01Is SEO Worth It? The Short Answer
Is SEO worth it anymore? The honest answer is no—not the old way. Old SEO, which meant ranking #1 and waiting for clicks, is mostly dead.
But a new way of doing SEO is bringing real results, like 27,003 clicks across five websites in 90 days.
In this episode, Julian Goldie explains why old SEO stopped working and shows you the new way, which he calls the Everywhere Engine. He also shares surprising data about AI search and why AI visitors are more valuable than regular ones.
02Why Old SEO Stopped Working
For 20 years, SEO had one job: be the best answer on Google. Marketers did exactly what Google asked. They answered questions better than anyone.
They covered every angle. They got so good that Google now has clean, perfect answers for almost everything.
Once answers were that good, Google stopped needing to send people to websites. It just reads the answer out loud. This is what AI overviews are: Google reading the internet's homework back to people before they click.
They are not a small feature anymore. Bright Edge tracks AI overviews showing up on 48% of queries, up 58% in a single year. In some topics, like education, they trigger on roughly 80% of searches.
03The Research Numbers That Show the Shift
Several studies show the same clear story. Pew Research tracked 900 people making almost 69,000 searches. When an AI summary appeared, people clicked a result just 8% of the time.
Without one, 15% clicked. People clicked a source cited inside the AI summary itself just 1% of the time.
Ahrefs studied 300,000 keywords. When an AI overview shows up, the #1 result's click-through rate drops by 58%. In April 2025, that drop was only 34.5%.
So in about 8 months, the damage went from a third to more than half. Spark Toro and SimilarWeb found 68% of US Google searches end without a click. Informational searches end without a click 74% of the time, but buy-intent searches only 31%.
ChatGPT passed 900 million weekly active users, and Google's AI mode passed 1 billion monthly users. 37% of consumers start searches with an AI tool.
04The Hopeful Number: Cited Brands Win
Here is the number that should give you hope. Sear Interactive studied 53 brands, 5.47 million queries, and 2.43 billion impressions. They found that brands cited inside the AI answer earn about 35% more clicks than brands sitting below without citation.
So AI isn't just reducing clicks. It is redistributing them.
The real question is: how do you become the name that AI trusts enough to repeat? Whoever gets named gets everything now. Whoever doesn't gets skipped.
That is what the Everywhere Engine is all about.
05The 5-Site Flywheel: How It Works
The first piece of the Everywhere Engine is the five-site flywheel. Instead of one website publishing one article and hoping, Julian runs five small websites. One keyword goes in, one real case study goes in.
The AI writes five different articles with different titles, angles, and examples, and they go out across all five sites the same day.
Every article links to the others where it makes sense. Google gets pinged the same hour with index exception as the API, so it comes and looks straight away. That makes it more likely to get indexed faster.
A flywheel is hard to get moving, but every push adds to the last one. Each article creates fresh impression data. That data reveals new keywords, and those keywords feed the next spin.
06The Secret Keyword Source: Google Search Console
The fuel for the flywheel is your own Google Search Console data. Search Console is Google's free tool that shows every keyword your site appears for. It is the only keyword tool on earth showing data nobody else can see because it is yours.
In June 2026, Google added a dedicated AI performance tracker. It shows your impressions in AI answers for free, and almost nobody checks it.
There are two patterns to hunt for. First, gaps: a keyword with 650 impressions, position 21, zero clicks, but no proper page for it. Google is basically saying, give me a real page and I'll rank it.
So you build the page. Second, leaks: a keyword with 14,000 impressions at position 8 but less than 1% click-through. The page ranks fine, but the title and content don't earn the click.
So you rewrite and improve the page instead of building a new one.
07Quality Control: The 13-Step Rules File
Google is not against AI content. Google is against bad AI content. The way to avoid bad AI content is a written set of rules the AI follows every time it writes.
Julian's rules file has 13 steps. It adds real case studies as a source of truth, so every fact comes from something that actually happened.
It creates five unique articles per keyword—never duplicates. Titles are under about 60 characters, written to earn the click. A relevant case study goes near the top of every page.
A clear call to action is included. And there is a self-improvement step at the end so the file gets sharper every time it runs. Anyone can ask an AI to write one blog post, but the rules file means article number 400 follows every rule as perfectly as article one.
08Why Your Website Matters Less Now
Your own website now matters less than what the rest of the internet says about you. MP Digital studied 82 factors that influence whether ChatGPT recommends a brand. Number one was relevance.
Number two was brand mentions across the web—above your own site's authority. Whatever people say about you moves the AI more than what you say about yourself.
For 20 years, SEO was about pages you control. Now the thing deciding your fate lives on pages you don't. You can't edit a Reddit thread or rewrite someone else's review.
You can only become the kind of brand the internet mentions in the right places. Julian created a subreddit and posts content there. In the last 30 days, it pulled over 244,000 views.
When AI engines crawl the web, they see the brand mentioned next to key terms on Reddit, on the five websites, and on social media. That teaches the AI who you are.
09The One Number That Flips How You Think About Traffic
Everyone panics about losing clicks, but almost nobody looks at the quality of the clicks that remain. Adobe analyzed more than a trillion visits to US retail sites. AI-driven traffic converted 42% better than non-AI traffic, and those shoppers spent 48% more time on product pages.
Ahrefs reported that AI search referrals were just 0.5% of total sessions but generated 12.1% of all signups. A study of 312 B2B companies found AI-referred visitors converting at 14.2% versus 2.8% from Google organic—roughly five times higher. SE Ranking found AI visitors spend 68% more time on your site.
Microsoft Clarity describes AI as a pre-qualification layer. It filters out casual browsers before they ever reach your site. When someone lands on your site because an AI recommended you by name, they've already half decided.
10How to Get Started with the Everywhere Engine
Start with what you know. Write down three to five real results from your business—a client you helped, a test you ran, a before and after. These become the case studies that make your content impossible to sound like AI fluff.
- Open Google Search Console and check the new AI performance report to see if you're showing up in AI answers.
- Hunt for gaps—keywords with impressions but no page built for them.
- Fix leaks first—pages that rank fine but nobody clicks. These are the fastest wins because Google already trusts them.
- Set a rhythm: one keyword a day, 30 keywords a month, with fresh content going out daily.
- Publish beyond your own site—answer questions in communities where your customers hang out, like Reddit, Quora, or LinkedIn.
