The people's voice of reason
The people's voice of reason
Generative AI has rearranged how people find what they want online, and many businesses are learning that the search tactics they relied on for years no longer behave the way they expect.
For nearly three decades, the arrangement between Google and the companies that depended on it was relatively simple. Businesses climbed the rankings, Google sent visitors to their websites, and those visitors often became customers.
But Google’s new AI-powered search experience is now putting pressure on that arrangement by answering more questions before a user ever leaves the search page. Digital marketing observers, including elk Marketing, have been tracking the implications closely as businesses discover that a strong ranking no longer guarantees the website visit that once followed it.
Online search may feel faster and more useful to the person asking, but the businesses behind the information are starting to get less of the customer contact they once counted on.
Google’s vice president of Search, Elizabeth Reid, called the company’s new AI-powered Search box its biggest upgrade in more than 25 years, with the whole experience now running on Gemini. And that upgrade is already changing what people see first.
AI Overviews now sit above many results, giving users a quick AI-written summary before they ever reach the links below. But AI Mode pushes the experience further by opening a conversational space where people can ask longer questions, then keep going with follow-ups without starting over.
Search is also widening beyond typed words alone, reading images and files as part of the same experience. And with early agentic tools beginning to act on a person’s behalf, Google is moving Search closer to handling parts of the task, not just surfacing information.
Google says adoption has moved quickly, with AI Mode now past a billion monthly active users globally and queries more than doubling each quarter since launch.
Before AI Search, a Google query usually led people through a path that businesses understood well. A typed question produced a page of blue links, and the next step was a click to the site that looked most useful.
But Google now interrupts that path by placing the answer directly on the results page, often resolving the search before a visitor reaches any website. And once that answer sits at the top of the page, the link below becomes easier to ignore.
Pew Research Center found that people click less when an AI-generated summary appears, and the BBC reported that nearly 60% of Google searches now end without a click at all.
Gisele Navarro of the review site HouseFresh told the BBC she has watched that change play out on her own pages, with impressions rising even while traffic falls. “Google is showing our links more often, but no one clicks,” she said.
Google’s bigger move is that Search is starting to keep more of the customer journey inside its own walls. The company has started building search experiences that carry more of the errand from the first request to the final choice.
For example, a search for dinner plans can send AI Mode across reservation platforms such as Resy, while a ticket search can send it across marketplaces such as Ticketmaster. And shopping agents go further by tracking a product’s price and buying it with Google Pay once the shopper approves the details.
Even travel planning and product monitoring follow the same pattern, with Google handling more of the work before a brand gets the visit. Each task completed inside Search places Google closer to the customer relationship, leaving marketers to wonder how much of the buyer’s path they will still get to see.
Every business, regardless of size, has a stake in Google’s new AI search experience. Non-branded searches often introduce a company to someone who does not know its name yet, so losing that visit can mean losing the first lead or sales conversation.
E-commerce and SaaS companies feel the pressure when product research ends before a trial or cart visit. But even healthcare providers and professional services face a similar risk when educational queries are answered before a prospective customer reaches their site.
Each missed visit also leaves less first-party data for email capture and remarketing, giving businesses less control over the relationship after search.
Every few years, someone declares SEO is dead, and every few years that claim falls apart. Search still rewards visibility, but the struggle now plays out inside the answer itself, where Google’s AI decides which brands are credible enough to cite and which sources deserve to shape the response.
A high ranking still helps, though it no longer carries the same weight on its own. Today, brands need accurate information wherever the web names them, and a reputation built on mentions from sources beyond their own pages.
McKinsey found that a brand’s own site often makes up only 5% to 10% of the sources that AI-powered search references, and just 16% of brands today systematically track AI search performance. Winning that space now depends on whether a brand is trusted enough to be named when the answer is written.
Search is also becoming more commercial in places that used to feel purely organic. Google now allows ads to appear above, below, and in some markets within AI Overviews, placing paid visibility closer to the answer itself and closer to the decision that follows.
And that raises a harder question for marketers about whether search is becoming more pay-to-play, especially when a shrinking share of clicks is already being contested inside the results page.
Budgets, customer acquisition costs, and attribution all get harder to manage in that setup. And when visibility depends on both auction strength and AI placement, many businesses will have to rethink how search fits into the rest of their channel mix.
While search is changing quickly, Google argues that the future is not as bleak as some critics suggest.
Company leaders have consistently framed AI Search as an evolution of discovery rather than a replacement for the open web. And their position is that AI Overviews and AI Mode help people find information faster while still connecting them to the websites behind the answers.
Google also points to built-in links and the source cards that credit each answer as evidence that users can continue exploring beyond the summary itself.
The company says it still sends billions of clicks to the web daily, with executive Nick Fox telling the BBC that “the web is thriving.” Google adds that “traditional web results will continue to appear” beside its AI answers, framing it as traffic that moves around instead of disappearing.
Google’s AI Search era does not erase the need to be found, but it does change what being found is worth. A business may still appear in Google while receiving fewer direct visits, especially when an AI answer gives the user enough information to keep moving. And that makes search success harder to judge through rankings and traffic alone.
Teams will need to watch how often they appear inside AI answers, then compare that visibility with the leads and revenue they can still trace. The next step is a wider approach to discovery, with stronger brand demand and more useful content that AI systems can read with confidence.
Businesses that pair that visibility with direct customer relationships will have more ways to earn attention, build trust, and stay visible as AI-powered search keeps expanding.
This story was produced by elk Marketing and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
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