Ep 121 - Why Has My Blog Traffic Dropped? AI Search Explained For Dietitian

Why has my blog traffic dropped?

If your website traffic has fallen even though you are still publishing genuinely useful content, the reason may not be that your SEO is wrong. Search has changed, with AI increasingly answering people's questions directly rather than simply sending them through to the websites that created the information.

Pew Research Center found that when Google displays an AI-generated summary, users click through to traditional search results about half as often, while clicks on the sources within the AI summary happen only rarely.

So, if your blog traffic has dropped, you are not necessarily doing something wrong. You may simply be playing a game whose rules have changed.

How is AI changing the way people find information online?

For years, the basic SEO model was relatively straightforward.

You created helpful content. You answered the questions your audience was asking. You optimised your pages for Google. Your website appeared in search results, and people clicked through to read the full article.

That journey is changing.

Google now has AI-generated summaries that can answer a searcher's question directly on the results page. It also has a separate conversational AI experience, AI Mode, where people can ask follow-up questions and explore a topic without following the traditional search journey.

Research from Ahrefs shows that these two Google AI experiences can use very different sources. In its analysis of hundreds of thousands of responses, AI Overviews and AI Mode cited the same URLs only 13.7% of the time, despite producing semantically similar answers much of the time. That matters because being visible in one AI experience does not automatically mean you will be visible in another

The old question was: "How do I get my website onto page one of Google?"

The new question is becoming: "How do I make sure my expertise is clear enough for AI to understand and use when answering my ideal client's question?"

That is a very different content strategy.

Why are fewer people clicking through to websites from Google?

People increasingly have less reason to click when the information they need has already been summarised for them.

Pew Research Center analysed browsing behaviour around Google searches and found that users who encountered an AI summary clicked a traditional search result in about half as many visits as users who did not see an AI summary. Clicks on links within the AI summary itself were very rare.

That creates a slightly strange situation for anyone who has spent years building a website through SEO.

Imagine you have a shop on a busy high street. You've created a beautiful window display, your products are brilliant and you've worked hard to become the shop everyone knows about.

Then the road outside changes. Fewer people walk past your door. The shop hasn't suddenly become worse. The behaviour around it has changed.

That is how I think about the drop in organic blog traffic many businesses are experiencing.

What happened to my own website traffic?

I've experienced this shift myself.

At its peak, my children's nutrition website was getting around 150,000 visitors every single month.

I'd spent years studying and mastering SEO, and the website had become a genuinely valuable business asset. I earned money from advertising on the site, and it wasn't unusual for me to make anywhere between £2,000 and £4,000 a month from those ads alone.

At one point, I had over 80 people helping with different parts of the business, including dietitians and nutritionists writing content. We were producing roughly four to six blogs every single month.

And it worked.

The more useful content we published, the more traffic we attracted and the more revenue the website generated. Then things started to change.

The website initially lost around 10,000 visitors per month. Then the drop became around 50,000 fewer visitors per month. Eventually, it was getting around 100,000 fewer visitors every month compared with its peak. The effect on revenue was significant too. The income that had previously sat around the £2,000 to £4,000 per month range eventually fell to around £400 per month. And what really caught my attention was the timing.

This happened as Google introduced its AI and AI became part of everyday search behaviour. That was when I realised I didn't necessarily have a content quality problem. I had a search behaviour problem.

Does a drop in blog traffic mean my SEO is wrong?

No, not necessarily.

A fall in traffic does not automatically mean your content has become less useful or that you've suddenly forgotten how SEO works.

It can mean that the search journey has changed.

AI can now provide an answer before someone ever reaches your website. That means your content can still be useful, relevant and discoverable while receiving fewer clicks than it did previously. This is an important distinction because the natural response to falling traffic is often to panic.

"Should I write more blogs?"

"Do I need to publish every week?"

"Has Google decided my website isn't good enough?"

You might find yourself disappearing down an SEO rabbit hole at 10.30pm, wondering whether you need to completely rebuild your content strategy.

I understand the temptation.

But more content isn't automatically the answer.

What does AI actually look for in a blog post?

AI is not simply matching the exact words someone typed into Google with the closest blog title.

It is trying to understand the question behind the question. Think about what happens during a clinical assessment.

A client might say, "I think I need help with my gut."

You don't simply take that sentence and run with it. You ask about their symptoms, how long they've been experiencing them, what they've already tried and their relevant history. You're working out what is really going on underneath the initial question.

