Alphabet’s share price dropped 7% in a single day after Apple’s Eddy Cue said he expects AI search engines to replace traditional search engines like Google, and that Apple plans to add OpenAI, Perplexity, and Anthropic as search options in Safari, according to CNBC’s report on his testimony.
You are watching the shift in real time. Your customers are already typing buying questions into ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Now Apple is getting ready to put those AI engines directly into the browser your customers use every day.
You are either visible inside those AI answers or you are invisible when it matters most.
What Apple’s Move Really Means For You
Eddy Cue did not just share a product roadmap. He described a new default behavior for billions of users.
When Safari adds AI search engines like OpenAI, Perplexity, and Anthropic as native search options, three things happen fast:
- Default habits change: People stop typing everything into a single search box that only points to Google.
- Answers replace results: AI search engines give your customers one or two direct recommendations instead of long lists of blue links.
- Platform power shifts: Visibility moves from traditional rankings to AI answers and AI citations.
Cue also said Safari searches declined for the first time in April, and he linked that drop to people using AI more often. That is not theory. That is user behavior already leaving traditional search behind.
You cannot afford to only optimize for classic SEO when your customers have already moved to AI search.
Why Traditional SEO Alone Will Not Protect You
For years, ranking on page one of Google was enough. You chased backlinks, optimized meta tags, and watched position changes in your rank trackers.
In an AI search world, that is not the full game anymore:
- AI systems such as ChatGPT and Perplexity synthesize answers from multiple sources and often do not show your page directly.
- Google AI Overviews can give a full answer at the top of the results and never send the user to your site.
- The sources that AI models cite become the real gatekeepers of demand and trust.
If your content is not part of the sources that AI Search Engines pull from, traditional rankings will not save you.
You might still be “visible” in a legacy report while being completely absent from the answers your buyers actually read.
How AI Search Engines Decide Who Shows Up
AI search engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews look at more than just classic ranking signals.
They reward:
- High trust sources: Consistent, expert content that other authorities reference.
- Clear topical depth: Comprehensive coverage of topics that LLMs can confidently use as reference.
- Structured, crawlable explanations: Clean headings, definitions, and explanations that models can lift and reuse.
- Consensus across sources: Ideas and facts that multiple credible domains reinforce.
In practice, that means:
- Perplexity might cite a handful of detailed guides and product pages for a commercial query.
- ChatGPT might ground its answer in a mix of documentation, case studies, and thought leadership from brands it sees as experts.
- Google AI Overviews might pull from a set of evergreen, authoritative pages that match user intent and overall topic quality.
If you are not intentionally building visibility across these AI engines, you are leaving your brand out of the conversation by default.
Why Apple’s Decision Raises The Stakes
Apple controls the default browser behavior for hundreds of millions of high value users.
Right now, Google pays Apple billions of dollars per year to stay the default search engine on iPhones. Cue admitted he has lost sleep over the idea of losing that revenue, but he still made one thing clear: AI search is coming to Safari as additional options.
Once users can pick OpenAI, Perplexity, or Anthropic directly inside Safari:
- Your buyer journey splits: Some people stay with Google. Others jump straight into AI search to get direct answers.
- Your analytics lag: Traditional SEO dashboards show you Google impressions, but not how often AI engines recommend your competitors.
- Your competitive gaps grow: Early movers who optimize for AI citations will become the “obvious” answer that AI search engines present.
If you wait until this is fully rolled out and normalized, you are already behind.
The Questions You Should Be Asking Right Now
Instead of asking what this means for Google, you should be asking what this means for your brand.
- When someone searches your core problem or product in ChatGPT, do they see you or a competitor?
- When Perplexity answers a question in your category, which brands and sources does it cite?
- When Google AI Overviews appears for your target queries, do your pages show up in the sources powering that box?
- When Apple adds AI search engines into Safari, are you ready for your customers to take that path instead of classic Google search?
If you cannot answer those questions with data, you are flying blind while the rules of discovery change.
