ePresence

The Brief

49% growth in AI Overview impressions in one month, with only a 5% drop in organic clicks

How ePresence improved its own visibility in Google AI Overviews and AI Mode across Ireland, and proved that AI search and organic traffic can grow together.

Metric	Result
AI Overview and AI Mode impressions	+49% in one month
Google organic clicks	-5% over the same period (which is a small trade-off compared to the AI visibility gained)

We don’t just tell clients how to improve their AI search visibility. We test it on our own website first. This is what happened, and exactly how we did it.

The Opportunity

Google AI Overviews and AI Mode have changed where discovery happens. A growing share of searches now end with an AI-generated answer rather than a list of blue links, and the businesses cited inside those answers are capturing attention that never reaches a traditional search result page.

That created a genuine opening. Optimising for AI retrieval is a young discipline, and most Irish businesses have not yet adapted. The sites that make themselves easy for AI platforms to crawl, parse, verify and quote are the ones being referenced, and at this stage of the shift there is far less competition for those citations than there is for conventional rankings.

There was a second reason to act. As an agency selling GEO and AEO services, evidence matters more than argument. The most credible thing we could do was run the strategy on our own website, measure it properly, and publish the result whichever way it went. Testing on ourselves first means every recommendation we make to a client has already been proven somewhere real.

The Challenge

The obstacle was not technical. It was the assumption almost every business starts with: that AI Overviews are a threat, that they sit above the organic results and absorb the clicks that used to arrive on the website.

That fear leads to inaction, or to a defensive strategy that protects rankings while ignoring AI visibility altogether. It also raises a fair question. If you optimise a site to be easily lifted and quoted by an AI platform, are you simply handing over your content and losing the visit?

There was no established playbook to answer that. AI search optimisation has no equivalent of the well-documented ranking factors that traditional SEO has accumulated over two decades. Getting cited depends on a combination of things working together: whether an AI platform can crawl and load the page quickly, whether it can understand what the page is about, whether it can verify who wrote it and why they are credible, whether the content is structured in a way that can be lifted out of context and still make sense, and whether independent sources corroborate the site as trustworthy.

Any one of those handled in isolation would not move the needle. All four had to be addressed at once, and the outcome had to be measurable in both directions, AI impressions gained and organic clicks retained.

The Approach

We rebuilt four areas of the site at the same time, and tracked both AI impressions and organic clicks throughout so the trade-off could be measured rather than assumed.

1. Technical SEO. AI platforms need to crawl, load and understand a page quickly and cleanly. A slow or messy site is far less likely to be referenced. This meant effective caching, a CDN and GZip compression, image compression with conversion to WebP and AVIF, lazy loading, minified HTML, CSS and JavaScript, HTTPS across the entire site and a clean, logical navigation structure. On top of that came structured data across the site (Organisation, LocalBusiness, Person, FAQ, Service and How-To schema), an LLMS.txt file and a schema aggregation endpoint, giving AI systems a curated summary of the site written specifically for them to read. Last-modified timestamps in the metadata act as a freshness signal AI platforms can pick up on.

2. E-E-A-T. AI platforms are far more likely to cite content when they can verify who wrote it and why that person is credible. Personal bios were upgraded to show qualifications, experience and achievements clearly, linked out to maintained LinkedIn profiles, and every article was attributed to the qualified specialist who actually wrote it. Alongside that, we published original content based on our own research, including original visuals, and published proof of real outcomes rather than claims. Named client testimonials tied to real people and businesses sit across multiple pages, a trust signal AI platforms weigh heavily.

3. Content architecture. This is about how content is structured and connected, not just what it says. We built a semantic network on an Entity, Seed and Node page layout, with internal links running up and down the network to reinforce the relationship between related pages, and enough node articles to answer the follow-up questions AI platforms generate through fan-out search. No orphaned pages anywhere. Every page was optimised for the first bite, leading with the main question and its answer, then short paragraphs, bullets, numbered lists and comparison tables. Each paragraph is written to stand on its own, so an AI platform can lift it out of context and it still makes sense.

4. Off-site citations.The final piece happens beyond our own site. Producing genuinely original content for the Irish market attracts mentions and backlinks from other websites and platforms, giving AI systems independent signals that we are a source worth citing.

Results

AI Overview and AI Mode impressions: +49% in one month Impressions from Google AI Overview and AI Mode grew 49% across the Irish market in a single month, measured in Google Search Console and filtered to AI Overviews and AI Mode only.

Google organic clicks: -5% over the same period Organic clicks fell by less than 5%, a marginal trade-off against the AI visibility gained.

The two numbers matter together This is the finding that changes how the strategy should be approached. A 49% rise in AI impressions against a 5% dip in organic clicks means AI visibility and organic traffic are not in competition. When the fundamentals are handled properly, technical performance, credible authorship, retrievable content structure and off-site trust, the two channels grow alongside each other rather than at each other’s expense.

A tested methodology, not a theory Every element of this approach now sits behind our GEO, AEO, Semantic Content Architecture and Brand Citation services. It has been run end to end on our own site, measured in both directions, and published in full.

Want to be the answer, not just a result? Talk to our AI search team

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About Author

Steven Dunlop

Steven holds a Diploma in Marketing Management and is a Certified Digital Marketing Expert, with over 15 years of experience spanning both traditional and digital marketing disciplines. His career is built on a strong foundation in sales, strategy, and technical execution, making him a versatile and results-driven professional.With roots in a technical background, Steven has worked across a diverse range of industries including Telecommunications, Industrial Automation, Electrical, Lighting and Lighting Control, and Audio Video. He is equally adept at supporting clients in sectors such as hospitality, online training, and other service-based industries.Steven’s core expertise lies in:Traditional SEO: Deep experience in technical audits, on-page optimization, and content strategy across multiple platforms including WordPress, Shopify, and Magento. AI Optimization: Actively developing and applying strategies for visibility in AI-powered search environments such as Google AI Overviews, Bing Copilot, and ChatGPT, including structured data, semantic content, and generative engine optimization. PPC Advertising: Proven success in setting up and managing high-performing Google Ads campaigns, including Search and Performance Max (PMax), for B2B, B2C, and eCommerce clients. Steven prides himself on delivering results that consistently exceed client expectations. His approach is strategic, data-driven, and always aligned with the evolving digital landscape.

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