AI SEO search interest in India grew 16x in three years, new data shows

Search interest in AI SEO has grown 16 times over in India since early 2023. That’s not a marketing claim. It’s what Ahrefs’ own keyword data shows when you pull the monthly search volume for “ai seo” in India and plot it against a calendar. Pyrite’s own keyword research shows the same shift from a different angle. “Ai seo” and its reordered twin, “seo ai”, are now the two highest-volume terms in the entire AI-search keyword set we track for this market, at 2,600 and 1,700 searches a month.

Three years ago, almost nobody in India was searching either version. By August 2026, thousands were. And it’s not the only pattern showing up. Generative engine optimization and LLM SEO barely existed as search terms in 2023. Today they represent thousands of monthly searches between them, and a wider cluster of related terms, from “ai seo tools” to “llm seo services”, is building real volume alongside them.

This is a data study, not an opinion piece. Every historical trend number below comes from Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, pulled directly for this article. Current search volumes for the wider keyword set come from Pyrite Digital’s own keyword research database. Both sources are labelled throughout, so anyone can see exactly where each number comes from.

How We Measured This (Two Data Sources, Both Labelled)

Before the numbers, a quick note on where they came from and why two different sources sit side by side here. A data study is only as trustworthy as its method.

Historical trend data, the month-by-month volume for “ai seo”, “generative engine optimization” and “llm seo”, was pulled from Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, filtered to India, covering January 2023 through August 2026, specifically for this article in September 2026. The AI Overview presence data further down came from Ahrefs’ SERP Overview tool, checked against twelve real SEO-buyer queries, also pulled in September 2026.

The wider snapshot of related terms, “seo ai”, “ai seo tools”, “generative engine optimization services” and others, comes from Pyrite Digital’s own internal keyword research database for the Indian market. These are current volume figures rather than multi-year trend lines, since that dataset captures a snapshot rather than a historical series. Where both sources cover the same term, both numbers are shown rather than one picked over the other.

AI SEO Search Volume in India Has Grown 16x Since 2023

In January 2023, “ai seo” was searched roughly 141 times a month in India, according to Ahrefs. By August 2026, that number had climbed to 2,346. That’s a 16.6x increase over three and a half years, and most of it didn’t happen gradually.

For nearly two years, the term barely moved. It sat between 140 and 300 searches a month right through 2023 and most of 2024. Then, between December 2024 and January 2025, monthly search volume jumped from 297 to 1,550, more than five times over, in a single month. That’s not the kind of curve you get from slow, organic awareness building. It’s the shape you see when a term crosses from niche jargon into something business owners and marketers are actively being told to look into, likely tied to the wider wave of AI Overview rollouts and AI search coverage that hit mainstream marketing media around that period.

Here’s the month-by-month shape of that climb, using selected snapshots from the full dataset:

Volume has held steady in the 2,000-plus range through most of 2026, which suggests this isn’t a passing spike. It’s settled in as a real, recurring search category.

Pyrite’s own keyword data adds one more point worth flagging. “Seo ai”, the same query with the words reordered, currently sits at 1,700 searches a month, the second-highest volume of any term in this entire dataset. Search engines increasingly treat both phrasings as functionally equivalent, but seeing real, substantial volume on both word orders is a useful confirmation that this is genuine, widespread search behaviour, not an artefact of how one specific phrase happens to get typed.

Two Categories That Barely Existed in 2023: GEO and LLM SEO

AI SEO isn’t the only new term here. Two of its sub-disciplines effectively didn’t exist as search terms in India before 2023 ended, and both show up clearly in Pyrite’s own keyword research too.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

Generative engine optimization recorded close to zero monthly searches in India for most of 2023. The first real volume shows up in December 2023, at 52 searches. From there it climbed steadily, then jumped hard through mid-2025, peaking at 3,505 searches in July 2025, the highest peak of any term in this study, before settling into a stable range of 1,700 to 2,300 searches a month through 2026. Pyrite’s own keyword database puts current volume for the exact term at 2,100 a month, with the bracketed shorthand, “generative engine optimization (geo)”, adding another 250, and “generative engine optimization services” adding 300 more, a sign that a real share of this volume is already commercial intent rather than pure curiosity. If you’re building a generative engine optimization strategy, this is the term with the steepest short-term spike in the whole dataset. We’ve covered what generative engine optimization actually means in more depth separately.

