for the topic.
- Having a homepage that is clearly relevant to what you actually offer.
- Strong backlinks and domain authority.
- Being mentioned in relevant Reddit discussions.
And the headline finding, the one that should end the "SEO is dead" talk: appearing in Google's results, anywhere on the first page, had the strongest correlation of any single external signal with being recommended by AI. Not ranking number one specifically. Just being on page one at all.
Why This Makes Complete Sense
Once you think about how these models work, the result stops being surprising.
AI language models are trained on an enormous slice of the public web. When a model learns what a good business law firm looks like, it learns it from the pages that were prominent enough to be in its training data. The pages prominent enough to be in that data are, overwhelmingly, the pages that rank. Google already did the work of deciding which pages were relevant and trustworthy, and the model absorbed the result.
On top of that, several AI tools now pull live search results while they answer you. When you ask for a recommendation, the system quietly runs searches, reads what comes back, and summarizes it. If you are not in those results, you are not in the summary.
So good SEO and good AI visibility are not competitors. They are pulling on the same rope. The same relevance, authority, and trust signals that move you up in Google are the signals that get you into the model's answer.
Want to Be the Answer AI Gives?
AldoMedia builds the search foundation that gets Buffalo businesses recommended by Google and by AI. It starts with ranking for what you actually do.
Talk to AldoMedia SEO ServicesThe Honest Part Most Coverage Skips
Here is the caveat, and leaving it out is how this kind of study gets turned into hype.
The same research found that external signals like search rankings, backlinks, and Reddit mentions explained only a minority of AI recommendation behavior. A large share, on the order of 80 percent, comes from inside the model itself, from its training data and tuning, which no business can directly control.
That sounds discouraging until you sit with it. It means two things. First, nobody has a magic button, so be skeptical of any agency promising to "guarantee" you a spot in ChatGPT. Second, of the factors you can influence, appearing in search is the biggest one. You cannot control the model. You can control whether you show up in the sources it was trained on and the results it reads.
That is exactly why the honest framing is not "SEO is dead" and not "SEO is all you need." It is that SEO is the foundation. It is the strongest thing you can actually build on, and everything else stacks on top of it.
The Four Signals, and What to Do About Each
The study points at four practical levers. Here is what each one means for a real business.
1. Appear in Google's Search Results
This is the base layer. If you are not on page one for what you offer, you are missing the single strongest external signal. This is ordinary search engine optimization, and it just became the entry ticket to AI visibility as well.
2. Have a Genuinely Relevant Homepage
Both Google and AI models need to understand what you do without guessing. A homepage that plainly states who you are, what you offer, and where you serve beats a clever, vague one. If a human has to hunt for what you sell, a machine has no chance.
3. Build Backlinks and Domain Authority
Links from other reputable sites remain a core trust signal, and the study found the most-recommended businesses had far more of them than average. This is slow, earned work, not something you buy in bulk.
4. Earn Mentions in Relevant Communities
Real discussion of your business in places like Reddit feeds both training data and live retrieval. This cannot be faked at scale, and trying to fake it tends to backfire. The version that works is being genuinely good enough that people bring you up on their own.
What This Means for a Buffalo Business
If you run a local business in Western New York, the takeaway is refreshingly unglamorous. You do not need a separate, mysterious "AI strategy" sold to you as a new product. You need the SEO fundamentals done properly, because those same fundamentals are now what feed the AI tools too.
Rank for what you do. Make your site clearly relevant and fast. Earn real links and real mentions. Keep your business details consistent everywhere, from your Google Business Profile to your local directory listings. Do that, and you are building the one foundation that serves both search and AI at the same time.
The businesses that panic and chase every new AI tactic will spend a lot and learn that most of it is not controllable. The businesses that quietly nail the fundamentals will show up in both the search results and the AI answers, for the same reasons, without paying twice. This is the same argument we made about how AI agents choose which businesses to recommend.
The Bottom Line
SEO is not dead. The evidence says it quietly became more important, because it now feeds two systems instead of one. The single strongest external signal for getting recommended by AI is the thing SEO has always delivered: showing up on Google's first page for what you do.
It is not the whole building. Nobody controls the model. But it is the foundation, and foundations are the part you do not skip.
Build the Foundation Once, Get Found Twice
AldoMedia helps businesses across Buffalo and Western New York rank on Google and show up in AI answers, with the same solid, technically sound work underneath both.
Contact AldoMedia Web Design & SEOSources
- Ben Wills, OppAlerts LLM Ranking Factors analysis
- The Digital Bloom, breakdown of the LLM ranking factors data
- Search Engine Land, on Google rankings correlating with LLM mentions
Frequently Asked Questions
Is SEO dead now that people use AI to find businesses?
No. A large analysis of AI prompts found that appearing on Google's first page was the strongest external signal for being recommended by AI tools. The AI models were trained on the web, so the same pages that rank well are the ones the models learned from. SEO is not the whole story, but it is the foundation everything else sits on.
What did the Ben Wills AI visibility study find?
The analysis looked at 403,000 prompts across 10 AI models and 100 industries. For a query like best legal services for businesses, the strongest signals for being recommended included appearing in Google's search results, having a highly relevant homepage, strong backlinks and domain authority, and being mentioned in relevant Reddit discussions. Appearing anywhere on page one of Google had the strongest correlation of any single external signal.
If I rank number one on Google, will AI automatically recommend me?
Not automatically. Ranking well makes it far more likely, but the same research found that most of what drives an AI recommendation comes from inside the model itself, from its training data, rather than from any single signal you control. Strong search visibility gets you into consideration. Being widely referenced across the web, in places like Reddit, helps carry you the rest of the way.
Why does appearing on Google help me appear in AI answers?
AI models are trained on enormous amounts of text from the web, and several also pull live search results while answering. The pages that rank well are, by definition, the pages Google already judged relevant and trustworthy, so they are heavily represented in what the model learned and in what it retrieves. Good SEO and good AI visibility are pulling on the same rope.
What should a small business actually do about AI search?
Do the SEO fundamentals first, because they are the strongest lever you can pull. Rank on Google's first page for what you offer, make your homepage clearly relevant, earn quality backlinks, and keep your business information consistent everywhere. Then extend that into the places AI reads, by getting genuine mentions in relevant online communities and keeping your Google Business Profile accurate.