Svitlana Shchehel
Key takeaways
- 15:16AI Overviews now trigger on approximately 90% of Google searches, with zero-click searches increasing to 60% in 2024 (up from 26% in 2022), making traffic visibility a critical challenge.
- 14:15Despite rapid growth in AI engine adoption, AI-driven traffic currently accounts for less than 1% of total website traffic across all LLMs combined (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Bing Copilot).
- 21:26Traffic from AI engines converts 23% better for informational queries and 300% better for commercial queries than average organic traffic, attracting highly motivated users already well-informed about topics.
- 52:22Link building is transforming into digital PR: LLMs show no direct correlation between backlinks and citation frequency, instead prioritizing mentions from authoritative media sources.
- 33:50Avoid creating generic top-of-funnel content; instead build deep, comprehensive coverage of narrow topics from multiple angles using proper structure, readability, and brand credibility to compete for AI citations.
Questions Svitlana Shchehel answered
Commercial queries are affected but not to the extent of informational queries. AI reviews appear less frequently for commercial searches currently, though Google is gradually adding product recommendations and this trend will eventually expand.
Link building is transforming into digital PR work. LLMs show no direct correlation between backlinks and citation frequency; instead they prioritize mentions from authoritative media websites, making PR-driven brand mentions more valuable than traditional backlinks.
Yes, good internal linking and content clusters covering topics from multiple angles work well for both Google and LLMs, as they want to answer specific user questions based on comprehensive topic coverage.
In Svitlana Shchehel's words
“A software developer can come up with some groundbreaking cutting edge technology, get all over the news overnight, get millions of users just weeks after its launch.”
“You can ask AI engines how they arrived at a certain conclusion, and they will list some criteria and explain their choice, which may give you hints on what to fix on your website.”