By Lauren Beesting, Digital Marketing Strategist at Creode
For the past two decades, marketers have built an understanding of how Google works and what changes your website and its content need to impact visibility. SEO for a long time has required constant adaptability to algorithm updates and user behaviour changes, but it’s been manageable for most.
Now, users can find answers in seconds, consume content in 15 seconds or less and receive a delivery the same day they order it.
This hyper-speed is changing how users search, and how we get people to our websites is not what it used to be.
The rise of AI-powered search is changing the landscape more than algorithm updates ever could, creating a fundamental shift in how people discover information, evaluate options, and make purchasing decisions.
Click-through rates are falling - across the board, CTRs are dropping as AI tools answer queries before users click on a website
Organic traffic is evaporating - as AI gets there first, the battle for the top position is now for position 0
The top of the funnel is collapsing - AI is handling informational queries, and consumers rely less on websites to find their answers
SEO playbooks are becoming ineffective - the way search behaviours are changing contradicts all that we’ve built around SEO knowledge and strategy
This isn’t a problem that can be solved with better keywords and more backlinks; it’s a strategic brand visibility challenge that demands a rethink of how we approach digital discovery.
Google still holds over 90% of the global market share, yet nearly 60% of Google searches result in zero-click results as users find answers on the search results pages without visiting a website.
Its AI Overviews are strengthening that gap as organic traffic falls between 20-40% whenever one appears on a search result, and ChatGPT has become the 5th most visited site globally, attracting nearly 5 billion monthly visits.
Despite Google’s dominance, these stats should be a cause for concern. In just four years, ChatGPT achieved what took Google 12 years to accomplish.
Consumers now expect hyper-personalised experiences online, so instead of typing a combination of keywords and sifting through results, they’re talking to AI and getting detailed answers in return.
A traditional Google query on average had 4 words, while AI search queries use around 23 words per query.
Search is no longer about keywords; it’s about speaking with digital assistants, providing context, asking follow-up questions, and expecting nuanced responses.
AI queries relating to assistance and productivity are most common, with informational and navigational-related queries on the rise. Only a small number of AI queries appear to be transactional, showing that people use AI search for efficiency over help making commercial decisions.
But if AI search continues on this trajectory, it wouldn’t be impossible to predict that it will become a tool used for transactional queries too.
The disruption from AI search is not affecting all industries equally. Certain verticals are experiencing significant impacts earlier than others, providing a preview of what is to come for everyone else:
Financial services are seeing educational queries that once drove substantial traffic to banks, credit cards and comparison sites, being increasingly answered by AI summaries.
Healthcare traffic losses are exceeding 50% as AI summaries handle informational health queries and cite big names like Mayo Clinic and the NHS. Putting health publishers and specialist sites at risk of becoming invisible.
In B2B SaaS, firms are being left without the organic discovery opportunities they have relied upon for years. Queries like "what is CRM software?" or "benefits of marketing automation" were once a prime opportunity to introduce prospects to businesses, but are now being summarised in AI results.
Although not every search will be a commercial opportunity for businesses, each has the potential to drive awareness and get prospects onto your customer journey. But now, AI is intercepting before users ever encounter your brand.
This could mean:
Fewer impressions at crucial awareness stages
Reduced brand discovery
Lost opportunities
Diminished ability to nurture prospects through content
In essence, AI is not just reducing click-through rates; it is hollowing out the top of the marketing funnel, removing the very touchpoints that have traditionally initiated customer relationships.
Companies like Expedia are already building these integrations with OpenAI, and financial services firms are exploring how to embed their products directly into AI workflows. The risk for brands is clear; we are not just facing a loss of awareness-stage traffic, but the potential bypass of the entire customer journey in the future.
The question is not whether to adapt, but how quickly you can transform your approach to remain visible and relevant in an AI-first world.
For help building a strategy to amplify your digital brand and marketing, get in touch with our team today.
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