HubSpot just lost 16 million monthly visitors. Google's CEO says AI is making search better than ever. Someone is lying. This is documented reality. If it can happen to HubSpot—the company that wrote the book on content marketing—it can happen to you.

In this explosive first episode of Rank by AI, we expose what Google's AI Overviews are doing to organic traffic. Host Udit Goenka (Founder & CEO of SEOengine.ai) pulls data directly from Ahrefs and reveals the massive contradiction between what Google executives claim and what publishers experience.

THE SHOCKING NUMBERS: According to Ahrefs data, HubSpot's US organic traffic crashed from 5.03 million to 2.35 million monthly visitors between March 2023 and January 2025. That's 2.68 million visitors gone. A 53% decline. But it gets worse. SparkToro's 2024 study reveals 58.5% of Google searches end without a click. When AI Overviews appear, that zero-click rate jumps to 83%. Eight out of ten people never leave Google.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince drops the bomb: Ten years ago, Google sent one visitor for every two pages they crawled. Today? Six pages for one visitor. A 200% decrease. For OpenAI? 250 to one. Anthropic? 6,000 to one.

WHAT YOU'LL DISCOVER: This episode reveals the invisible war between Google's AI ambitions and the publishing industry. You'll hear Google CEO Sundar Pichai's quotes from Google I/O 2025 claiming AI Overviews drive "over 10% growth." Then we show data from Semrush, Ahrefs, and BrightEdge proving click-through rates drop 34-55% when AI Overviews appear.

We dissect why HubSpot—with Domain Authority 81 and 120 million backlinks—couldn't survive the shift. We expose what Google won't say about AI Mode becoming the future of search.

THE UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH: Traditional SEO is dying. Not because you're doing it wrong. Because the game changed. Google transformed search from a gateway into a destination. Users get answers on Google and leave. Your content powers those answers. You get nothing. Publishers call this theft. Google calls it innovation. The News/Media Alliance called AI Mode "the definition of theft." But you can't pay rent with quality when traffic drops 50%.

THE PATH FORWARD: This episode ends with a solution: Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). Udit breaks down the new playbook for ranking in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews. You'll learn why citations matter more than clicks, how brand mentions create value without traffic, and what metrics matter in 2026. SEOengine.ai has generated over 50,000 AEO-optimized articles achieving 90% brand voice accuracy. These are the strategies that work when traditional SEO fails.

WHO NEEDS TO LISTEN: SEO professionals watching traffic decline. Content marketers seeing ROI collapse. Publishers bleeding revenue. Founders dependent on organic traffic. Anyone building authority online.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Google confirmed AI Mode will migrate to main search. This is the roadmap. The shift is inevitable. The question isn't whether this is happening. It's: Are you adapting fast enough? Brands that master AEO now will dominate. Everyone else will explain to boards why traffic disappeared.

Duration: 10 minutes. Host: Udit Goenka, Founder & CEO of SEOengine.ai. All data verified through Ahrefs API, Semrush, SparkToro, and official Google statements. Zero speculation. Only facts. This is Rank by AI. Where traditional SEO dies and Answer Engine Optimization wins. Listen now. Your traffic depends on it.