Insights on AI search optimization, AEO strategies, and research from the Wayfinder team.
A three-part research series analysing 14,728 search queries. 67.7% of organic opportunity is being absorbed by AI Overviews and SERP features. Explore the data, read the analysis, and get the research paper.
We analysed 14,728 search queries across four intent categories and two devices. The result? 67.7% of organic search opportunity is being absorbed by AI Overviews and SERP features before it ever reaches a website. And your keyword research tool won't tell you.
Across 14,728 queries, 42.3% have AI Overviews that fully satisfy user intent. Intent absorption averages 58.8 — and in informational queries, it's 63.3. This is the sub-index where AI doesn't just push you down the page. It removes the need to click entirely.
We analysed 14,728 queries across 63 sectors and 389 content types. The headline number is 67.7% composite absorption — but the real story is where that absorption lands. Here's which sectors are uninhabitable, which are defensible, and what to do about it.
Marketers track whether AI mentions their brand. But the retrieval pipeline that decides which passage gets surfaced is opaque, vendor-controlled, and varies massively across configurations. We benchmarked seven embedding models across 28,350 LLM evaluations. Two models scored identically to ten decimal places — and retrieved completely different content. The mean is hiding the only thing that matters.
We benchmarked nine chunking strategies across 36,450 LLM evaluations. The content that wins AI retrieval looks nothing like SEO-optimised copy. Zinsser described it in 1976.
AI hasn't just made bad work easier to produce. It's removed the friction that used to prevent bad work from reaching an audience. The walls were doing important work.
The industry keeps citing 8.5 billion daily Google searches to dismiss AI search. But when you actually decompose that number, the searches that shift consumer decisions are a fraction of the headline.
The advertising industry has spent years claiming AI will kill creativity. The data tells a different story: most creative work was already mediocre, and AI just made that impossible to ignore.
The GEO industry is measuring the wrong thing. AI search is brand building, not performance marketing — and the data proves it. Here's what to do instead.
How to conduct an AI accessibility audit of your site using free tools
I ran 3,348 AI navigation tasks across 269 websites. Here's what actually determines whether AI agents find your content.
