Something has been nagging at me across our client base for the past year.
Organic search traffic is dropping. Not for one or two clients. Across nearly all of them. And yet in a number of those same businesses, leads, enquiries and sales are actually increasing. That combination of less traffic and more revenue doesn’t make intuitive sense until you understand what’s happening to search right now.
We’re making sure those clients are being found in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and other large language models. Not just in Google. That’s the difference.
The earthquake nobody fully prepared for
ChatGPT launched in November 2022. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to call it the biggest change to the internet since it came into existence. It didn’t just introduce a new tool. It fundamentally changed how people behave online and how they use search.
The shift is most visible when you separate out why people go to search in the first place. There are really two reasons. People either want to buy something, or they want to learn something. Every search query you’ve ever typed fits into one of those two buckets.
What’s changed is the “learn something” bucket. People are increasingly going to AI platforms for that. The experience is simply better. Instead of scanning a page of blue links and stitching together an answer yourself, an AI just gives you the answer. Yes, there are still issues with hallucination and accuracy. But it’s getting better fast, and people prefer the experience.
The “buy something” bucket is more stable. When someone has genuine purchase intent, Google still holds its own. The blue links are actually useful when you’re comparing prices and checking competitors before committing.
Why medical device companies are particularly exposed
MedTech buyers are research-heavy by nature. They spend a long time in the learning phase before they ever raise their hand to speak with a vendor. There are stakeholders involved, committees with a say, compliance considerations, and clinical questions that need to be answered before anyone moves.
That research phase is precisely where AI is gaining ground.
If your buyers are going to a large language model to learn about your product category, your clinical applications, or the regulatory landscape, and your brand isn’t part of that conversation, you’re losing ground you can’t see. There’s no analytics report that tells you how many times ChatGPT failed to mention you. It’s invisible attrition.
Compare this to a lower-consideration purchase. Someone researching blinds and shutters will learn what they want, then happily book a free measure and quote. The MedTech equivalent of that journey is far longer and involves far more trust-building. If that trust-building is happening in AI tools, and you’re absent from them, you’re not even in the running by the time they contact a salesperson.
What AI Optimisation actually means in practice
SEO and AI Optimisation aren’t two separate disciplines. Think of them as a Venn diagram with a significant overlap. Keyword strategy still matters. Technical health still matters. But there are specific things you need to do for AI that many businesses haven’t addressed yet.
The one I find most useful to explain is siloing. Siloing is the process of grouping all of your website’s content into clear, coherent categories. Think of your cutlery drawer. Knives, forks, spoons, each in their section. Easy to navigate, clear at a glance. Now think of that second drawer down in most kitchens. Scissors, rubber bands, skewers, string, batteries, things you’ve forgotten about. A complete mess.
If an AI visits your website and finds the second drawer, it doesn’t know what you’re about. It can’t confidently categorise you, and it’s less likely to cite you. If it finds the cutlery drawer, it gets you immediately. It understands the categories, the context, and the relationship between your content. That’s when you start appearing in AI answers.
Beyond siloing, structured data and schema markup are more important than ever. AI actively looks for this to understand your pages. Author authority is another factor worth taking seriously. If the person publishing content about your medical device holds a PhD and has published through universities, that credibility needs to be properly reflected in your site architecture so AI can recognise and weight it accordingly.
Reviews are worth mentioning, with the caveat that this needs to be handled carefully in accordance with TGA and AHPRA guidelines. But where they can be used, they contribute to the signals AI uses to assess credibility.
The window is open. It won’t stay that way.
Many businesses have been doing SEO for years and assume it’s covering them for AI visibility. It’s probably doing part of the job. But not all of it.
The companies embracing AI Optimisation right now are likely winning on both fronts. Better Google rankings, because the underlying content quality and structure is stronger. As well as genuine visibility in AI-generated answers, because they’ve done the work to be findable and citable there too.
The businesses getting in early are the ones who will own the real estate in AI results. That’s how it always goes with new search territory. The early movers build authority that is hard to displace later.
We’re at an interesting moment in history. The landscape is changing, but it’s still very much possible to get on the train. The gap between companies that have addressed this and companies that haven’t is widening.
If you want to know where your business actually stands, we’ve built an SEO and AI Optimisation Audit specifically for this. It covers your site structure, keyword strategy, content, backlinks, technical health, and AI visibility gaps. You walk away with a prioritised report and a definite action plan. The link is below if it’s useful for you.
