SEO, still the foundation

Every AI answer engine sits on top of a search index, which means the old discipline never went away; it became the entry requirement. This section covers search visibility for Indian businesses without the folklore.

1. What does SEO cost in India? Real numbers and what they should buy

   Credible SEO for an Indian SME runs from roughly ₹20,000 a month at the low end to ₹1,00,000 and beyond in competitive categories. Quotes far below that usually buy activity reports rather than results. This article breaks down where the money goes, why quotes vary tenfold, and how to judge a proposal before signing it.

   Published 17 August 2026

2. AI Overviews cut clicks by 40%. Will they cut your enquiries?

   A randomised study of 1,065 US desktop Chrome users found organic clicks fell 39.8% when an AI Overview appeared. The loss sat almost entirely on information searches. Searches for a company by name, or with intent to buy, showed no measurable drop. For a B2B company, the blog takes the hit; product and enquiry pages largely do not.

   Published 9 November 2026

3. Ads have reached Google AI Mode in India. Should you pay to appear?

   Google began showing sponsored results inside AI Mode in India at the end of October 2026. They carry a Sponsored label. For a B2B company they are a way to buy visibility on chosen searches, not a way to be the supplier the AI-written answer itself recommends.

   Published 9 November 2026

• E-E-A-T

  E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness: Google's framework for judging whether content deserves to be believed, increasingly mirrored by AI assistants choosing what to cite.

• Structured data

  Structured data is machine-readable markup, usually JSON-LD using schema.org vocabulary, that states facts about a page and its entities explicitly instead of leaving machines to infer them from prose.

• AI Overviews

  AI Overviews are the AI-generated summaries Google shows above its classic results, composed from indexed pages and citing a handful of sources, which now absorb a large share of informational clicks.

• AI Mode

  AI Mode is Google's conversational search experience, which decomposes one question into many parallel sub-queries (query fan-out) and composes an answer across them, rewarding sites that cover a topic thoroughly.

• SEO and AEO audit: where your site stands in search and AI answers
• 30 Indian manufacturer websites checked against 18 buyer questions

SEOtop10 is published by EbizIndia. These links go to its own pages.