A new report from ReSO, a Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) platform, shows that AI-powered search engines overwhelmingly favour blogs and editorial content when constructing answers about brands and products. According to the State of Search Report, blogs make up 46% of all citations in AI-generated responses, while editorial articles and listicles account for another 33%. That adds up to nearly 80% of citations coming from narrative, educational formats rather than transactional pages like product listings, which represent just 5.4% of mentions.
The findings come from an analysis of thousands of AI-generated responses across platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. The report notes that 80% of marketers now consider AI answers more specific and contextual than traditional Google results. In fact, 100% of respondents expect AI search to have a meaningful impact on their campaigns, with 69% viewing it as a complement to traditional SEO and 31% anticipating significant disruption.
Click-Through Rates Collapse but Conversions Triple
One of the most striking findings is the dramatic drop in click-through rates from AI search. Where traditional organic search delivered 3-4% CTRs, AI referral traffic now converts at less than 1% even as impressions continue to grow. ReSO describes this as the “crocodile mouth” effect: visibility expands but clicks fall sharply. What makes this shift particularly significant is that users who do click through from AI search are three times more likely to convert than those arriving from traditional organic results. That suggests AI search users arrive with stronger intent and higher trust in the synthesised information they have already received.
Swati Paliwal, co-founder of ReSO, explained the implications for marketers: “AI search has moved from curiosity to habit much faster than most teams expected. The challenge now is not awareness. It is understanding what actually makes a brand appear, get cited, and stay memorable inside these systems. Brands that continue to optimise only for clicks will miss what is really changing: buyers are increasingly forming opinions, shortlisting vendors, and building trust before they ever visit a website.”
Platform Differences and Content Preferences
The report also highlights significant differences across AI platforms. ChatGPT surfaces more than 3,300 unique brands across a standard prompt set, while Google AI Overviews cite about 1,912 and Perplexity around 1,845. Competitive density varies as well: ChatGPT mentions roughly 16 brands per prompt, Google AI Overviews about 12, and Perplexity about 9. These differences mean that optimisation strategies must account for platform-specific citation patterns.
Content preferences are equally telling. Step-by-step guides generate 89% more citations than average, while comparison articles see 156% more mentions. Pros/cons lists, FAQs, and code snippets also perform strongly, while promotional product pages struggle to break through. Perplexity shows the strongest preference for community content (90%+ of citations), while Gemini relies less heavily on it (just 7%).
GEO Emerges as the New Visibility Standard
The report positions Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) as the essential complement to traditional SEO. GEO metrics focus on citations per 1,000 queries—tech averages 12.3, B2B services 6.2—rather than clicks, and track performance across multiple AI platforms simultaneously. Nearly all CMOs (98%) are now investing in Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), but success requires blending SEO crawlability with AI synthesis signals like fluency, authority, and structure.
For digital marketing leaders, the message is clear: AI search has fundamentally changed how brands are discovered. Optimising for synthesised answers rather than individual links is now table stakes, particularly as 25% of Google searches already trigger AI Overviews and that figure continues to climb.
