The Role of Websites in the AI Era

Web usage is shifting from attention to intention. 

At this year’s Cannes Festival of Creativity, the CEO of Cloudflair Matthew Prince presented two stark facts to quantify the rapid shift in web traffic caused by AI search. One, in 2025 it takes 3x more content on your site to get a visit from Google Search than it did 10 years ago; and two, 75% of searches are now “zero click,” answered directly in the web browser by generative AI.

AI has already disrupted search. So what are marketers to do? And what does this mean for websites? 

This isn’t the first shift in search behavior. Since Google’s debut in 1998, the algorithm has undergone constant evolution. Voice search arrived with Siri in 2011, and visual search followed with Pinterest Lens in 2017. By 2022, generative AI, led by ChatGPT, had redefined how users ask questions and expect answers.

Today, a rising generation of users and consumers have stopped going to websites to browse: they’ve started going to AI for answers. To remain relevant in the era of GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), website content must adapt to answer questions posed in AI search. 

From a destination for clicks to a platform for experience. 

The transformation underway goes far beyond retiring outdated SEO tactics built for clicks and link traffic. In the age of GEO, websites must evolve from static information hubs into structured, AI-ready knowledge engines.

To stand out, content must be richly structured, contextually aware, and built as much for human readability as for machine interpretability. The goal is no longer just visibility, but also usefulness to AI models that power search, assistance and decision-making.

In short, websites must shift in both form and function, from being a destination for clicks to a platform for experience. To lead in this new landscape, they must account for three emerging realities:

1. AI search is the new top of the funnel.

As generative AI reshapes digital behavior, websites are no longer the first stop: they are the next stop. “Zero-click” search, where users receive answers directly in browsers without visiting source pages, is rapidly becoming the norm. Gartner forecasts a 25% drop in web traffic by 2026, with long-tail dependent, niche websites getting hit the hardest. 

But there is a strategic opportunity in the shift.

Visitors who land on your site after engaging with AI are not just browsing — they are primed, having already asked AI a question that your brand is uniquely positioned to answer. 

They are not just traffic, but high-intent leads.

Take the femcare brand Viv, which saw a surge in qualified traffic in 2024 after the publication of a study linking toxic metals to mainstream tampons. As media coverage increased, AI search queries for sustainable feminine care products surged, resulting in a 4x increase in conversion rates on Viv’s site. The reason? Their site was ready: structured, searchable and solution-focused.

What to do now: 

• Implement Google-recommended schemas, particularly for FAQs and blog content, to improve visibility in AI queries.

• Audit all site content for semantic clarity, consistent taxonomy and descriptive markup.

• Utilize tools like Gumshoe, Geostart and Profound to assess and improve visibility in AI search.

2. A site visit will be a co-created experience.

Conversational AI is redefining how people search and how they expect to engage. Instead of browsing static pages or clicking through menus, users now interact in real time with generative systems that tailor responses to their unique context.

This behavior shift holds massive implications for both transactional and content-driven sites.

In 2025, 47% of Americans used AI search for online shopping. Meanwhile, on content-rich platforms, AI tools are summarizing articles to deliver deeper insights, without requiring users to reach each page.

For brands, this means a website is no longer a fixed journey; it’s a fluid, adaptive conversation.

When your site supports conversational exploration, users do not just consume content: they co-create meaning. Transactional paths become more personalized. Content discovery accelerates, and data from these interactions fuels a flywheel of ongoing optimizations.

What to do now: 

• Implement natural language processing search frameworks, such as Algolia, Coveo or Google Vertex AI, to support dynamic, intent-aware search.

• Use analytics to track conversational journeys from query to conversion, including dropout points and task completion rates.

• Play close attention to queries your AI can’t resolve: these signal needs and opportunities to create a new feature, tools or content.

3. A single visit will initiate an entire journey.

Websites are no longer isolated destinations and have to evolve into agentic platforms that orchestrate outcomes across a broader digital ecosystem.

Powered by contextual signals and AI agents, websites of the future will empower users to accomplish in one visitor session what was once required multiple disconnected visits. These experiences won’t just be personalized: they will be coordinated across brands, platforms and services, increasing their effectiveness.

Here’s what that could look like in practice: AI-enabled brands acting as interconnected agentic platforms. Imagine an apparel site that can help you find not just a great outfit, but create a lifestyle: a shopper looking for an outfit to host a dinner party might be able to plan the full experience including a table setting, decorations, the food menu and drinks. As the shopper browses outfits on the  apparel site with help of conversational AI, they also see shoppable recommended products from partner sites that could complete the experience. 

To enable this kind of orchestration, websites must evolve from content delivery to action execution. Your content becomes a library of skills, personalities and goals for an AI agent to interpret and activate. And your brand's voice? It becomes the operating system of your AI, guiding decisions, behaviors, and outcomes.

What to do now: 

• Internally, prepare your data and services for AI access using tools like Anthropic’s MCP for safe model-to-model execution and governance.

• Externally, explore peer-to-peer agentic frameworks such as Google’s A2A. (agent-to-agent) to support autonomous actions across platforms.

• Begin defining your brand's agentic personality, including ethical constraints, preferred partnerships, and outcome criteria.

As a final implication underpinning all these trends, it’s important to consider the shift in how content must appeal to both humans and AI. Humans tend to prefer concise and straightforward content, whereas AI is more adept at processing lengthy information. Keeping both formats on your site and making them accessible to users in a way that is indexable and smoothly navigable will be critical to appeal both to your human and AI visitors. 

Conclusion: Great data powers great experiences.

To survive and thrive in this world of continuing AI disruption, let’s bring it back to first principles: AI needs data in order to function. For website owners, the data on your site is the fuel for AI search engines to display compelling results. 

You can use the recommendations in this article to refine and evolve your website content to provide even better answers to AI crawlers and stand out to consumers using AI search. Also, as web hosting and CDN platforms like CloudFlare are starting to demonstrate, you can take an active role in how AI accesses your sites. There are analytics tools to monitor and manage which AI search engines are accessing your site, and a new “pay per crawl” framework to monetize the content on your site when it's accessed by AI. 

As a website owner, you also have access to a valuable datastream: the conversations customers have with the AI search and AI chat agents living on your site. This data is a powerful tool to optimize your website content and experience over time to meet user needs.

This is how experience platforms are built.