Takuma Nakahara has been doing SEO since before most of today's marketing interns were in middle school. Seventeen years. That's long enough to watch link farms rise and fall, to see content marketing become a religion, and now to witness AI rewrite the rules of search entirely. When someone with that kind of mileage starts talking about what's changing and what isn't, you lean in.
Nakahara, an executive officer at GMO TECH and head of their Algorithm Research Lab, recently became an official Ahrefs Ambassador in Japan. His appointment comes at a moment when the SEO industry is drowning in new acronyms (GEO, AEO, LLMO) and existential anxiety about whether traditional search optimization even matters anymore. His perspective cuts through the noise with something marketers desperately need: clarity born from experience.
The Career That Started With a Question at a Networking Event
Nakahara's SEO journey began at 31, when he was working in real estate services and struggling to drive traffic through traditional advertising. At an affiliate marketer meetup, he asked the room how they were acquiring customers. The unanimous answer: SEO. He bought a book on the way home and never looked back.
What followed was a career that tracked the entire evolution of search marketing. He worked on large-scale blog networks during the link-building era, pivoted to content marketing as Google's algorithms matured, and eventually helped develop tami-co, an SEO analysis tool. When generative AI emerged, he saw it not as a threat but as "an expansion of intelligence," a chance to do things at scale that humans alone couldn't accomplish.
That mindset led him to GMO TECH, where he now oversees both product development and client services while running research on how search engines and AI systems actually behave. The dual role matters. He's not just theorizing about AI search from a conference stage; he's watching the data and testing hypotheses against real client outcomes.
The Visibility Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About
Here's the uncomfortable truth Nakahara is addressing: in the AI search era, companies are becoming harder to see. Google AI Overviews now reach 2 billion monthly users, and when they appear, they fundamentally change user behavior. Pew Research found that users clicked a traditional result in just 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, compared to 15% without one.
The math is brutal. According to Ahrefs' analysis of 300,000 keywords, AI Overviews reduce click-through rates for top-ranking pages by up to 58%. AI Overviews now show up in nearly 55% of all Google searches, and that number keeps climbing. For B2B marketers who built their demand generation engines on organic search, this isn't a minor adjustment. It's a structural shift.
Nakahara's research at GMO TECH has been tracking this transformation. In June 2026, his team published an analysis of 40,000 domestic AI search queries, examining how brands appear (or don't) in AI-generated responses. The findings inform a practical framework for what he calls "brand visibility in AI search," which goes beyond traditional ranking metrics to measure whether your company gets cited, referenced, or recommended when AI answers a user's question.
GEO Is Not an Acquisition Strategy
One of Nakahara's sharpest insights challenges how most marketers are thinking about generative engine optimization. "GEO is not an acquisition strategy," he argues. "It's an activity for building recognition."
This distinction matters enormously for how you allocate resources. Nearly a third of the US population will use generative AI search in 2026, according to EMARKETER. But the goal isn't necessarily to drive clicks from those interactions. It's to ensure your brand exists in the AI's understanding of your category.
Think of it like this: when a prospect asks ChatGPT or Perplexity about solutions in your space, does your company get mentioned? Are you part of the consideration set before the buyer ever visits your website? Only 16% of brands systematically track their AI search performance today, according to McKinsey. That's a massive blind spot.
The practical implication is that GEO work looks different from traditional SEO. You're not optimizing for a single ranking position. You're building the kind of content, entity signals, and brand authority that makes AI systems confident enough to cite you. As one industry analysis put it, "all the stuff you're already doing for SEO gets you 90% of the way there with AI search." The remaining 10% is about making your content citable, quotable, and structured in ways that AI systems can extract and reference.
The Cross-Functional Reality
Nakahara emphasizes something that should make every CMO pause: adapting to AI search isn't just a marketing problem. It requires cross-functional coordination.
When AI systems decide which sources to cite, they're evaluating signals that span multiple departments. Technical SEO (owned by engineering or IT), content quality (owned by marketing or editorial), brand authority (built through PR, thought leadership, and customer success), and entity signals (often scattered across legal, HR, and corporate communications) all contribute to whether your company appears in AI-generated answers.
This is why Nakahara's role at GMO TECH combines research, product development, and client services. The insights from studying AI behavior need to flow directly into both the tools the company builds and the strategies they recommend to clients. Siloed organizations will struggle to execute this kind of integrated approach.
For B2B marketing leaders, the implication is clear: you need to own the AI visibility conversation, but you can't execute it alone. The CMO who treats GEO as "just another SEO initiative" and delegates it entirely to the search team will miss the strategic opportunity.
What Hasn't Changed
Perhaps the most reassuring part of Nakahara's perspective is his insistence that the fundamentals still matter. After 17 years of watching search evolve, he's seen plenty of "everything is different now" moments that turned out to be less revolutionary than advertised.
The core principle he's maintained since reading Google's patent documents early in his career: understand what the algorithm is trying to reward, then create content that genuinely deserves that reward. The specific tactics change. The underlying logic doesn't.
As one industry guide noted, "the fundamentals of optimizing a website haven't changed much. What has changed is where and how people discover brands." Great user experience, fast and secure performance, and clear, helpful content still matter as much as ever. The difference is that you're now optimizing for multiple discovery surfaces, not just Google's traditional results page.
Nakahara's approach to Ahrefs reflects this philosophy. He's been using the tool since 2013, originally for backlink analysis and competitive keyword research. What he values most is the ability to compare his clients' performance against the broader market, not just their own historical data. In an era where AI search adds another layer of complexity, that comparative view becomes even more essential.
The Opportunity in the Chaos
Here's the thing about moments of industry disruption: they create openings for companies willing to move while competitors are still debating whether to act. AI search visitors convert 4.4x better than organic, according to one analysis. The traffic may be smaller, but it's more qualified.
Between 40% and 60% of cited sources change month-to-month across Google AI Mode and ChatGPT, making visibility far less stable than organic search rankings. That instability is frustrating for established players, but it's an opportunity for challengers who can move quickly and adapt.
Nakahara's bet is that the companies who invest in understanding AI search now, who build the measurement capabilities, who create content designed for citation rather than just ranking, will have a significant advantage as this channel matures. The playbook isn't fully written yet. That's exactly why it's worth writing.
For B2B marketers watching their organic traffic metrics with growing concern, Nakahara's 17-year perspective offers something valuable: permission to stop panicking and start experimenting. The rules are changing, but the game isn't over. It's just entering a new level.
