Will Generative AI Kill SEO for SaaS? How Founders Can Still Get Discovered

Generative AI and Google’s AI Overviews are cutting clicks on informational keywords by 30–40%. SaaS companies are losing vanity traffic, but higher-intent visitors are still converting. SEO isn’t dead. The play now is to focus on brand search, structured answers, multi-format content, and new channels like AI assistants and marketplaces.

The gut punch nobody asked for

If you run a SaaS business, you’ve probably noticed something ~~strange~~ blood-curdling in your analytics in the last few months.

Traffic that used to trickle (or flood) in from Google is down. Like WAY down.

And when you search your own keywords, Google is now doing a cheery AI summary at the top, basically swallowing your hard-earned content and spitting it back out in 67 words.

Thanks, AI.

The fear is obvious: if ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity can answer buyer questions directly, will anyone ever click through to your site again?

This post looks at what is really happening with Google’s AI Overviews and LLMs, why the biggest hit is on informational traffic, and how SaaS founders can adapt their discovery strategies before SEO as they know it slips away.

The impact of AI on SEO: traffic and click-through rates are falling

This is not just paranoia. Multiple studies confirm what founders and marketers are whispering in Slack groups:

Pew Research (2025) found that when an AI Overview appears, users click a traditional result in 8% of searches versus 15% without the summary. That is basically halving your odds.
Ahrefs (2025) showed position-one CTR on affected queries dropped from 7.3% to 2.6%, a 34.5% reduction.
BrightEdge (2025) reported CTR is down around 30% since AI Overviews rolled out, with B2B Tech queries now showing AI answers in more than 70% of cases.
Amsive saw CTR declines averaging 15.5% across 700,000 keywords, with non-branded queries hit hardest.

This erosion is most visible in informational searches, where users are happy to take the AI summary and move on.

Wait, what is an informational search?

In SEO, searches are often grouped into three types:

Informational: The user wants an answer or explanation. Example: “fun Zoom icebreakers” or “what is application performance monitoring.”
Navigational: The user is looking for a specific brand or site. Example: “StreamAlive login” or “HubSpot pricing.”
Transactional: The user intends to take action, like buying or signing up. Example: “best webinar engagement tools” or “buy Slack alternative.”

Informational queries are the most vulnerable to AI Overviews and chatbots because they can be answered in a single summary, without the need to click through to a website.

And the kicker? These summaries often cite Wikipedia, Reddit, YouTube, or your competitor’s blog. You might still be fueling the machine, just not getting the click.

Why informational keywords are the biggest casualty

The biggest hit is on informational queries like “what is X,” “how does Y work,” or “fun Zoom icebreakers” (more on that later).

These searches were the top-of-funnel bread and butter for SaaS marketing teams. No content strategist worth their thesaurus would be caught without a bunch of blog posts titled “What is a CRM?” or “What is a sales enablement tool?”

Now? Google owns your click.

And ChatGPT owns your customer education.

Monday.com’s share price tanks

On the second quarter earning’s call, Monday.com admitted that their organic search strategy had taken a major hit from the AI overviews. All the top of the funnel keywords it had ranked for around team management and project management were now being answered in the search results.

People don’t need to click through to Monday.com’s 2,500 word article.

The impact of this admission was stark. A 40% drop in the share price over the last month.

It’s a bloodbath out there for SEO-driven websites that relied on Google to send them traffic and leads.

The impact of AI overviews on StreamAlive’s web traffic

StreamAlive hasn’t been immune to the rollout of AI overviews either.

We built hundreds of pages around meeting icebreakers using programmatic SEO. These pages pulled in thousands of visitors, but conversion was awful, about 0.6%.

In the last six months, traffic to those pages has halved because Google’s AI Overview can now do an equally good job answering “fun zoom icebreakers.”

But here’s the interesting part: conversions actually went up.

The conversion rate on those pages is now almost 1.3%. The visitors we lost were never going to sign up anyway. The people still clicking are the ones are more motivated and have a higher intent to solve their meeting icebreaker problem (if such a thing exists).

Another interesting trend that has happened in August is the traffic to the icebreaker pages has gone up for the first time in five months AND the conversion rate has gone up.

Is Google’s AI overviews helping to pre-sell people on the need for meeting icebreakers, warming them up before they click through to StreamAlive?

It’s a theory.

What this does reveal however is a counterintuitive truth: traffic loss is not always a business loss.

If you built your funnel on fluff traffic in order to gain ‘exposure’, AI is stripping it away. What you are left with may be smaller in volume but higher in intent.

