A question we get asked often: "I've heard about this AI search stuff. Should I be doing that instead of SEO?" The short answer is both — but there's a sensible order to it, and the right balance depends on your business type.
Here's the honest breakdown.
Traditional SEO is still essential
Google's traditional search results — the blue links — still drive the majority of search-driven traffic for most NZ businesses. For local searches, Google Maps is still where most customers start. For informational and product searches, Google's organic results remain dominant.
If you don't have the SEO basics in place — a Google Business Profile, properly optimised service pages, consistent NAP across directories — that's still where your energy should go first. AI search is valuable, but it builds on a solid SEO foundation. A business with no web presence and no GBP will struggle to get cited by AI tools, because AI tools largely source from the same signals that drive SEO.
AI search is growing — and early movers win
That said, AI search is growing faster than most NZ businesses realise. Google AI Overviews now appear on roughly 40% of searches. ChatGPT has mainstream consumer adoption. Perplexity is growing among younger, tech-forward users. And critically, the NZ businesses competing for AI citations right now are very few.
This is a genuine window of opportunity. In 18–24 months, every NZ digital agency will be offering some version of GEO services, and the market will be more crowded. The businesses building AI search presence now are locking in an advantage that will be much harder to replicate later — just like early GBP adopters built map pack authority that's hard to displace.
How to think about prioritising your budget
Start here (if you haven't): Google Business Profile
If your Google Business Profile isn't set up, claimed, and actively managed, that's step one. For local businesses, it's the highest ROI digital investment available. Our Local plan ($449/mo) is built around this.
Layer in: On-page SEO and content
Once your GBP is in order, consistent SEO work — keyword research, content creation, technical fixes — builds the organic rankings that drive traffic month after month without paid ads. This takes 3–6 months to show results, but compounds significantly over time.
Add: GEO foundation
Schema markup, entity optimisation, AI-crawlable content, and llms.txt are relatively quick to implement and provide the signals AI tools need to start citing your business. Our Authority plan ($749/mo) includes this as part of the standard package — you don't need to choose between SEO and GEO, you get both.
For maximum AI visibility: Full GEO monitoring
If you want to actively monitor and optimise your AI search presence — tracking citations across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI, and adjusting your content strategy based on what's working — that's the AI-First plan ($1,149/mo).
The bottom line
Don't think of it as SEO versus AI search. Think of it as SEO plus AI search — a complete strategy for being found however your customers are searching. The good news is that the overlap is significant: good SEO content, consistent entity signals, and a well-managed GBP all contribute to both traditional rankings and AI citations.
The businesses that will win in NZ search over the next 3–5 years are the ones doing both, starting now, while most of their competitors are still only thinking about one.