AI is doing something similar when it processes a search.

It can look across related topics, context and different pieces of information before generating an answer. This means the content opportunity is no longer simply about creating a huge article that covers everything. It is about making individual answers incredibly clear.

How can dietitians write content that AI can use?

Start with the questions your ideal clients already ask you. Not the topics you think you should be writing about.

The actual questions that come up repeatedly in consultations.

If you find yourself explaining the same thing to clients again and again, that is a strong place to start.

Instead of creating a broad article such as "Everything you need to know about IBS", you could answer a much more specific question such as: "Do I need to follow a low-FODMAP diet if I have IBS?". Then answer that question clearly in one place.

The test I use is very simple: If AI pulled one paragraph from this page to answer someone's question, would that paragraph give them a genuinely useful answer?

If the answer is yes, you're creating content that is much easier for AI to understand and potentially use.

Should I write for the paragraph rather than the whole blog?

Yes.

This doesn't mean removing your stories, personality or professional experience. Those things are still what make your content yours. It means changing the order. Lead with the answer.

Then provide the context, explanation, experience and story afterwards. Think about a detailed report you've written for a GP after seeing a client. There might be pages of relevant information, but the GP may simply be looking for one particular answer.

That's increasingly how AI can interact with your content. It may not need your entire 3,000-word article. It may need the one paragraph that answers the question particularly well.

So make that paragraph easy to find. Use headings that reflect the questions your audience is actually asking, then answer the question directly underneath.

Your reader shouldn't have to dig through half a page to find the information they're looking for.

And neither should the AI trying to understand your expertise.

Do I need to create more blog posts to recover my traffic?

Not necessarily.

The answer isn't automatically more blogs.

Your existing content still has value, but it is worth looking at the purpose of each piece. Ask yourself:

Does this article clearly answer a specific question my ideal client is asking?

Is the answer easy to understand?

Could one paragraph stand alone and provide a useful answer?

Does the content demonstrate what I know and what I'm known for?

Are my answers clear enough that an AI system can understand the expertise within them?

The goal is to move away from content for content's sake.

You don't need to keep feeding the content hamster wheel just because your traffic graph has taken a dip.

You need content with a job to do.

How can I find out what AI is currently recommending?

The quickest way is to look for yourself.

Choose five questions that you answer regularly in consultations. Open an incognito browser window and search each question in Google. Look carefully at the AI answer.

Who is being mentioned?

Which websites are being cited?

Are dietitians appearing?

Are nutrition influencers appearing?

Which organisations or publications are being used as sources?

Then ask those same five questions in ChatGPT or another AI chatbot. Compare the answers.

You may find that different people and websites are being mentioned depending on the AI experience.

That is useful information.

You're essentially getting a little glimpse into the search landscape your potential clients are seeing. And once you've seen it, the whole thing becomes much less mysterious.

Why does AI visibility matter particularly for dietitians?

Health is a different environment from many other areas of search.

When someone is asking about their health, symptoms or nutrition, the systems answering those questions need to be much more careful about the information they use.

That creates an opportunity for qualified health professionals.


For years, you may have felt that you're at a disadvantage because you can't make exaggerated claims or simply say whatever will get attention.

You have to be nuanced.

You have to explain caveats.

You have to stay within your professional boundaries.

And sometimes it can look as though the loudest voices online are winning.

But those same qualities can become strengths in an AI-driven search environment. Your credentials, genuine expertise and ability to explain complex information clearly matter.

You don't have to become louder.

You don't have to start making outrageous claims.

You don't have to dance around on Reels to prove that you're an expert.

You need to make your expertise easy to understand.

Does traditional SEO still matter now that AI search is growing?

Yes.

Traditional SEO still matters, but it is no longer the whole picture.

Ahrefs' research has found that AI Overviews can cite pages that do not appear in the traditional top 10 results. Its March 2026 update found that 38% of pages cited in AI Overviews also appeared within the top 10 search result blocks, meaning a substantial proportion of cited pages came from elsewhere.

That doesn't mean you should abandon SEO. It means you need to think beyond rankings.

Your content needs to be useful to the person searching, but it also needs to be clear enough for AI systems to understand the information within it.

And there is another important piece of the puzzle.

Your blog is only one signal.

AI is also trying to work out who you are, what you know and whether you're a credible source. That means your reputation, credentials and mentions elsewhere online can all contribute to the bigger picture of how your expertise is understood.

