There’s a lot of noise right now about AI killing SEO. Algorithms are changing. ChatGPT is stealing Google’s traffic. The rules are being rewritten. According to Cameron LiButti, founder and CEO of Bidview Marketing, most of that narrative is panic dressed up as insight.
“The first mistake I’m finding is that people are reacting too fast,” LiButti says. “For the first time, the CEOs, the COOs, the CFOs are thinking about SEO. They’re in this panic of the hype cycle, and they think they have to do this special AI SEO. There are businesses out there telling them there are secrets or special ways to do this.”
The reality, he argues, is more grounded, and more actionable, than most people realize.
The Engine Hasn’t Changed. The Dashboard Has.
Cameron draws a distinction that most marketers are missing: the difference between the front end of AI search (what users see) and the back end (how data is actually retrieved and ranked).
Google’s transition from a manually managed algorithm to machine learning began around 2015 and 2016. That algorithmic infrastructure, the engine that indexes websites, weighs citations, processes reviews, and interprets intent, hasn’t been torn down. What’s changed is the interface sitting on top of it. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, these are new ways of accessing the same underlying web of organized data.
“The algorithm is still using your website, your citations, your Google Business signals,” Cameron explains. “All of those signals are still strong and exist. And that’s what is still ranking you on the AIs.”
What this means practically: the businesses that invested in clean site architecture, consistent review building, and authoritative content over the past several years are already well-positioned for AI-driven search. The fundamentals didn’t expire, they compounded.
Where AI Search Is Actually Changing Behavior
That said, Cameron isn’t dismissing the shift entirely. He points to a concrete example from his own client roster: a tax attorney whose inbound lead flow changed dramatically after Bidview optimized his digital presence. Somewhere between a third and half of his new business now comes through ChatGPT.
The reason isn’t some secret AI-optimization trick. It’s because ChatGPT handles the top-of-funnel education that used to happen across multiple Google searches. A potential client types a panicked question about unpaid taxes, gets walked through the implications, and is delivered to the attorney’s door already warmed up and ready to act. The lead quality improved. The conversion path is compressed.
For local professionals, doctors, lawyers, insurance agents, financial advisors, this shift matters. AI platforms are increasingly being used as first-stop trusted advisors, and the businesses that show up there aren’t the ones stuffing prompts or gaming citation farms. They’re the ones with well-structured websites, authentic reviews across multiple platforms, and clear service pages that answer the questions real people actually ask.
What Professionals Should Actually Be Doing
Cameron’s advice for navigating this moment is practical and unglamorous: write a service page for every service you offer. Answer the questions people ask around each one. Build reviews on Google, Yelp, Facebook, and any niche directories relevant to your industry. Make sure your Google Business Profile is clean and accurate. If you have capacity for video, start building it, AI systems are pulling citations from YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook video at a growing rate.
None of that is revolutionary. But that’s exactly the point.
What does require a strategic shift is understanding that AI search is personalized in ways traditional rankings never were. Cameron cautions business owners against getting distracted by “vanity” ranking reports that claim to show where a business sits in ChatGPT results. The AI’s response to any given query changes based on who is asking, their history, and their context. The only metric that reliably tells the story is lead flow: are more qualified prospects finding you, and are they converting?
Performance Over Positioning
Bidview Marketing has generated over $20 million in documented client revenue, and Cameron credits that track record to the same philosophy he’s held since founding the company: measure performance, not optics.
“Most agencies sell traffic,” he says. “Bidview sells revenue. That distinction shapes everything, from how strategies are built to how success is measured.”
The businesses that will win the next phase of search aren’t the ones chasing the newest acronym. They’re the ones who understood, all along, that organized, trustworthy, well-structured information is what every algorithm, human-written or machine-learned, has always been looking for.
