Why David Krauter Says Some Website Traffic Sources Deserve a Closer Look

As Google’s AI-generated answers increasingly resolve some searches without a click, the founder of Websites That Sell says some Australian businesses may be investing in a system that changes how traffic reaches them, often before the impact is fully clear.

Search for almost anything on Google in Australia today, and you may never leave the page. An AI-generated summary appears at the top, answers your question, and the links below go unclicked. For businesses that spent months and significant resources earning one of those positions, the change can be difficult to spot. Their ranking may hold, while traffic shifts elsewhere.

The numbers tell you how fast this is moving. Recent reporting suggests that a growing share of Google searches now end without a click to a website. Pew Research found that when Google’s AI Overviews appear, the odds of a user clicking any organic result drop by nearly half. And Australia may be more exposed than some markets. Some industry estimates suggest AI Overviews are appearing more frequently in local search results in Australia, potentially at rates above some global averages.

Most Australian businesses on a competitive SEO campaign spend between $2,000 and $5,000 a month. That’s a serious budget. And it raises a direct question: what are they actually getting for it now?

The Prediction

David Krauter has been running digital marketing campaigns for Australian businesses since 2007. He started in direct response advertising before moving online as the internet became a primary driver of commercial growth. He founded Websites That Sell, a local digital marketing agency, after years of watching businesses pay vendors who reported activity but couldn’t show results. His agency now manages SEO, paid advertising, and web strategy for clients across multiple industries and locations.

“Right now, Australian businesses are spending an average of $2,000 to $5,000 a month on SEO expecting one thing in return: traffic to their website. Within 24 months, that same investment will still be necessary, but what it delivers will be fundamentally different. You’ll be paying for brand authority and AI citations. The traffic won’t arrive the same way it used to. The businesses that understand this now and rebuild their strategy around becoming the most cited, most authoritative brand in their category will pull ahead. The ones that don’t will be paying the same monthly retainer, watching their analytics fall, and wondering what went wrong.”

Krauter isn’t guessing. He’s watched every major shift in Australian digital marketing over 20 years. Google’s rise. The social media era. COVID pushing everything online. And now this. His clients’ own data backs the call.

What the Numbers Show

A September 2025 study by Seer Interactive tracked 25 million organic impressions across 42 organisations. It found organic click-through rates dropped 61% for queries where Google’s AI Overview appeared, falling from 1.76% to 0.61%. Paid click-through rates fell 68%. Gartner projects a 25% decline in traditional search volume by end of 2026 as AI absorbs queries that used to send people to websites.

Google’s AI Mode, a conversational search layer that launched across Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane in September 2025, produces zero-click outcomes on around 93% of queries. Users get their answer and go nowhere. For businesses whose lead flow depends on people clicking through to their site, that’s not a routine algorithm update. It’s a structural problem.

“The problem I see every day,” Krauter says, “is that business owners look at their rankings and think everything is fine. But rankings and traffic are no longer the same thing. Google can rank you, cite your content, answer questions using your expertise, and never send the user to your site. Your content may also be contributing to the data systems that power AI search experiences. That’s a very different arrangement than what businesses signed up for.”

The Businesses That Win Anyway

But the same Seer Interactive study also found this: brands cited inside AI Overviews earn 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks than brands that don’t appear at all. So there’s still a path. It’s just a different one than most businesses are currently walking.

Ranking number one used to mean getting the click. Now, a growing advantage may be being trusted enough that Google’s AI cites you as a source. And earning that trust requires the things most agencies cut corners on: original expertise, content with genuine depth, and a long-term commitment to building brand credibility rather than chasing monthly traffic numbers.

Krauter’s agency built its model this way long before AI Overviews existed. “We test everything before we recommend it,” he says. “When AI content flooded the market, we held the line on quality while other agencies scaled up cheap output. Every client of ours came through the major Google spam updates without losing a single ranking. That’s not luck. That’s what happens when you build for the long game.”

What Business Owners Should Do Now

Krauter’s advice isn’t dramatic. He’s not telling businesses to scrap their SEO or chase new platforms. The shift he’s recommending is simpler. It’s about what you measure and what you’re building toward.

First: stop measuring success by traffic alone. Impressions, citations, branded searches, and direct traffic are all signals now. If people see your brand named in an AI Overview, some will search for you directly later rather than clicking in that moment. An agency that only reports on website sessions isn’t showing you the full picture.

Second: put money into content that actually shows what you know. Google’s AI cites sources it trusts. That trust is often built through depth and consistency over time, rather than frequent publishing centered mainly on broad keyword topics.

Third: don’t build everything on one channel. That’s Krauter’s bluntest piece of advice. “The businesses most at risk right now are those that built their entire lead pipeline through search and nothing else,” he says. “If that channel shifts, and it has shifted, they have no fallback. Businesses with email databases, retargeting campaigns, and a social presence can absorb this. Single-channel operators can’t.”

The Longer Game

This isn’t a crisis for every business. But it is a real problem for any business that has treated SEO as a transaction. Pay the retainer, get the traffic, repeat. That arrangement is breaking down.

The businesses best placed right now were already building properly. Real expertise. Consistent content. A presence across more than one channel. And an agency they trust to own the outcome, not just report on it.

“Most agencies sell traffic,” Krauter says. “What we’ve always sold is the infrastructure to grow a business. The channel changes. The principles don’t. And right now, the principle is this: if you’re not building genuine authority, you’re building something Google’s AI is about to replace.”

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