What should I do if my blog traffic has dropped?

Start small.

Choose one question that your clients ask you repeatedly.

Write the clearest, most useful answer you can.

Make the question your heading.

Put the answer immediately underneath.

Then add your experience, examples, nuance and personality.

Once you've done that, test the question in Google and an AI chatbot and see what is currently being surfaced.

You don't need to rewrite your entire website this weekend.

You don't need to publish five new blogs before Monday morning.

And you certainly don't need to panic.

Search is changing, but that doesn't mean there is no place for your expertise.

In fact, I think this shift creates a rather encouraging opportunity for dietitians.

 

You don't need to win by being louder, posting more or chasing attention.

You can win by making what you already know exceptionally easy to understand.

Your clinical expertise is an asset.

Your professional credentials are an asset.

Your experience is an asset.

Now the job is to package those things into clear answers that people, and the AI systems helping them search, can understand.


References

Pew Research Center: Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results

 

Ahrefs: AI Overviews vs AI Mode

 

Ahrefs: AI Overview citations and the top 10

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Episode transcription:

Sarah:

Have you noticed that the number of people visiting your website has fallen? Maybe you've wondered, 'Why aren't my blogs getting the amount of visitors that they used to?', even though you're still writing super useful content on your blogs, still answering the questions that your audience are asking and still trying to keep your website up to date. This drop in traffic probably has you questioning all sorts of things like,

 

'Do I need to create even more blogs?' or 'Am I doing my SEO completely wrong?'. When you've spent years being told, 'Create helpful content, answer people's questions and Google will send people your way', it's really frustrating when the numbers start moving in the wrong direction.

 

But this is not a you problem. It doesn't mean your blogs aren't good enough anymore. It doesn't necessarily mean that you've done your SEO wrong. And it doesn't mean that you need to panic and start churning out even more blog content to try and keep up. The simple fact is that online search has changed.

 

We touched on this a little bit in the last episode when we talked about what you need to be doing to help your chances of getting recommended by AI. If you haven't listened to that one yet, I definitely recommend going back and having a listen. That episode was about making sure that AI knows that you're a credible source and feels confident recommending your name. But this episode is a different piece of the puzzle because AI isn't just deciding who to recommend; it's also deciding which information to use when answering people's questions. Now for years, the goal of your website was really simple. Create helpful content, rank on Google, and people would click through to your website to read the blog and get their questions answered. Now the goal isn't just getting someone to click through to your website anymore.

 

It's about creating content that answers the exact questions people are asking because AI is providing the answers upfront and people no longer need to click through to read your blog. So we need to give AI the information that it needs to confidently use your words when building an answer.

 

So in this episode, we're going to talk about what that means for blogging and how to create content that AI will want to use when answering your ideal clients' questions. If you're wondering just how much things have actually changed, the numbers are pretty eye-opening. Research from last year from Pew found that when Google puts one of those AI answer boxes at the top of the page, people click through to an actual website about half as often as they used to. And the little source links that are tucked inside the answer box, well, they're clicked incredibly rarely around only 1% of the time. what does that mean? It means more and more people are getting the answers they need without ever making it to the website that created the information in the first place. And that's a really strange shift to get your head around because for years the whole goal was to create helpful content and rank on Google and get people to then click through to build trust from there.

 

But now the journey stops much earlier. It's a bit like having a shop on a busy high street doing everything right, beautifully dressed shop window, amazing products and making your shop the place that people want to visit. And then the road is closed and suddenly fewer people are walking down the street.

 

I actually experienced this shift with one of my own websites. So, at its peak, my children's nutrition website was getting around 150,000 visitors every single month. It was brilliant. I'd studied and mastered SEO, search engine optimisation. The website had become a really valuable asset for my business.

 

I earned money from selling advertising space on my website and it wasn't unusual for me to make anywhere between £2,000 and £4,000 a month, purely from these ads. Some months, it was more than I took home after tax as an 8b consultant dietitian in the NHS. Things were going so well that I even employed a team of writers, all dietitians or nutritionists.

 

I had over 80 people at one point who would help me with various parts of the process. And we would turn out roughly four to six blogs every single month. And the more I published, the more my revenue grew. It genuinely felt like I had figured out the formula: create that helpful content, rank for it on Google, and then bring people to the website where I could sell them my offers and make even more money. But then...

