Rank #1 on Google? It's no longer worth it! How AI is shaking up Google search

In March 2025, Google brought its AI Overview to Germany – since then, an AI-generated text has appeared as a response to certain queries in Google Search. This poses a problem for website operators, especially young startups. And Google will continue to rely on AI in the future – in September, Google announced that it would be introducing a series of changes to Chrome , transforming the browser into an AI-focused browser.

Julia Huhnholz of the Berlin-based intimate care startup Dr. Vivien Karl shared on LinkedIn the consequences this AI-centric approach has had for e-commerce companies. Gründerszene spoke with the founder about her learnings and with SEO expert Fabian Bauer, asking: Is search engine optimization dead in e-commerce?

According to Huhnholz, she and her co-founder Vivien Karl focused on SEO from the very beginning of their e-commerce business. Over three years, they freed up internal resources and enlisted support from freelancers, building a solid foundation for visibility, rankings, and revenue.

Then, in March 2025, the upheaval came: Google users were stuck on the search page, getting their information from AI summaries, and traffic plummeted. "We then asked ourselves: How do we proceed with this? How do we deal with it?" the founder recalls. "I then decided: We'll pause all SEO measures. And then we'll see what happens after six months. Do we see a drop in visibility? Has this hurt our rankings?"

"For me as a user, Google's AI summary is great. I love that you get an answer right away," Huhnholz says in an interview with Gründerszene. But from a company perspective, an important touchpoint has been lost, "because people are no longer clicking. And because of this lost click, we're missing the opportunity to remarket, achieve conversions, or run personalized ads via Google Ads."