There’s a quiet revolution happening in search. Have you noticed? Are you a victim or a participant?
Artificial intelligence-driven (AI) behaviour is rapidly reshaping how people are finding what they need on the internet and how web content is surfaced and consumed, chipping away at organic traffic and keyword rankings – and marketers are starting to feel it.
Google (and Bing and the rest of the search minnows) have long been the digital gatekeepers.
But things are changing – and fast.
Curiosity and conversion
I wrote a while back about ChatGPT when it first exploded. I even interviewed it. Back then, the buzz was around how it could write intelligently, crack jokes, and play chess. Neat party tricks.
But now the trick’s on Google.
Generative AI tools have ushered in a new behaviour: skipping the search engine altogether and asking the AI to do the grunt work – recommendations, comparisons, even shopping lists.
Whether it’s planning a holiday, buying a car, choosing a recipe or hunting for a new camera, people are turning to AI to ask: “Just tell me what to get.”
In fact, ChatGPT has just announced that the buying journey will soon be able to start inside the AI tool.
For marketers and SEO professionals, this new reality is already showing up in the data. Organic traffic is softening – even in markets with strong purchase intent.
But it’s not that consumers aren’t looking; it’s that AI is doing the looking for them.
Queries like “best budget smartwatch”, “iPhone v Samsung camera quality” or “which tablet is best for students?” can now be answered entirely in AI-generated summaries.
Who needs 10 blue links when the AI offers a tidy rundown, complete with pros, cons and a few buying options?
Maybe an emoji or two too.
Case in point: I recently searched for a travel-friendly digital camera. After scrolling through the usual reviews, I asked ChatGPT, “What’s the best camera for travel under $1,000?”. Instantly, I got a curated list, with pros, cons and yes, even links, which I did check, but they weren’t essential.
The AI had done the hard yards. I didn’t really need to go website-hopping. For brands, that’s a problem.
Fewer clicks. Less visibility. Lost touchpoints. And the AI? It’s now the gatekeeper between curiosity and conversion.
Digital success measures
So what’s a marketer to do? Well, first, realise this: AI-centric content is the new frontier.
Soon, if you’re not showing up in AI, you might not be showing up at all. And AI can’t be encouraged to surface your brand with long lunches or Christmas hampers – it wants its own version of great content; clean, trustworthy, well-structured, fact-based content. Snackable. Parsable. Quote-worthy.
This shift also puts fresh emphasis on brand. Remember the old worries about Amazon’s “buy again” button turning every purchase into a generic one? AI risks doing the same, simplifying decisions to whatever it deems best. But strong brands punch through that.
If a user knows your name, they’ll ask for you by name. “What does Brand X offer?” That’s gold.
Good news, then, for brand marketers – and for channels that build brand equity. Cutting through AI’s flattening tendencies becomes a new game worth playing.
And also good news for those who have invested in their first-party data.
Love your customer, keep communicating, be sophisticated and get that marketing automation platform humming along. This and your brand are probably your greatest marketing assets now, as the tectonic plates shift.
Existential curveball
Of course, all this also forces a rethink in digital success measures.
Page views, bounce rates, time on site – they miss the mark when AI is making decisions behind the scenes.
You might actually be winning the AI battle – getting mentioned, driving action – yet see no traffic bump. You could even misattribute results to direct traffic or keyword searches when AI’s doing the lifting invisibly.
The one thing AI still can’t replicate? Experience. And that’s where brands need to double down.
Transactional and support-driven pages still matter: buying, quoting, booking, downloading – the AI can’t complete these steps.
That’s where your website must excel.
It’s going to be fascinating to see how Google, whose business relies on people clicking, responds to this existential curveball.
As for me, I’m off to lunch, just as soon as I ask AI where the best spots in Ponsonby are. (Though anyone who knows me already knows the answer – no AI needed.)
Disclaimer: Goodale is the CEO of the strategic marketing agency Quantum Jump and needs no help from AI in choosing where to go for lunch.
– Ben Goodale
