Informational queries at the top of the funnel lose clicks to summarised answers. That much is now measurable across every client property we manage.
What did not change is the underlying requirement: to be cited by an answer engine, your content must be crawlable, unambiguous about who wrote it, and specific enough to be worth extracting.
Where traffic actually moved
Definitional and how-to queries dropped between 18% and 40% in click-through across our portfolio. Comparison, pricing and "best X for Y" queries held or grew, because those decisions still end in a click.
Branded search grew everywhere, which is the clearest signal of where the strategic emphasis belongs.
The practical response
Structure content so a machine can extract a claim and attribute it. Invest in the middle and bottom of the funnel, where intent still converts. Build entity clarity through structured data and consistent authorship. And measure assisted conversions, not sessions, because the session count is now a worse proxy for value than it has ever been.
Written by the Astral Turbines team.
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