As chatbots become increasingly popular as search engine replacements and Google places a stronger focus on its AI mode, the question of what this means for the organic visibility of brands becomes more pressing. A recent analysis by the SEO agency Digitaleffects provides some insight into an industry that is particularly competitive in terms of SEO.
What is it about?
Digitaleffects examined the visibility of 220 German-language travel websites and investigated how it differs between traditional web search and results within Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, or ChatGPT.
Who benefits from AI search?
There is no general answer, but there are sometimes stark differences—compared to traditional Google search results, but also among the individual AI-supported offerings.The big winner on ChatGPT is Deutsche Bahn, which dominates with a market share of 19.67 percent. However, this triumph stands in sharp contrast to its presence in AI Overviews. Here, only 1.12 percent of the results refer to the railway company. This is significantly lower than in organic search, where the transport company reaches 7.47 percent.
Who loses?
Again, there is no simple answer—but there are dramatic shifts. The "SEO king" Holidaycheck, which enters the race with a confident 21.81 percent market share in traditional search results, plummets to 7.96 percent on ChatGPT. In AI Overviews, the situation looks even worse at 6.56 percent, especially since competitors Tui (8.62 percent) and Dertour (7.80 percent) are now ahead of Holidaycheck. Dertour, in particular, benefits in this comparison, more than doubling its visibility compared to classic search (3.7 percent).
What can be deduced from this?
Digitaleffects makes several generalized observations indicating that the visibility of players within an industry is currently shifting significantly and that individual AI offerings apparently prefer specific criteria. For instance, it is interesting that market shares in AI Overviews sometimes differ drastically from those in classic search, but are much closer in Google's related AI Mode. Nevertheless, there are clear winners here compared to traditional SERPs; for example, Expedia jumps significantly from 1.44 percent to 8.22 percent in AI Mode.
According to Digitaleffects, once travel websites are clustered by category, certain preferences of the individual search types become clear: While travel portals and intermediaries dominate classic Google search with a 41.74 percent market share, their share drops to 23.10 percent in AI Overviews, while package tour operators gain significantly, reaching 33.29 percent.
On ChatGPT, on the other hand, a significant upgrade for bus and train travel to a 21.10 percent market share can be observed, while these are almost non-existent in AI Overviews at 2.06 percent. It is also interesting that regional tourism boards play a larger role in ChatGPT results at 10.18 percent. OpenAI’s bot tends more toward mobility, planning, and official information sources, while Google’s AI Overviews are dominated by tour operators.
So, what to do?
Members of the travel industry can at least try to draw conclusions from these observations. No blanket recommendations can be derived from the analysis—except perhaps to track not only the visibility of one’s own brand and immediate competitors but also to look at which neighboring segments are recording gains in the AI context.
However, providers also seem to understand that they cannot simply rest on the fact that AI search is a "black box" technology. Yesterday, Microsoft introduced an extension to its Bing Webmaster Tools. This is intended to allow brands to track how often and with which of their pages they have been cited as a reference in the AI context on Bing over a certain period. Microsoft promises that this tool will help users optimize their content for AI.