AI Search in Action: How Uptick Went Toe to Toe with Industry Giants

Everybody loves an underdog. We’re always hungry for stories where the hero overcomes adversity and comes out on top, even if everyone doubts them. We all cheered for Rocky when he fought for the world title. We shed a tear when Rudy finally got his recognition. We clapped for Jerry Maguire when he secured Rod’s contract. We all love underdog stories, and now Uptick has one of our own.

The truth is, the digital marketing world is full of giants who throw shade not just in the U.S., but globally. Yet this is not a story about us standing on the shoulders of giants. It’s a story of how we rubbed shoulders with them.    

AI Search Isn’t Coming—It’s Here. Here’s What That Means for Your Business.

AI search is already baked into Google and Bing, and it’s already changing how people find answers. SGE (Search Generative Experience), aka AI Overviews, and AI panels are showing up on many searches, and they pull answers and content directly onto the page. If your brand isn’t being cited by these AI-powered summaries, you might as well be invisible. This is the new battlefield. 

Many are concerned about what this all means. Will the underdogs be crushed under the weight of large competitors’ authority? Is there a light at the end of the AI tunnel? Is SEO finally dead? 

There is so much doom and gloom surrounding these questions. The game has changed, yes, but it’s not all bad news. In fact, we’ve seen some very positive results we wanted to share. 

We’ve seen Uptick show up right next to industry titans (sometimes even above them) in these new answer panels and even AI Mode. It isn’t luck. While we can’t guarantee we can do it every time (remember, there are no guarantees in SEO), we’ve done it consistently enough on multiple queries to confidently say that we have a pretty good idea how it works. Take a look at some examples below:

Uptick vs. Industry Giants: Proof You Can Beat the Big Dogs

There’s this myth making the rounds that only the “big guys” get to play in the AI search field. That’s nonsense. You’ve seen with your own eyes how we appear right next to websites that get hundreds of thousands of visits every month. Here are some more screenshots if you’re still not convinced:

No, AI Overviews and AI Mode are not only for the giants (at least not yet). In fact, in some ways, they make it easier to rank. For example, our ranking for “onsite SEO” is the 24th result as of the writing of this article (that’s the third page, if you can believe such a place exists). If not for AI Overviews and AI Mode, no one would know our content exists (this is an insanely competitive query and we’re going toe to toe with the titans of our industry). 

Now, there are a few caveats we need to mention here:

• With the risk of sounding like a broken record, there are no guarantees in SEO, and AI Overviews and AI Mode are no exception. 
• AI results are extremely volatile. By the time we’ve published this article, they may look different. Still, we’re looking at overall trends.
• AI results are extremely personalized and location-based. We’ve tested our results from Alabama and Georgia, but odds are, if you’re searching from California, you’ll get different results. 

Despite all that, the trend is pretty clear.  

A Clear Upward Trend

Being featured here and there feels amazing. Seeing your name alongside the big players in your industry, even if it’s mostly in your small corner of the internet, is incredible. However, we wouldn’t be writing this article without having observed some tangible results in the backend, too. And while we can’t share intimate details about our business, what we can share is the graph below:

Isn’t it beautiful? This is the type of graph we love to see. Ever since we started creating content and optimizing it not just for search, but AI answers, the trend has been clear. 

In terms of numbers, we’ve observed a 104 percent increase in impressions for the past six months compared to the previous period, most of which occurred during the past three months, as you can see. Our growth in impressions for the past three months compared to the previous period is 139 percent. But most impressively, the YoY growth is a staggering 491.7 percent!

Impressions are no longer a vanity metric. When they’re caused by AI Overviews and AI Mode, they’re a clear indication of authority in the eyes of search engines. During this rise in impressions, we’ve also ranked better for non-branded queries, such as “digital marketing in Birmingham,” “Birmingham marketing agency,” and more. We’ve seen a jump in certain keywords of over 15 positions, completely blowing local competition out of the water.  

What Are We Doing Differently? (Real Tactics, No Voodoo)

There’s no magic wand, no secret handshake. Uptick wins by building content the way AI wants to serve it. That’s the long and short of it. OK, maybe not the long of it—let’s get into some more details.

Formatting for AI Overviews, not just blue links.

Formatting is and has always been important for SEO. Having the proper header structure, URLs, and metadata never went out of style and, considering their function, likely never will. However, in the era of AI-generated answers, this importance goes way beyond mere optimization. It becomes the skeleton for AI’s understanding of the content.   