How To Start Winning In AI Search Now
You do not control whether Apple ships AI search in Safari. You do control how ready you are when it happens.
Here is how you can move now.
1. Map Your Critical AI Search Queries
Start where the money is. Identify the questions that actually move revenue for you.
- What would a ready to buy customer ask ChatGPT or Perplexity before choosing a product like yours?
- What “how to choose” or “best tools for” queries matter in your category?
- Which AI search questions directly connect to your core value proposition and pricing pages?
Turn those into a short list of must win queries across AI search engines.
If AI cannot find you for those questions, your customers will not either.
2. Audit How AI Search Engines Already Talk About You
You cannot optimize what you cannot see.
For each critical query:
- Ask ChatGPT how it would solve that problem or which tools it recommends.
- Use Perplexity and see what it answers and which sources it cites.
- Check Google to see when AI Overviews appear, and which domains are featured when they do.
You will usually find one of three realities:
- You are not mentioned at all: AI engines do not know your brand in this context.
- You are mentioned rarely: You show up sometimes, often next to stronger competitors.
- You are the default: AI engines reliably describe and recommend you as a leading option.
Your goal is to move as many queries as possible into that third category.
3. Create Content That AI Engines Want To Cite
AI search engines need clear, trustworthy content they can recycle into answers.
Focus on:
- Deep, structured explanations of your category, not surface level blog posts.
- Guides that mirror real questions your buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or inside Google AI Overviews.
- Pages that clearly define and explain core concepts, like your equivalent of a “what is X and how does it work” page.
- Evidence and examples: data, case studies, and concrete scenarios that LLMs can reuse.
A strong approach is to build a glossary and resource hub that covers key terms, strategies, and comparisons in your space. That gives AI engines a high trust cluster to draw from instead of scattered articles.
4. Optimize For AI Citations, Not Just Clicks
Clicks still matter, but AI search engines often answer users directly. So your strategy has to go beyond classic click through rates.
Think in terms of AI citations:
- Is your brand name used in the answer text when someone asks for tool recommendations?
- Is your guide cited as a source when a model explains your core topic?
- Do you appear as the example when AI search engines describe how something works?
This is where internal structure matters. Clear headings, concise definitions, and consistent terminology help models understand when to pull your content.
If you want a tight foundation, start with a piece like an AI search engine explainer that you control, similar to your own AI Search Engine entry, and build related content around it.
5. Track Competitors Across AI Search Platforms
You are not trying to win a vacuum. You are trying to win the space your competitors are already occupying.
You should know:
- Which of your competitors show up in ChatGPT answers for your highest value queries.
- Which domains Perplexity relies on most when it cites sources in your category.
- How often Google AI Overviews mentions your competitors compared to you.
- Where your competitors’ content is shaping AI answers while yours is missing.
This is where AI search visibility becomes a competitive intelligence problem, not just a content problem. If you only look at where you rank in classic Google search, you are missing how AI search engines already present your market.
How RankZero Fits Into This New Reality
Apple’s shift toward AI search options in Safari is one more sign that traditional SEO alone is not enough.
You need to:
- See when and where your brand appears inside AI answers across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
- Understand which competitors are recommended when you are not.
- Know which sources and pages AI engines are pulling from, so you can shape your content strategy around reality, not guesswork.
RankZero helps you:
- Track AI search mentions across major AI engines so you can see when your brand wins or disappears.
- Monitor competitor visibility so you can see who is getting recommended when buyers search for your category in AI tools.
- Break down AI citations so you understand what content is driving those recommendations.
This is not about vanity rankings. It is about owning the answers your customers see first.
Your Next Move In An AI Search World
Apple has already told you where Safari is heading. Alphabet’s stock reaction shows how serious this shift is for the old search model. Your choice is simple.
You can keep playing the old SEO game and hope AI search engines decide to recommend you. Or you can treat AI search visibility as a core channel you track, optimize, and own.
Start showing up in AI answers now, while your competitors are still looking at old dashboards. Be the answer that AI delivers, not the brand people never see.