• Zero-click searches already dominate 65% of queries (SparkToro)

• AI Overviews scrape content without driving traffic to sources

• Perplexity/AI agents answer complex queries without links

Yet…

• Google still needs fresh, EEAT-compliant content to train its models

• Niche sites with ultra-specific expertise (e.g. medical case studies) still rank

• Technical SEO (Core Web Vitals) matters more than ever for AI crawlers