Mostly it depends on which queries your buyers type. We checked 8 buyer questions about SEO in Google India on 11 August 2026. All 8 returned an AI Overview, and in 4 of them the first source named was a company selling SEO. Three city-qualified searches returned none.
Type the question into Google and an AI Overview answers it for you, in the affirmative, before a single organic result. So the first useful question is not whether the answer is right. It is who supplied it.
Who is answering this question for you right now?
We searched eight buyer-side questions about paying for SEO in Google India on 11 August 2026 and recorded one thing per query: which source the AI Overview named first in its citation panel.
| First source Google named | Queries |
|---|---|
| A company selling SEO services | 4 of 8 |
| A Reddit thread | 3 of 8 |
| Google's own developer documentation | 1 of 8 |
"On eight questions about whether to buy SEO, the first source Google named was a company that sells it four times, and a forum thread three times."
Across those eight answers Google credited 64 sources in total. None of them can tell you the one thing that decides your answer, because none of them has seen your queries.
Which of your queries actually return an AI answer?
That part is measurable. We pulled Ahrefs SERP feature data for 160 India queries in the marketing services category and recorded whether an AI Overview appeared, split by query type.
| Query type | AI Overview appeared | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Informational, question form | 74 of 80 | 92.5% |
| Commercial, no city name | 22 of 50 | 44.0% |
| Commercial, with a city name | 0 of 30 | 0.0% |
In the same browser session we searched three city-qualified commercial queries. None returned an AI Overview, which is what the larger pull predicted. The method and its limits sit in our analysis of which query types AI Overviews actually take.
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What does Google say about when an AI Overview appears?
Google documents this rather than leaving it to inference. Its guidance for site owners states that "AI Overviews are only shown when our systems determine that it is additive to classic Search, and as such, often don't trigger".
The same guidance on AI features and your website says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special optimisation is necessary. Being eligible for a snippet is the bar.
On what earns the place, Google's guidance on people-first content asks whether a page offers original information, reporting, research or analysis, and warns against mainly summarising what others have already said.
"Google's own position is that AI Overviews often do not trigger. Our data says the queries where they do not are the ones with a city name attached."
When is SEO not worth it?
We have talked people out of buying search work for every one of these reasons.
- You cannot fund it for two quarters. Organic work that stops halfway returns nothing at all, so a short budget does better in a channel that can finish inside it
- You need revenue this quarter. Organic compounds slowly. If the gap is immediate, paid search is the honest answer and any agency saying otherwise is selling you a timeline
- Nobody searches for what you sell. Demand has to exist before you can capture it. Check volume before you check anything else
- Your buyers find you offline. Referral and relationship businesses can run for years without search mattering
- You have two pages and no intention of writing more. There is nothing for a search engine to rank
How would you decide this in an afternoon?
- 1
Write down the ten queries a buyer would actually type, in their words, including the ones with your city in them
- 2
Search each one in an incognito window and record only whether an AI answer appears
- 3
Count how many of the ten carry an AI Overview and how many do not
- 4
For the ones that do, read which sources it credited and ask whether you could plausibly be one of them
- 5
Check your pages are reachable and readable before spending anything on content
Step four is the one that changes minds. Step five is the one most often skipped, and if a crawler cannot read your page then none of the rest applies, which is the diagnostic we set out in the two reasons a site is absent from AI answers.
What this cannot tell you
- Presence is not traffic loss. We measured whether an AI Overview appeared, not whether it cost anybody a click. Settling that needs a before and after on the same queries, which we have not run
- Eleven live queries is a spot check, not a study. One session, one location, one logged-in browser. AI Overviews vary by user and by day, so treat the live numbers as an illustration
- The sample is one category in one country. 160 marketing services queries in India. Your sector may behave differently and we would not assume otherwise
- The zero has an innocent explanation we cannot rule out. It is Ahrefs' record of what its crawler saw, and incomplete coverage of local results would look the same
- A zero at n of 30 is not a zero everywhere. It is consistent with a true rate of up to 9.5% at 95% confidence, so read it as uncommon rather than impossible
Key takeaways
- The useful question is not whether SEO works, it is which of your queries return an AI answer at all
- On 8 buyer questions searched live, every one returned an AI Overview, and 4 named a company selling SEO as the first source
- In 160 India marketing queries, AI Overviews appeared on 74 of 80 informational searches and none of the 30 carrying a city name
- Google states that AI Overviews often do not trigger, and that no special optimisation exists to appear in them
- Ten queries and an incognito window will tell you more about your own situation than any published benchmark
Frequently asked
Is SEO dead?
No, and Google says so on its own results page. We searched "is seo dead" in India on 11 August 2026 and an AI Overview appeared citing seven sources, opening with the statement that SEO is not dead but that traditional tactics have changed. What has changed is which queries carry an AI answer at all.
Do AI Overviews reduce clicks?
We have not measured that and will not claim it. Presence is not the same as traffic loss. Google states that clicks from result pages with AI Overviews are higher quality, meaning users spend more time on the site. That is Google's own account of its own product, so weigh it accordingly.
Is SEO worth it for a small local business?
This is where our data is most encouraging. Of 30 commercial queries carrying a city name, none returned an AI Overview, and three live city-qualified searches on 11 August 2026 returned none either. If your buyers search with a place attached, the classic result is still the result.
Will AI replace SEO?
The academic work points the other way. The KDD 2024 paper that introduced generative engine optimisation reports visibility gains of up to 40% in generative engine responses, measured on its own benchmark sample of user queries spanning multiple domains, and notes the effect varies by domain. Something you can still move by that much has not stopped mattering.
How do I measure whether any of this is working?
Search Console. Google states that sites appearing in AI features are counted in the overall search traffic in the Performance report, under the Web search type. There is also a Generative AI performance report covering AI Overviews and AI Mode impressions, which Google says it is rolling out to a subset of website owners. No file needs publishing to be eligible.
Sources
Adith Krishnan
Co-Founder & COO, Kula Digital
8+ years building marketing that is measured in revenue. Runs strategy, AI search visibility, and education marketing at Kula. Written from the studio in Coimbatore.