AI cites the deep pages but sends humans to the homepage — most sites are built backward

Google AI summaries and chatbots are sharply reducing human referral traffic, with traditional search clicks falling and AI citation clicks remaining near 1%. But AI systems are consuming more web content than ever, increasingly using live citations to answer queries across categories like travel.

The web is shifting from a click-driven model to one where content must be structured for AI visibility as much as human browsing. Sites built around homepage funnels may lose influence if their deeper pages are not crawlable, authoritative, and easy for AI systems to interpret.