LLM SEO

LLM SEO tells the sharpest before-and-after story of the two. It sat at single-digit monthly searches for almost two full years, then jumped from 65 searches in January 2025 to 1,185 by August 2025, a twelvefold increase in seven months, before settling to a steadier 500 to 600 searches a month on Ahrefs’ historical series. Pyrite’s own keyword database currently puts the exact-match term higher, at 800 a month, alongside real volume on close variants like “llm in seo” (250) and “llm seo services” (100). That timing lines up closely with when ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity started becoming default research tools for a much wider slice of Indian internet users, not just early adopters. Our llm seo services page and LLM SEO strategy checklist cover what actually changes in your approach once this term applies to your business.

Where Answer Engine Optimization Fits In (a Brief Aside)

One more term is worth a brief mention, even though it isn’t part of Pyrite’s own keyword set for this topic. Answer engine optimization, AEO, shows a similar pattern in Ahrefs’ historical India data: single and low double-digit searches through most of 2023, two distinct jumps in June and November 2024, then a settled plateau of 900 to 1,080 searches a month through 2025 and 2026. It’s included here for factual completeness, not as a term this article is built to target. If you’re comparing AEO and traditional SEO directly, our AEO vs SEO breakdown goes into that in more depth.

Other AI-Search Terms Worth Watching

Beyond the terms with a full historical trend line, Pyrite’s own keyword research tracks a wider cluster of related searches in India. These don’t have multi-year history to chart yet, but the current volume alone shows real, sustained intent rather than one-off curiosity.

Two patterns stand out here. First, “ai seo tools” pulling 600 searches a month suggests a real share of this audience isn’t just reading about the concept, they’re actively shopping for software to act on it. Second, the “what is” queries, “what is generative engine optimization” and “what is llm seo”, both carry real volume, which confirms these terms still need explaining to a large part of the audience even as adoption climbs elsewhere. A term can be trending and still not widely understood at the same time, and this data shows both things happening together.

Only 1 in 3 SEO-Buyer Searches in India Currently Trigger a Google AI Overview

Search interest in AI SEO is one thing. Whether Google actually shows an AI Overview for the searches your customers are typing is a separate question, and the data here is messier than the volume trend above.

We checked twelve real SEO-buyer search terms against Google India’s live search results using Ahrefs’ SERP Overview tool. Four of them, exactly a third, currently return a Google AI Overview. Eight don’t.

The pattern here doesn’t split cleanly along the line you’d expect. Conventional wisdom says AI Overviews favour informational queries over commercial ones. That’s not quite what this sample shows. “How does seo work”, a purely informational query, gets an AI Overview. So does “ecommerce seo services”, a clearly commercial one. Meanwhile “what is ai seo”, just as informational as the first example, gets nothing. Whatever Google’s actual trigger logic is here, it isn’t a simple informational-versus-commercial split, at least not for this set of queries, in this market, at this point in time.

What This Data Means for Businesses Planning Their 2026 SEO Strategy

Put the findings together and a clearer picture forms. Search interest in AI SEO, seo ai, GEO and LLM SEO has grown fast enough in India that it’s no longer a fringe concern. The volume data makes that hard to argue with. But AI Overview coverage on the ground is still patchy and inconsistent enough that no business should assume every relevant search is already being answered by an AI summary before a user even reaches a website.

The tools’ data point matters too. With “ai seo tools” pulling 600 searches a month in India, businesses aren’t just reading about this shift. A real share of them are already shopping for software to act on it.

That combination matters practically. Wait until AI Overviews dominate every query in your space before you act, and you’ll be reacting to a market that’s already moved. The search volume growth already happened. But assume every query is already AI Overview territory and abandon traditional ranking work, and you’d be wrong for roughly two out of three of the searches that matter to a typical SEO buyer today, based on this sample.

The businesses that get ahead of this aren’t the ones panicking about AI Overviews taking over search. They’re the ones treating GEO, LLM SEO and traditional SEO as layers of the same strategy rather than separate bets, and updating that strategy as the data shifts rather than once a year. If you want a clear-eyed read on where your own site currently stands against this shift, Pyrite Digital runs a free audit that checks exactly this: your current AI Overview visibility alongside your traditional rankings, not just one or the other. Get in touch and we’ll walk you through what we find.