Redefining search in the AI age: Threats, myths and market realities
Andy Macdonald, national head of digital at Carat, argues that search is not “dead” as some suggest, it is instead transforming.
When Microsoft’s ANZ CTO recently declared “search is dead” at the recent Humain conference, it triggered a headline splash across the trade press that felt more like provocation than prediction.
Yet in the attention economy, headlines win. While it makes for great theatre, this declaration is neither reflective of the current market nor the lived behaviour of billions of users around the world.
Search is not dead.
Google is still enormous, yet the foundations are wobbling. Its share of global search has now dipped below 90 per cent line in 5 of the last 6 months and for the first time in almost a decade, which is largely attributed to the sudden popularity of AI-first tools and “answer” engines.
Behavioural data tells the real story: when Google’s AI Overviews or the newly rolled-out AI Mode appear, external clicks collapse. A MediaCat user-tracking study found outbound traffic dropped by as much as 66 per cent when an AI Summary surfaced, while a multi-source CTR audit logged a 54.6 per cent fall in organic clicks on queries that triggered an AI box. Press Gazette’s early tests of AI Mode show links relegated to a skinny side panel, making it even less likely a user will visit a source site.
So, yes, Google’s revenue is still climbing, but it is doing so by charging advertisers more for every shrinking slice of user attention, not necessarily because people are searching more. As news-SEO veteran Barry Adams puts it, “the web has gotten so bad that a mechanism allowing users to enjoy the web’s output without having to engage with its crap is going to become the default.” AI Mode is that mechanism, and its early metrics already undermine some of the optimism in Macdonald’s take.
Zero-click searches are going to be very much the default and it’s something that both brands and publishers will have to grapple with.