The Death of the 10 Blue Links
Google crowns AI Answers as the new king of search
For twenty years, marketers fought for real estate on Google’s first page.
Entire industries (SEO, link-building, content farms) rose and fell on the back of the 10 blue links.
That era just ended.
Google is quietly killing its own invention. The throne now belongs to AI Overviews. Generated answers at the very top of the page. Not only do they replace links, they already weave ads directly into the response.
This rewrites the hierarchy of visibility.
If your brand isn’t cited in the AI answer, you don’t exist.
If you’re optimizing for keywords, you’re fighting the wrong war.
If you’re not building for AI visibility, your competitors are.
The 10 blue links are gone. The new battleground is Answer Engine Optimization. Becoming discoverable, referenceable, and buyable within a model’s response.
The question is no longer “How do we rank?”
It’s “How do we get chosen?”
