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Many marketing leaders are currently facing the same problem: not enough leads coming through search, even though nothing about their product, pricing, or sales team has changed.
Tim Cameron-Kitchen, Founder of Exposure Ninja, shares the major reason why businesses are seeing fewer leads and less revenue from search, and how to fix it.
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The Real Reason You’re Not Getting Enough Leads From Search
For decades, doing great Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and ranking at the top of Google was the golden ticket. People searched for exactly what you sold, and if you showed up, you got the click and the sale.
That’s changing fast. AI Overviews now sit above the organic results on many searches, giving people the answer before they ever reach a website.
Tim Cameron-Kitchen explains the scale of the problem: “Increasingly, people can use the information in the AI Overview to avoid ever having to click on a website. This study from our friends over at Ahrefs found that AI Overviews reduce the clicks made from search results by 58% when they’re present.”
This isn’t a small dip. It’s a structural shift in how people search, and it’s one of the biggest reasons businesses are seeing fewer leads from channels that used to be reliable.
AI Search Is Rewriting The Buyer Journey
It isn’t just Google’s AI Overviews. AI Search platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Mode are becoming part of how people research and buy.
Tim Cameron-Kitchen points to research showing just how quickly this is moving: “55% of US consumers who’ve used AI are using it for product research at least weekly, and 69% expect AI to play an even bigger role in how they shop in the future.”
As Tim Cameron-Kitchen puts it, bot traffic, including AI agents, “has now surpassed human traffic online for the first time.”
The important detail for marketing leaders here is that traditional search hasn’t disappeared. In fact, only 4% of people say they rarely use search engines. What’s changed is that people now move between AI tools and search engines, researching in one, cross-checking in the other, then heading back to search for reviews or deals before they buy.
That means businesses need visibility in both Google and AI Search, not one or the other.
Turning Declining Traffic Into More Leads And Revenue
Tim Cameron-Kitchen shares two real client examples that show what fixing this problem looks like in practice.
The first is a global skincare brand that came to Exposure Ninja with declining organic traffic. The team ran a technical SEO audit, improved on-page signals, guided the content strategy, and optimised specifically for AI search.
“They saw a 27% year-on-year (YoY) increase in organic traffic against the backdrop of fewer people clicking on websites. We managed to more than double the number of AI Overviews that their brand was being recommended and mentioned in.”
As Tim Cameron-Kitchen puts it, this happened “despite there being a decline in the number of clicks in their space.”
The second example is even more striking. This business saw a 14.5% YoY drop in organic traffic, while its competitors dropped between 40% and 60%. Despite the fall in traffic, the business had its best-ever revenue month from search, with average order value up more than 10%.
Tim Cameron-Kitchen puts the reason down to AI visibility:
“Their mentions in AI Search results have increased 107% in their primary target market and over 300% in their secondary market. Because they are now so visible in AI Search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, they are now appearing in front of 119 million users of these tools every single month.”
As Tim Cameron-Kitchen puts it, “when people do go to their website, they spend more, and their total revenue has actually gone up as a result.”
What To Do If You’re Not Getting Enough Leads From Search
For marketing leaders wondering whether this trend will simply correct itself, Tim Cameron-Kitchen is direct about it.
“You can either hope that all of this stuff goes away and these changes sort of correct themselves over time. To be honest, that’s incredibly unlikely. All of the trends show AI search increasing and traffic continuing to decrease, meaning you have to have a game plan for this new era if you’re going to win.”
In practice, that means two things working together:
- Solid SEO to hold your ground in organic search.
- Dedicated AI Search Optimisation for how AI tools reference and recommend brands.
Both of the businesses featured in this article started with an SEO and AI Search audit, dissecting their visibility in traditional search and in AI tools, then building a step-by-step plan to close the gap.
If you’re facing not enough leads coming through search right now, you need a clear plan for both traditional and AI Search. Book a consultation call with the team at Exposure Ninja and we’ll show you exactly where the opportunities are.
