With the meteoric rise of artificial intelligence, it’s no surprise that there’s been a fundamental shift in marketing and media strategy. At FoodMix, we plan and place media for both B2B and B2C food companies, whether targeting consumers making decisions in the grocery store or B2B audiences deciding which brands to incorporate into their retail offerings or foodservice operations. So, let’s take a closer look at how consumers, operators, chefs, and procurement teams are actually using AI-enabled search—and how media strategies must evolve to keep pace while still delivering measurable ROI.
The Convergence of AI and SEO
AI and SEO strategies are undoubtedly key to keeping an updated presence online. Making them work together within your marketing strategies is the key to generating reach and engagement. Naturally, there’s a lot of confusion and misunderstanding in this constantly evolving field. The real question for marketers is not whether to use AI, but how to integrate it with SEO into a structured media strategy that still drives qualified demand.
Understand How AI Is Being Used
Today, AI is most often used as a research accelerator. Consumers and B2B decision-makers are using tools like ChatGPT to quickly compare brands and understand options, often before engaging directly with a brand’s website.
Unlike traditional keyword-based search, AI-driven discovery is conversational and contextual. In fact, 90% of B2B buyers report clicking through AI-cited sources to validate responses (TrustRadius). While the number is lower for consumers (41%), it’s still significant. For marketers, that reinforces the importance of being viewed as a credible, authoritative source, not just a visible one.
Generative AI and SEO Serve Different—but Complementary—Roles
Generative AI is currently optimized for information gathering, not transaction-driven search for products or services. Most AI-generated results are sourced from broad platforms such as Quora, Reddit, YouTube, and Wikipedia, many of which are either opinion or general information sites. As a result, they account for a relatively small share (1-2%) of downstream website traffic.
Organic search, by contrast, continues to capture the vast majority of high-intent engagement. Studies show that while AI-driven and sponsored placements together represent a single-digit percentage of clicks, more than 90% of traffic still flows through traditional organic search. For foodservice and consumer brands, SEO remains the most reliable driver of qualified site visitors.
Another interesting tidbit is that while Google still dominates search, as of January 2026, it accounted for 90% of all search traffic, down from 92% in January 2023. While it’s not a significant drop, it’s one to watch.
AI is Driving Fewer Clicks—but Deeper Engagement
While AI summaries may reduce top-line website visits, they are simultaneously improving visitor quality. Casual researchers are increasingly satisfied at the AI level, while users with purchase intent continue through to brand sites. AI is filtering out potential visitors to the site that have no intention of buying or contacting you but are simply looking for quick information. They find the answer and move on to something else. Significantly, one in four searches with AI summary end without further action.
Roughly 26% of searches that show results with AI summaries on the search results page end without any additional clicks to a website further down the page. For searches showing only traditional, non-AI results at the top, that drops to 16% no-clicks (2025 Pew Research Center Study). The lack of action on pages with AI summaries suggests that many users treat AI summaries as complete answers—not a starting point for deeper exploration or purchasing decision.
For marketers, this is a net positive. A smaller pool of highly engaged visitors—operators and consumers actively evaluating products—delivers more value than high volumes of low-intent traffic. We would rather send 100 qualified shoppers to a site than 1,000 information-only visitors. AI is quietly helping make that distinction.
The biggest challenge marketers face will be to fight false information that can occasionally be generated in AI results. Think of this as search engine spam being picked up as reality or authority, then presented to the searcher. Making sure a website is up to date and optimized for easier crawling with correct information is the best way to battle this problem.
Appearing in AI Results May Not Be Your Goal
Depending on business objectives, appearing in AI results is not always the goal. If you’re looking to attract a serious shopper or buyer that will contact you for information or look for a specific product, it’s important to attract them directly to the website. If the objective is to appear in AI results, they are drawn from high-quality, authoritative websites found ranking highly in the search engine index, so you still need to provide the information from which AI generates results—making SEO as important as it has always been.
Best Practices for AI-Ready, Brand-Focused Content
• Employ long-tail keywords. Instead of “butter,” consider “cultured butter for baking.” This assures that your keywords align with user questions and increase your chances of inclusion.
• Create original, quality content. AI prioritizes unique and well-written answers to questions that accurately address user intent.
• Build strong, natural backlinks with this content. Reliable backlinks signal authority, making your content more likely to be included.
• The importance of blogs cannot be overstated. Adding a new one to your site at least once a month is a great way to promote your company and help support your SEO results and AI inclusion efforts with authoritative, positive, accurate information about your brand, product or service. AI results tend to include original, well-written content. A blog gives them information from which to draw.
Looking Ahead: Where AI and SEO Meet with Purpose
Generative AI will continue to influence how B2B2C audiences discover and evaluate information, but it will not replace the role of search. Instead, AI is increasingly dependent on the same high-quality, well-structured, and authoritative content that strong SEO has always required.
As food marketers, the opportunity lies in alignment, not trade-offs. AI optimization should never exist in isolation from SEO or broader media strategy. When search optimization is built around intent and supported by disciplined media planning, brands can attract fewer—but far more qualified—visitors, improve engagement, and ultimately drive better business outcomes. In this way, SEO remains the backbone of digital performance, with AI serving as an amplifier for brands that get the fundamentals right.
If you need help with SEO and AI inclusion for your website, Contact Us today!
