3 SEO Optimizations to Stop Prioritizing Because of AI

Key takeaways:

• Three SEO tactics that were central for years are migrating to AEO/GEO.
• PAA answers are now almost entirely AI-generated, compared to 12% in July 2025: to show up there, you first have to appear in AI Overviews.
• Position zero lost 64% of its visibility in the US last year, dropping to 5.53%: it is becoming a box to check rather than a goal.
• FAQPage no longer produces rich results, but it remains essential on the AI side.
• These optimizations aren’t dying, they’re switching channels.
• If you want real results, you’re better off focusing on something else!

SEO may not be dead, but it’s going through a radical transformation that reshuffles the deck on quite a few fronts. You even hear more and more often that SEO is on its way to becoming an influence channel rather than a performance channel. Without going quite that far for now, it’s clear that the optimizations worth prioritizing have changed since last year, and changed again this month!

If you want your efforts to pay off, it’s time to shift your approach. Here are 3 tactics that were still central to the game not long ago and no longer carry the weight they used to:

Targeting People Also Ask (PAA)

“People Also Ask” boxes were, until now, a recurring target for taking over a results page beyond the top positions.

You look at the list of questions shown for a given target query and make sure that passages answering them precisely (better than the competition) live on your dedicated page.

I’ve collected tens of thousands of relevant clicks in the past by focusing on this. Today, though, the answers given in those PAA boxes are almost entirely AI-generated (source). It was barely 12% in July 2025.

So the answers are mostly pulled from Google’s AI Overviews, which means you have to appear there to stand a chance of showing up in PAA boxes, which have essentially become little AI Overviews inside an accordion.

Since this is no longer extracted content with its URL attached, this SEO optimization disappears and joins the realm of AEO/GEO.

Swearing by position zero

With AI Overviews finally landing in France two months ago, featured snippets are fading and no longer guarantee the generous CTR they had accustomed us to.

Last year, a 64% drop was recorded in US search results, leaving a visibility level of just 5.53% (source). It’s still a bit early to draw conclusions about French results, but it will soon be possible to check.

Once the favorite target of the majority, position zero now represents only a fraction of the qualified traffic available and becomes a box to check among other actions.

Note that featured snippets aren’t disappearing entirely. That said, AI Overviews now rule the roost and command the attention of users and professionals alike. Another win for AEO/GEO.

Adding FAQPage for CTR

Until recently, one of the first reflexes when you wanted rich results for a page was to add an FAQ section with a few relevant questions and implement the FAQPage schema markup to get those accordions in search results.

The result took up more space, with more opportunities to include links. CTR usually went up.

With Google’s decision to fully remove the rich results tied to this markup, the benefits for traditional SEO have shrunk considerably. Helping search engines understand a page’s structure remains its main asset, but the impact is subtler.

On the AI search side, though, it’s the red carpet: higher mention and citation rates thanks to a question-and-answer structure that’s easier for LLMs to parse and reuse.

So while implementing FAQPage remains a useful SEO action without being essential, it looks unavoidable for AEO/GEO.

In summary

The following actions are no longer essential for classic search:

• Targeting PAA boxes
• Prioritizing position zero
• Using FAQPage schema markup

Outside of AI search, they can still be useful for SEO in a number of ways: People Also Ask for covering adjacent topics, chasing position zero for high-value commercial queries, and FAQPage implementation for structural understanding of the site.

It may not seem like much, and yet these three “transfers” of optimization toward AEO/GEO mark an important turning point in the history of traditional search.