Semrush says technical SEO now powers both search and AI visibility

Semrush’s late-June technical SEO checklist recasts crawl access, clean HTML, accurate schema, fresh content and logical site structure as the same prerequisites for Google rankings and AI visibility. The company says technical SEO now serves two search systems at once, traditional Google search and AI surfaces that pull from the web in real time, which makes crawlability and structure a revenue issue instead of back-office upkeep.

Google has moved in the same direction. In June 2026, Search Central updated its guidance to say SEO best practices remain relevant for AI features such as AI Overviews and AI Mode. A separate guide for generative AI features tells site owners to apply foundational SEO best practices and build and maintain a clear technical structure, while Google Search Console now folds a generative AI performance report into Search performance so impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode sit alongside standard search data.

Bing has added a second measurement layer. Bing Webmaster Tools launched its AI Performance report in public preview in February 2026 to show when a site is cited in AI-generated answers across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and select partner integrations. On June 16, 2026, Bing added expanded AI visibility insights, including Intents, Topics, Citation Share and Compare, extending the platform’s indexing and crawl diagnostics into AI answer reporting.

Semrush is pushing the same argument through its own research. In August 2025, the company said 92% to 94% of AI Mode searches were zero-click searches, a figure that underscores why visibility inside the answer surface matters even when traffic does not arrive through a click. Its newer analysis of 5 million cited URLs found that AI platforms consistently cite pages with strong technical foundations, and Semrush says systems such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini still depend on the same fundamentals that help search engines find, crawl and index pages.

For agencies, that changes the economics of technical SEO. A crawlable site with clean rendering, valid schema and a logical structure is no longer just a ranking play for Google; it is the base layer for being retrieved, understood and cited across AI-powered results as well. That makes technical audits easier to frame as recurring protection work, with ongoing fixes tied to search performance, AI visibility and the systems clients now use to measure both.