 

things started to change. About two years ago, I noticed that the number of visitors to the website was slowly beginning to drop. At first, it was dropping by around 10,000 fewer visitors per month and then it dropped by 50,000 fewer per month. And eventually the website was getting around 100,000 fewer visitors every single month, compared to its peak.

 

Now, as you can imagine, it had a huge impact on my revenue too. The income that once sat around the £2,000 to £4,000 per month range dropped significantly, eventually sitting closer to around £400 per month, which is where we are at now. But the timing of this was what was really interesting because it happened at exactly the same time as Google introduced its AI, and AI started becoming part of everyday surge behaviour.

 

And that's when I realised it actually had nothing to do with my blogs and it had everything to do with the fact that the way people were getting information had completely changed. Let me actually explain what's happening here, because once you understand this properly, it stops feeling like this mysterious thing where your website traffic just randomly disappears and becomes something that you can actually work with and use to your advantage. Here's what you need to know.

 

Two things have changed about how people find you. The first one is happening inside Google itself, because Google isn't just one simple search engine anymore. When someone types a question into Google today, there's now different experiences all happening on that same platform. So, the first 'there' is the AI answer box at the top of the page that gives you that quick summary. And then there's also a full chatbot built into Google, that some people use instead, where they just have a back-and-forth conversation, a bit like ChatGPT.

 

Interestingly, those two different AI systems don't always agree on which sources they use. When researchers from Ahrefs compared them across hundreds of thousands of questions, they found that they were both pulling from almost entirely different sources. The way I like to think of this is like two notice boards in the same clinic waiting room. One notice board might be right by the entrance and another might be over by the reception. Getting your information pinned to one doesn't automatically mean you're pinned to the other.

 

The second shift is understanding how AI actually reads and uses your content. Because when someone types a question into AI, it doesn't just look for that exact sentence and find the closest blog post. Behind the scenes, it's trying to understand the bigger question. It's looking at related topics. It's looking for context and different pieces of information before creating an answer.

 

It's a little bit like a good clinician assessment. A client might come to you and say, 'I think I need help with my gut'. But you don't just take that sentence at face value. You start asking questions like, 'What symptoms are they experiencing?', 'How long has this been going on?', 'What have they already tried?', 'What's their past medical history?'. In other words, you're trying to figure out what is actually going on underneath the original question. AI is doing something similar.

 

It's trying to understand the question behind the question. And this leads us to probably the biggest mindset shift in how we need to think about content. Because the old Google was mainly about ranking pages. The new search landscape is increasingly about finding the clearest pieces of information within those pages. So let me just explain what I mean.

 

Imagine you've written a really detailed report for the GP after a client assessment. It's got all the background information. It's got history, it's got symptoms, everything. But the GP reads it and they only pull out the one sentence that answers the query they had. Essentially, that's what's happening with search now. AI isn't necessarily looking at your entire blog post and thinking, 'This is a great article. I'm going to recommend this whole page.'

 

It's looking for the clearest, most useful piece of information it can pull out to answer that person's question, which means one really strong paragraph can sometimes be more valuable than an entire 3000-word blog.

 

There is good news in this because it means you don't necessarily need to compete by creating endless amounts of content. You just need to create content that clearly answers the questions that your ideal clients are actually asking. So just to prove that, Ahrefs, the same company I mentioned earlier, conducted another study just in March this year, and they found that many of the pages Google now uses to create its AI overviews aren't even pages that rank in the top 10 traditional search results, which seems shocking, doesn't it? It just goes to show the game has completely changed. It used to be, 'How do I get my website to rank in the search results on the first page of Google?' And now it's, 'How do I make sure my words are the ones being used when AI answers my ideal client's questions?' It used to be that whole websites would be competing for visibility.

 

Now, it's just individual paragraphs and sentences competing. What should you do to make sure you're staying ahead of the game as search continues to change? Well, I'm going to give you three really practical things to focus on. Number one: don't start by thinking, 'What blog shall I write this month?'. Instead, start with the questions you already know your ideal clients are asking.

 

The ones that come up again and again and again in consultations, and the ones you find yourself explaining repeatedly. Then take one question at a time and create the clearest answer you can in one place. Don't have the answer to that question scattered across five different blogs or write one huge, vague blog that tries to cover every possible angle.

