AI isn’t just changing search — it’s deciding which brands get ignored.
At Adobe Summit today, Andrew Warden, CMO of Semrush, argued that visibility has fundamentally changed — and that brands now risk being systematically filtered out by AI systems.
- “The idea of standing out is no longer optional. There’s a real risk of sameness,” Warden said.
Because AI systems decide what to surface and what to ignore, brands now must compete for visibility in answers.
AI is changing how discovery works
You can already see the shift in the data, as 60% of Google searches now end without a click to a website.
Users are still searching, but they’re not always visiting websites. They get answers directly from AI systems like Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others.
AI systems are becoming what Warden described as the “new gatekeepers.”
This is part of a broader shift toward the agentic era — where AI systems act as intermediaries, guiding users through the entire journey from question to decision in a single interface.
At the same time, user behavior is changing. People are spending more time in conversational environments, asking follow-up questions, refining queries, and exploring options without leaving the interface.
The result is fewer clicks, but often higher-intent users.
According to Warden, “consumers who are using LLMs convert at least 4x higher than those using search alone.”
SEO is the foundation
Despite ongoing claims that AI will replace search, Warden pushed back.
- “I’m here to tell you today… that [SEO is] not dead,” he said.
Instead, SEO has become more foundational. It’s no longer just about ranking pages — it’s about making sure your brand exists in the data layer that AI systems rely on.
- “SEO isn’t just for humans anymore. This is a training manual for AI right now,” Warden said.
That includes the fundamentals:
- Crawlability
- Indexability
- Structured data
- Authority signals
Without them, your brand won’t show up at all.
- “If you do not have the core SEO principles in place… LLMs will actually wipe you out of the conversation.”
Research supports this: 94% of Google AI Overviews cite at least one top organic result, reinforcing that traditional search signals still underpin AI outputs.
The rise of the ‘bland tax’
One of the most striking ideas from the session was what Warden called the “bland tax.”
- “AI is conditioning itself right now to ignore blandness.”
That means content that feels generic or repetitive disappears.
- “If you are generic, you are average. And if you are average or bland… [you are] invisible.”
AI systems don’t reward sameness. Instead of highlighting your brand, they summarize similar content into a single answer — often stripping away attribution entirely.
- “This is an invisible penalty that you pay,” Warden said.
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