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Takeup of AI search tools is on the rise, disrupting user behaviors and the performance of brands’ organic search efforts. The implications for paid search, as well as for search’s impact on brand awareness and conversion metrics, are less clear.
What is certain is that increasing a brand’s presence in AI search summaries will become a crucial goal for many marketers. It’s also one they can get started on right now. The data below illustrates the state of AI search for marketers, and how brands are and aren’t responding.
AI search has become many consumers’ preferred source of information online
Many web users are now happy to use an AI-generated search summary as a primary source online, rather than visit a brand’s website or a review forum. That’s according to McKinsey’s AI Discovery Survey, conducted in August, which found 44% are content to rely on Google’s Overviews or AI Mode, ChatGPT or Perplexity versus the classics (original Google, Bing).
But Google’s still the favorite by far
Google’s estimated share of the search market dipped below 90% in October 2024, for the first time since 2015. But it hasn’t fallen farther this year, and the collective share of the market held by all other AI engines is less than 1%, according to BridgeEdge’s latest AI Pulse data. So, when we talk about AI search we’re really talking about Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, the two primary ways users interface with its large language model (LLM), Gemini.
Zero-click search is affecting brands’ web traffic
There’s both anecdata and actual data telling us that AI search is hitting publishers. Inevitably, with fewer users going beyond the summary, brand web traffic is going to fall too.
A Bain and Dynata survey of 1,100 consumers conducted in December 2024 showed 80% of users relying on AI summaries at least 40% of the time, leading to an estimated organic traffic hit of between 15-25%.
What gets a brand into Google’s AI summaries?
Lower web traffic means it’s important for brands to make sure they’re being mentioned in an AI summary. Per recent Ahrefs research, there’s a strong correlation between brand visibility in AI-generated summaries and mentions of a brand on other web pages, as well as hyperlinked mentions of a brand, and the amount of branded searches being carried out by users.
In plain English, that means that earned media and press coverage, plus a brand’s existing popularity among users, count for a lot. Media and PR agencies, from Jellyfish to WPP’s Burson, have responded by launching a variety of tools to rank and analyze brand visibility in AI search results.
Mother-backed PR shop The Romans, which works with Lidl, Heineken and Deliveroo, released a GEO tool called “Serpent” (a reference to the search engine results page, or SERP) last week. “This is a massive opportunity for PR and earned media because so many of the results come from editorial, and we can influence that,” said Lucy Hart, executive strategy director.
What about paid search?
AI search has had observable impact on paid search ads, with Google’s Overview summaries literally pushing them down results pages. But since most search spending flows toward keywords that don’t trigger an Overview, few marketers report adverse impact on ad performance.
Meanwhile, researchers at the University of Hamburg and the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management concluded that referral traffic from ChatGPT converts far worse than traditional marketing channels such as Google Search, email and affiliate links. The implication? It’s still worth pulling levers like paid search.
According to WARC’s Q3 advertising spend projections, search ad spend is set to increase 10% this year to $253.2 billion, accounting for 21.6% of global advertising investment. Google, by the way, is expected to take 86% of that.
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