Lily Ray Spotlights EBSCO’s Organic Visibility Gains Amid AI Search Shift

Lily Ray is holding up EBSCO as a clear example of what durable authority looks like when search is being reshaped by AI. The SEO veteran, now vice president of SEO Strategy & Research at Amsive, said the company’s continued organic visibility gains matter because they come at a time when AI search is gaining traction and traditional organic traffic is under pressure.

Ray has long been tied to the E-E-A-T conversation, and she has said Google became “laser focused” on the concept starting in 2017. That history is part of why EBSCO fits the moment so well. The company describes itself as a leading provider of research databases, e-journals, magazine subscriptions, ebooks and discovery services for academic libraries, public libraries, corporations, schools, government and medical institutions. It has also built its brand around reference-style products such as Research Starters, which offer reliable, easily citable summary articles on thousands of topics.

EBSCO’s own AI strategy reinforces that positioning. The company says its artificial intelligence work is guided by responsible AI and is meant to support authoritative, trusted products and services. Its AI features, including AI Insights and Natural Language Search, are designed to improve the researcher journey and search accuracy. In a search environment where answer engines, AI Overviews and zero-click behavior can reduce clicks, that mix of trust, utility and subject-matter depth can become a visibility advantage.

Ray underscored the broader pressure point in a January 22, 2026 Moz AMA, where she called 2025 “turbulent” for SEO. She said AI search gained traction, organic traffic declined and search results pages stayed in constant flux. That makes gains like EBSCO’s more notable, not less, because they suggest some brands are still finding room to grow by reinforcing the signals that search systems reward: expertise, authority and trust.

Amsive has also been watching the volatility closely. Its June 30, 2025 core update analysis said Google’s June 2025 Core Update lasted 16 days and produced substantial recoveries for some sites hit by earlier updates. Against that backdrop, EBSCO looks less like a one-off success and more like a case study in what happens when expert-led content, citable reference material and responsible AI all point in the same direction. As Ray has spent more than 100 SEO conferences explaining, credibility is not fading in the AI era. It is becoming the edge.