What actually changed
Four shifts that rewrote discovery while you were busy.
The shift isn't subtle and it isn't slow. Answer-first interfaces now intercept queries that used to reach your site. Ranking on a results page matters less when the results page is skipped. Keywords move the game at the wrong level, structure and substance are what earn citations now.
Search results now lead with a generated answer. The ten blue links dropped below the fold.
AI assistants cite sources in-line. Being one of those sources is the new page-one.
Models reason about entities and relationships, not keyword density.
Sites with clean structure get parsed, summarised, and quoted. Sites without get skipped.