 

Instead, create one piece of content that clearly answers one specific question. For example, rather than writing a general blog called, 'Everything you need to know about IBS', you might create a clear answer to the question, 'Do I need to follow a low-FODMAP diet if I have IBS?'. And then once you've written it, the test is really simple. If AI pulled out just one paragraph from this page to answer someone's question, would that paragraph give them a genuinely useful answer? If the answer is yes, you've created something that's easy for AI to understand, to use and to share. And ultimately, that is the goal. So, number two: write for the paragraph, not for the page. Don't hear this as, 'Take out all of your stories and your fantastic personality', because those are the things that make you, you and what sets you apart. That's still really important.

 

It just means you've got to lead with the answer to the question first and then bring in the context. Your experience and your stories come afterwards. In other words, pay attention to how your answers are structured. So you want the headers as the questions your audience is asking and then answer straight underneath. Make it so neither AI, nor the person who's been newly diagnosed with IBS or coeliac disease, has to dig through half that page to find the answer that they're desperately looking for.

 

And then number three: go and see what AI is actually doing. This is probably the most valuable thing that you can do after listening to this episode and something you can do super quickly too. Pick the five questions that you answer most in consultations with clients and then open an incognito window in your browser so that your previous searches don't influence the results and type each question into Google one by one, and take a proper look at the AI answer. Screenshot what comes back and build a simple list of who's showing up so that you can see whether it's dietitians or influencers, who is being quoted, and then ask those same five questions in something like ChatGPT or another AI chatbot. Do the answers change? Are different people being mentioned? This becomes your starting point because, once you've seen it with your own eyes, you'll start to understand how AI is finding and selecting and using information. You'll be looking at the new search landscape exactly as your potential clients see it. It's worth mentioning that health is one of the areas where AI is most cautious about the information that it uses.

 

So, when someone is asking about their symptoms or their health, AI and search engines have to be much more careful about who they choose to quote. They're not going to treat a health article the same way that they treat an article about the best trainers for paddle or the best bean-to-cup coffee machines. The standard for health is much higher. And for years, you've probably felt like you've been at a bit of a disadvantage because you can't make bold claims and you always have to add caveats.

 

So it can feel like the nutrition influencers making louder and more attention-grabbing claims online were winning at this game. But the great news is now, when these systems do decide to quote somebody on health, they've been built to source real credentialed experts with genuine experience. So the exact things you've always had to be careful about before, like not making exaggerated claims and explaining the nuance, are actually the signals that AI values the most when it's deciding who to trust.

 

You might be asking yourself, 'Well, Sarah, should I still bother creating all of these blog posts?' And the answer is yes! Content still matters. But the way you're going to win this new version of search isn't simply by producing more and more and more content. Instead, you need to be thinking about the role that each piece of content is playing.

 

Is it clearly answering something specific that you know that your ideal client is Googling, is searching for? Is it giving AI a real clear understanding of what you know and what you're known for? And remember your blog is only one part of the picture. As we talked about in the previous episode, if you want to get recommended by AI, AI is also looking at things like mentions of you elsewhere online and all of those little signals that help work out: who is this person and can I trust them as the expert? So yes, keep creating content. Just don't panic and assume the answer is... more blogs! Think about the quality and the purpose and the bigger picture.

 

So if you found this episode useful, but you're wondering, 'Sarah, on earth do I start?'. Start by picking one question that your client asks you all the time, the one you find yourself answering again and again and again in consultations, and then create the clearest, most useful answer to that question you possibly can. Something that AI could easily lift and use. Don't try and cover every angle, just focus on one specific question and one clean answer. Then once you're done, you can do another. Think of it as a bit like practice, you're getting used to writing in this clear, more direct way, and giving the AI the kind of information that it can actually understand and begin to use.

 

So that brings us to the end of this two-part mini series on AI and search. So in the last episode, we talked about how AI is deciding who to trust, how your reputation, your credentials, and the signals you have across the internet really help AI understand that you're a credible person to recommend. And then in this episode, we've looked at the other piece of the puzzle: how AI is deciding which information to use when someone is asking a question.

 

And I think a lot of what we've covered is very encouraging for us as dietitians because I know it can sometimes feel like the online world rewards a completely different skill set. You might think, 'Everyone else is so much better at getting attention than me'. But the thing I hope you take away from these two episodes is that you don't need to win by being louder or posting more or chasing attention.

 

The dietitians who will stand out in this new world of online search are the ones who simply make their expertise easy to understand.

 

Bye for now.