A few days ago, I had the strangest craving: to make smoothies. The urge was not simply to drink one — I could walk into almost any supermarket near me and buy one. I wanted to make it myself.
As many of my friends know, my greatest skills do not lie in kitchen matters. I eat to live, not live to eat, so it is quite unusual for me to have such cravings. Besides, I had never made a smoothie before and would not hesitate to admit that I barely knew the procedure needed to make one.
So, I opened ChatGPT and typed: How to make smoothies?
Within seconds, it gave me a breakdown of ingredients, steps, fruit combinations, blending tips, and even suggestions on what to avoid.
As I read through the response, it occurred to me that I could actually make one without having to open Google, click through multiple websites, or sit through long, ad-infested YouTube videos usually packed with irrelevant stories and constant pleas of ‘before we continue, click the subscribe button below’.
As you might imagine, I still did not make the smoothie.
But the reality is that I am not the only person who now turns to AI tools like ChatGPT for answers that would ordinarily require a Google search.
And that behaviour, from ‘Google it’, to ‘ask ChatGPT’, is beginning to change the internet.
AI is Hampering Website Visit
Earlier this year, I read a report that would unsettle almost any journalist: The Washington Post was preparing to cut about 300 employees.
When Matt Murray, the Post’s executive editor, announced the publication’s decision during a staff call, he revealed something many online publishers — from media giants to smaller digital outlets — are quietly struggling with today.
In the last three years, online search traffic, he admitted, had reportedly fallen by nearly half, partly due to the rise of generative AI.
Data from The New York Times shows that monthly digital traffic of Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal has continued to fall since 2022. Washington Post fell to below 40 million last year, from over 70 million in 2022. The Wall Street Journal was no different as its online visitors fell to a similar level.
“We are losing large amounts of money. Your audience has halved in recent years. People are not reading your stuff anymore,” Will Lewis, 2024.
Will Lewis, the publisher and CEO of the Washington Post, was hired in late 2023 to help find a path back to profitability for the once-dominant publication.
The decline in online readership at the Post, among many other factors, can also be traced to the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence.
“Digital traffic has been hampered by generative A.I,” The New York Times wrote in their article about the Post sack.
If web traffic of giants like The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, sites that witness over a million traffic daily, with their domain authority, and publication reputation, are being impacted, then what happens to the website of your small smoothie shop?
Majorly due to Google’s AI overview, nearly 60 percent of Google searches now end without a click to any website, in what has become known as the Zero-Click Economy.
People Are Turning to AI for Search
The world was genuinely stunned when OpenAI released ChatGPT on November 30, 2022.
At the time, it struggled with calculations, coding, writing accuracy, and internet access. People mainly relied on it for simple explanations and basic understanding of topics — things they would ordinarily search for on the web.
But that moment marked the beginning of a real challenge to the dominance of search engines, a dominance Google built during the dot-com era.
Comparing the old GPT-3.5 version to today’s GPT-5.5 is almost incomprehensible. The newer systems can browse the web, summarize information in seconds, reason through questions, and increasingly provide real-time answers. This has made ChatGPT to become the first resort for most people when they seek information.
Today, OpenAI says that more than 900 million people use ChatGPT every week — searching, learning, researching, coding, brainstorming, and, like me, reading tips on how to make smoothies.
It is probably safe to say that every time someone asks ChatGPT a question, a potential web search is lost.
Right?
But if ChatGPT alone posed the threat to search — especially to Google’s near monopoly — one could argue that traditional search would survive comfortably for decades.
The bigger problem for Google is that AI-powered search behavior is now happening everywhere.
Google itself has accelerated this shift through AI Overviews, powered by its AI model, Gemini.
According to Google’s 2025 fourth-quarter report, Gemini surpassed 750 million monthly active users.
Meanwhile, Meta claims that more than one billion people use Meta AI every month, largely because it is integrated into almost all of Mark Zuckerberg’s platforms — WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger.
Spend just three minutes scrolling through X and you will quickly notice how frequently users tag Grok to explain tweets, settle arguments, summarize breaking news, or provide context.
Many of those questions would once have ended with a simple phrase: ‘Google it.’
Now they end with: ‘Ask Grok.’
The Dawn of GEO and AEO
For years, online publishers, businesses, and virtually anyone trying to gain customers on the internet relied heavily on what became known as Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.
SEO is the practice of improving a website’s visibility on search engines like Google. Businesses structure articles, headlines, keywords, and websites in ways designed to increase the chances that Google places them high on search results.
The logic was simple: rank higher, gain more clicks, attract more visitors, and make more money.
But AI is beginning to disrupt that entire system.
As more people turn directly to AI tools for answers — and as Google users increasingly read only AI Overviews without clicking links — two new concepts have emerged: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO).
Generative Engine Optimization focuses on helping content appear inside AI-generated responses. Instead of merely trying to rank high on Google search results, companies now want AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, or Claude to reference, summarize, or recommend their content directly.
Answer Engine Optimization, on the other hand, focuses on structuring content so clearly and authoritatively that AI systems can easily extract and present it as direct answers.
In simple terms, businesses are no longer fighting only to appear on the first page of Google.
They are now fighting to become the answer itself.
How All These Impact African Businesses
For many African businesses — small, growing, but ambitious to reach more customers online — this shift could become both an opportunity and a threat.
For years, many businesses across Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, and other parts of the continent depended heavily on social media visibility and Google traffic to attract customers. A fashion brand in Lagos, a food vendor in Nairobi, or a fintech startup in Kigali could publish content online hoping that search engines would push customers their way.
But what happens when people stop clicking links?
A sharp decline in web traffic could be catastrophic for many African businesses that already operate with limited marketing budgets and depend almost entirely on online visibility to survive.
If AI systems summarize articles, recommend products directly, or answer customer questions without users visiting websites, many businesses may suddenly discover that being online no longer guarantees being seen.
That is why many companies are beginning to rethink how they create content.
Instead of simply stuffing articles with keywords for Google Search, businesses are now being forced to produce clearer, more trustworthy, and more authoritative content that AI systems can easily understand and reference.
The businesses that adapt early may gain a huge advantage.
Because in this new internet era, visibility may no longer belong to the company with the best Google ranking alone — but to the company that AI trusts enough to mention.