Few industries have absorbed as much disruption from generative AI in the past two years as search engine optimisation. With AI Overviews appearing on roughly a quarter to half of informational queries and research showing that approximately 93% of Google’s AI Mode searches end without a single click, agencies are rebuilding their playbooks in real time.
To understand what this transformation actually looks like from the inside, we spoke with Victor Karpenko, founder and CEO of SeoProfy. The agency has been testing AI search tactics since 2022 and now serves more than 250 clients across SaaS, finance, and ecommerce. He shared a candid view of the operational, strategic, and commercial pressures defining the field today.
The end of the click as the default success metric
Q: Victor, what is the single biggest shift agencies have had to make over the past two years?
The clearest change is that visibility and traffic are no longer the same metric. For two decades, the industry built a strategy around ranking number one and counting clicks, but that equation has broken. When users get a complete answer inside an AI Overview or directly from ChatGPT, a brand can be cited everywhere and still see flat referral traffic.
