Reclaiming Visibility — What to Do Now That Google Has Changed the Game

By now, most site owners who’ve been paying attention know something's wrong. Traffic is down. Pages that once ranked easily are buried. Some are gone entirely. In quiet forums and closed-door Slack channels, the pattern is clear: this isn’t just another algorithm update. This is a foundational change in how the web is being read, ranked, and returned.

Welcome to the era of answer engines.

The Old Rules No Longer Apply

In the previous landscape, you could optimize for keywords, build backlinks, post blog content, and expect a general upward trend. Google indexed what you published, matched it to queries, and rewarded sites that were active, structured, and (mostly) trustworthy.

Now? You can publish a timely, well-optimized article… and watch it get scraped into an AI-generated summary that appears above your link — or not appear at all. Your expertise is being abstracted, paraphrased, and redistributed without the click. Even the notion of a “top 10 result” feels outdated when most users never leave the AI-generated answer box.

Your content may still exist. But your visibility has been redefined.

What’s Being Prioritized Now?

Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) — now rolling out under the broader Gemini/AI search umbrella — draws its answers from a blend of structured data, machine-learned patterns, and a curated pool of trusted sites. It leans heavily into contextual synthesis rather than direct linking.

Sites being favored tend to have one or more of these traits:

• Brand recognition in their niche

• High engagement signals (think: dwell time, return visits, shareability)

• Explicit structured data that feeds directly into AI summaries

• Clustered topical authority (not just one post, but a series of deeply related ones)

• Expert-authored content with named contributors, bios, and signals of legitimacy

• Semantically rich writing that answers layered questions, not just keywords

In contrast, the typical SEO blog strategy — long-tail posts, modest backlinks, and templated intros — is being deprioritized. Google isn’t just ranking content. It’s curating answers.

You’re Not Just Competing Against Sites — You’re Competing Against the Summary

This is perhaps the most frustrating twist: your article may be informing the answer, but not credited. The AI engine takes a mosaic of sources, synthesizes an original answer, and leaves your link as optional… if it’s shown at all. The reward for your work becomes ambient — invisible to the end user.

This is already triggering major business impacts across industries:

• Independent publishers are seeing up to 60% traffic losses year-over-year.

• Niche e-commerce brands are struggling to appear at all in informational searches.

• Agencies and service businesses are finding that FAQ and “how to” content no longer generates leads like it used to.

• Some companies are pausing SEO investment entirely — not because they should, but because they don’t understand the shift.

So What Now?

You can’t keep doing what worked in 2022 and expect results in 2025.

But you can adapt. If you shift the goal from ranking to recognition, your strategy evolves. Instead of chasing keywords, you start building language the engines respect. You don’t just optimize content — you architect it with entity awareness, narrative depth, and AI-context relevance.

This means:

• Structuring your site and schema so Google knows who you are — not just what you say.

• Publishing clusters of interconnected content that reinforce topical authority.

• Redesigning your content for AI interpretation — not just human scanning.

• Tracking visibility loss the same way you used to track traffic gains.

• Elevating thought leadership that can’t be easily paraphrased or summarized.

In short: you stop playing the volume game. And start playing the recognition game.

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About the Author

Sarah A. Sherman is the founder of Illustrated Domain, a strategy-led digital agency recognized for helping brands thrive in a rapidly shifting search landscape. With 30+ years of experience spanning finance, film, and global nonprofit leadership, her work blends creative clarity with systems thinking. she now advises high-impact businesses navigate the intersection of AI search, SEO, and digital trust—building not just traffic, but reputational equity that endures.

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