I suspect the traffic loss for Monday.com will be alarming, but not catastrophic as it loses traffic on keywords that didn’t directly convert.

Case study: playing the AI self-full filling cycle game

Now here’s where the new game of generative AI for visibilty gets a bit meta.

We’ve been using generative AI to create lots of top of funnel content for StreamAlive. As you saw above, total signups from these pages have dropped slightly, but given that traffic halved, conversion has gone up.

It almost feels like AI is creating content for AI to reference because now we are seeing more visits from ChatGPT and Perplexity to these AI-generated, programmatic pages. That is bizarre and slightly worrying for the future of generative AI, but right now it is also an opportunity.

The takeaway we’ve got from our observations so far is: generative AI is not only taking traffic away, it is also a channel you can feed.

Well-structured, relevant, and multi-format content (text, video, documentation) gives the models something to cite. We have found that when we publish content in several formats around the same topic, we are more likely to dominate the AI summaries.

Here’s a screenshot from a Google search which shows what we’ve been able to achieve using multiple content types around target keywords.

Not only is StreamAlive heavily cited in the AI overview with links to our YouTube videos and use case pages, it’s also ranking multiple pages from the website at the top, above Microsoft’s own website!

How B2B buyers are using generative AI for research

It is not just Google. Buyers are shifting their discovery habits into generative AI tools.

Forrester reports 89% of B2B buyers now use generative AI somewhere in the buying process.
TrustRadius found 72% encountered Google’s AI Overviews during software research, with 90% clicking at least one cited source.
Adobe says AI-referred traffic to websites has already grown more than 10x in the past year.

Translation: buyers are not only searching in Google, they are asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude for recommendations and answers. The funnel is starting inside AI.

1,000% increase in traffic from ChatGPT

This is clearly illustrated in StreamAlive’s traffic from ChatGPT. In September 2024, Google Analytics tracked just 15 visitors from ChatGPT. By August 2025 there has been a 10x increase to over 170 visits.

That’s just 2% of our overall traffic at the moment, but the traffic from ChatGPT (and other LLMs) converts at over 15% compared to search engine traffic which converts at around 8% overall.

Strategies for SaaS discovery beyond Google

Rumours about the death of SEO are being greatly exaggerated right now.

But the rules have mutated, as they have always done ever since two Stamford graduates built a curious little app call backrub.

What marketers and SaaS founders need to do is adapt to this new normal.

1. Stop chasing vanity traffic

If AI eats the fluff clicks that were never going to convert, let it. Better to have fewer, higher-intent visitors than a flood of people who were never going to sign up anyway.

2. Optimize for being cited in AI Overviews

Structured, authoritative content is more likely to be pulled into AI summaries. Even if users do not click, being cited still influences buyer perception when they shortlist tools.

3. Double down on brand search and demand capture

Make sure that when buyers do move past the AI summary, they are looking for you by name. Stronger brand building, community presence, and consistent messaging are not optional anymore.

4. Diversify discovery channels

Relying only on Google in 2025 is like relying on Yellow Pages in 2005. Buyers are in Slack groups, marketplaces, YouTube, newsletters, and yes, inside LLMs. Spread your bets and test referral sources outside Google.

5. Publish in multiple formats

We have found combining video, blog, and documentation content makes it more likely we dominate AI summaries. Multi-format answers give AI more to latch onto.

6. Keep producing good content

After 25 years in SEO, one thing is constant: every few years the rules change. Generative AI is a monumental shift, but buyers still need information. Better to be present in AI summaries than invisible.

The future of SEO for SaaS in the age of AI

SEO has always been cyclical. Every five years, a “search is dead” narrative pops up. But generative AI is a bigger disruption than mobile-first indexing or featured snippets.

Here is the likely future:

Informational queries will continue to be answered directly in AI tools.
Transactional and branded queries will still drive traffic to SaaS websites.
Content that AI can reference will carry disproportionate influence, even if it drives fewer clicks.
Brand strength will determine whether buyers search for you by name, not just your category.

Wrapping up: clarity in the AI traffic apocalypse

The panic is real. Traffic graphs are heading south. But the real story is not that SEO is dead. It is that the buyer journey is mutating, and AI is the newest middleman in town.

If your SaaS depends only on ranking for “what is [category],” you have got a problem. If you adapt, focus on brand, get cited, and diversify channels, you will come out leaner and stronger.

And if you are sitting there thinking, “Okay, but what the hell do I actually do for my business?” that is where I can help. Book an AI clarity call and we will figure out how your SaaS can survive (and maybe even grow) in the AI traffic apocalypse.