This SEOer took 77 AI search studies & scored them against 5 criteria, kept the good ones & summarized the most important findings. It's actually not a that dry of a read. Here are my favorite nuggets:

• All organic search traffic isn't dying - it's mostly publishers feeling the pain.
• Most AI use happens in mobile apps, which you miss if you only track web referrals
• People don't click through from AI search to a website much. They see brands in AI output, google them, then visit the website directly and/or do a reputation check
• You don't have to rank well in traditional search to get cited in AI responses because AI prioritizes relevant passages, not authoritative pages with lots of backlinks
• Chunking is real, the ski ramp effect is real
• YouTube & Reddit dominate AIO & AI Mode citations; LinkedIn, FB & Google itself round out the top 5
• For professional services, 80%+ of AI citations come from third-party sources, not brand-owned content
• About half of users make a purchase after AI research, but not directly: they go and verify the AI recommendations on Google, brand websites, review sites, and YT. AI influence is there but not trackable.

> ...rankings and AI presence have decoupled, where your website is barely considered, and where the brands showing up consistently are already embedded across the sources the model draws from.

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> Two systems are now running in parallel. Understanding how each one works is becoming a requirement if you want to maintain visibility and influence in both.