Google clicks are dropping in every category while buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini instead. Here is our bet on AI visibility.
Every marketing leader we talk to is staring at the same chart: Google Search Console impressions flat or down, clicks dropping, branded queries holding while everything else erodes. It is not their site. It is the market. We are moving - fast - into a zero-click world, and the buyer journey has quietly relocated to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Grok and Google AI Overview.
That is why we built Focala. This is the post explaining the bet, the pain, and exactly what you can do about it.
Why we chose this vertical
The market is huge and the pain is unmistakably clear. AI is here. Your ICP - the same buyers who used to type "best category tool 2024" into Google - is now typing the same question into ChatGPT or Perplexity and reading a synthesized answer with three brands inside it. If yours is not one of them, you do not exist for that buyer.
The attribution is broken. There is no utm_source=chatgpt in your analytics. There is no Search Console for Perplexity. You cannot A/B test your way into a Claude answer. And yet the pipeline impact is real - we see it every week with our partners: deals that show up "self-sourced" but the rep finds out on the discovery call the buyer "saw us on ChatGPT" or "Perplexity recommended us."
Meanwhile every AI engine is making its own ranking decisions about your brand right now, with or without your input. That gap - between the influence AI engines already have on pipeline and the zero visibility most teams have into it - is the vertical. It is the SEO of the next decade, and it is wide open.
The zero-click world is already here
Look at any of our partners' Google Search Console reports. Impressions are flat or trending down. Clicks are dropping faster than impressions, because Google AI Overview is answering the question on the SERP itself. Branded clicks hold up; everything informational is bleeding.
This is not a forecast. It is a measurable, ongoing shift. The traditional SEO funnel - keyword → ranking → click → site visit → conversion - has had a new layer inserted on top of it that captures the answer before the click ever happens. And the layer above it (LLM chat interfaces) skips the click entirely.
Your ICP stopped using traditional search a long time ago for the questions that matter most. Engineers ask Claude. Founders ask ChatGPT. Marketers ask Perplexity. Buyers ask Gemini. The "search" you are optimizing for is no longer where your buyer actually searches.
Are you in the buyer journey prompts?
Forget keywords for a second. The new unit of measurement is the prompt. Three categories matter:
- Awareness prompts - "what tools exist for X", "how do companies solve Y", "what is GEO". These shape the consideration set before the buyer ever knew you existed.
- Discovery prompts - "best X tools in 2026", "top alternatives to Y", "which vendor is right for a 50-person team". These determine whether you make the shortlist.
- Decision prompts - "X vs Y", "is Z worth the price", "what do users say about W". These determine whether you win the deal.
Every brand we audit asks the same three questions: Are we mentioned? In what position? Versus whom? Almost no one can answer those questions today. The teams that can answer them - and act on the answer - are the ones compounding the fastest.
What you can do about it
You do three things, in this order:
- Measure. Baseline your visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Google AI Overview, Grok and Copilot. Track presence, position and sentiment weekly. Without a number you are guessing. Start with the free AEO Audit & Leaderboard.
- Fix the four pillars. New AEO content for prompts you are missing. Refresh existing top pages to be quotable. Technical GEO-SEO (schema, llms.txt, structured Q&A). Outreach to PR, Reddit, comparison sites and listicles - the sources LLMs cite most. See the AEO + SEO playbook.
- Compound. AI visibility is not a launch - it is an index that moves week over week. Run a continuous loop: measure, fix the highest-leverage gap, measure again. The brands winning today started 6 months ago and never stopped.
What Focala is doing about it
Focala is the platform we wished existed when we first watched our partners' Google clicks fall off a cliff. It does all three steps above in one place: monitoring across every major AI engine, generating AEO/GEO content from real buyer language (including direct integration with sales conversations via Gong), technical fixes, and outreach.
We picked this vertical because the pain is universal, the attribution gap is structural, and the window to win the AI visibility index is still open. Most categories have not been locked in yet. The brands that move now will be the ones LLMs cite by default in 2027.
If you want to see where you stand today, run the free AEO Audit and the AI Agents Audit, or book a demo and we will walk through your visibility live.
The zero-click world is not coming. It is here. The only question is whether you show up inside the answer.