We’ve slightly altered our approach to content. In the past, we made sure that every element in a piece played well with the others, creating a near-perfect symphony of linguistic precision. While this approach worked wonders for us and our clients in the past, it had a glaring weakness when it came to AI: the content could not be segmented. Every part of the copy flowed from the others, so if you only took a fraction of the text, it didn’t make much sense. 

With AI Overviews, we quickly realized that this approach, while it worked for traditional search, wouldn’t work for generative AI, which tends to take only a small fraction of the whole in order to feature it. So while we still maintain the quality of the whole, we also try to write each block of content as a modular piece that could fit with other pieces, too. This is critical for AI to pick it up and feature it. 

Targeting entities and topics, not just keywords.

SEO has been moving away from keywords and more into the realm of entities (distinct concepts, people, or places) for a while now. And while keywords are still important, it’s far more important to cover topics in their entirety. AI Overviews don’t seem to rely on keywords as much as traditional search engine algorithms. 

This means we’re thinking a lot more about covering topics in depth. This is the main weakness of AI and the main strength of human writers, so we use it to its full extent. The truth is that you can’t know which precise piece of information AI will pick up and feature, so you need to make sure that you’re covering a topic in its entirety.

Using Schema matters more now.

The truth is, AI is extremely lazy. It’s very resource-intensive, so it’s programmed to always look for the biggest shortcuts. This is where Schema comes into play. Schema makes it easier for AI to understand what the content is about and how it’s structured, so it’s a lot easier to generate an AI Overview. 

Like with traditional copywriting, removing obstacles standing in the way of the desired result increases the chances for success. You want to make it extremely easy for AI to crawl and understand your content. If the AI Overview needs to work for it, you’re not getting featured. 

Monitoring the SERP constantly and tweaking the strategy.

This is a dynamically changing field. It’s clear that Google’s motivation has been shifting for years from sending people to other websites to keeping them on Google’s own platform. It’s a safe bet that this will only get worse. 

With this in mind, the algorithms are going to change. We don’t foresee any radical shifts like in the early days of SEO, but there will be a lot of tweaking, that much is certain. Google is definitely borrowing from social media companies’ playbook (and indirectly competing with them for attention), so expect to see more dynamic shifts.

For example, freshness is bound to become more important, even for “evergreen” content. Topical authority, resource commitment, and content velocity are all going to be much bigger factors moving forward. Big changes like these sound scary, but they’re also great opportunities for those who know how to seize them. That being said, the set-it-and-forget-it approach will no longer be viable, if it ever was.   

Client Results

Case in point, we’ve been rolling out these tactics on some of our clients’ websites and then watched the graph pop. We always begin with a ground-up audit, address technical gaps, and then get the right content in the right format. Sometimes we add new content, sometimes we rework old content, and if the budget allows it, we do both.  

That’s when the momentum kicks in. Those upward swings below are the result of consistent work, solid strategy, and some quick pivots. As AI search evolves, we’re already testing the next move, making sure our clients are ahead of the next curve, not just chasing it. 

As you can see, this is a repeatable pattern. Obviously, we’ve removed names from the results to protect our clients’ anonymity, but you can rest assured, these are real results we’ve helped them achieve. 

Bear in mind that the final point in the graph is a week before the end of July 2025 (as of the writing of this article). It will likely look different by the end of the month. While the increase you can observe in these graphs is not as dramatic as our own, it’s worth noting that for our in-house strategy, our team is free to publish, edit, and implement content much faster than we would on a client’s website. And yet, even so, the results speak for themselves. 

FAQs About AI Search

• Can I really compete with industry giants?

  Depends on your industry, but yes. And you don’t necessarily need their budget, but a smarter strategy. Creating niche content with genuine insight or new research gives you a chance to cut through the noise.

• How long does it take to see results?

  SEO has always been a long game, and while SGE (AI Overviews) is more dynamic, it still takes time. Think months, not days. But you’ll see the upward movement before you know it with consistent effort.

• Will I need to rewrite my content?

  If you want to show up in AI results, probably. The old playbook doesn’t cut it

• Are AI-generated results stable?

  Not always. But with the right monitoring and updates, you stay ahead of volatility.

• Do I have to choose between “old SEO” and AI SEO?

  Nope. You need both, and they have to work together. There’s a huge overlap between the two. Think of it as increasing the intensity rather than changing direction.

Ready to See Your Brand Show Up with the Big Names?

If you’re tired of spinning your wheels and want to see how your brand could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the giants in your industry in AI search, let’s talk. Uptick can show you exactly where you stand, walk you through the data, and lay out a plan that fits your goals, not just the latest fads. We make no promises we can’t back up, and we push no empty guarantees. What you get is our best practical steps to get you visible in the new world of AI search.