If you follow marketing discussions on LinkedIn or X, you’ll have seen the headlines. Google is dying. ChatGPT is the new search engine. SEO is dead, long live AEO. They’re eye catching claims, and it’s easy to see why they get shared. Whether they hold up is another matter.
We’re asked about this regularly by clients, and it’s a fair question to ask. Search is genuinely changing, and it would be a mistake to ignore that. But it would be just as much of a mistake to abandon a strategy that’s still delivering results on the back of a handful of alarming headlines. What follows is our honest assessment of what’s actually happening, based on the available data rather than speculation, and what it means for how you approach marketing.
The short answer: no, not yet, but the ground is moving
Right, let’s deal with the headline claim first, because it’s the bit everyone actually wants to know. Google remains overwhelmingly dominant in search. According to Statista, Google accounted for 91.25% of worldwide search-engine market share in June 2026, compared with 4.68% for Bing, while Yahoo ranks third with a share of 1.28 percent. That’s not a typo, and after two years of people declaring Google finished, its market share has barely moved.
Now stack that against every AI tool put together, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, the whole lot. AI search is growing quickly, but the available data still shows traditional search dominating overall web discovery. As per The Washington Post, Google and other traditional search engines sent around 9.5 billion visits to news websites in early 2025, compared with about 25 million from ChatGPT.
So no, AI search hasn’t replaced Google. Not even close to what the headlines would have you believe.
But here's the catch
The story isn’t really about who wins the traffic war between Google and ChatGPT. It’s about what’s happening inside Google itself, and about how people are quietly changing their search habits without necessarily abandoning Google as their homepage.
Two things are true at once:
- Google is still the dominant search engine by a country mile
- The way people use Google, and the number of platforms they now use alongside it, has genuinely shifted
Understanding both of these at the same time is the key to getting your strategy right.
What's actually changed in search behaviour
1. Zero click search is now the norm, not the exception
This is probably the single biggest shift in search over the last few years, and it has very little to do with ChatGPT.
Google is increasingly answering queries directly on the search results page through featured snippets, knowledge panels, local results and, more recently, AI Overviews. Users can often get the information they need without visiting another website, making Google less of a gateway to the web and more of a destination in its own right.
This shift did not begin with generative AI. Google has been adding more information and functionality directly to its results pages for years, gradually reducing the need for users to click through to individual websites. AI Overviews are the latest development in that evolution, giving users increasingly comprehensive answers without requiring them to leave the search results.
The important change is therefore not simply that AI has reduced clicks. Search behaviour itself is changing. Users are becoming more accustomed to finding answers directly within the search experience, while Google is increasingly designed to satisfy the query before a website visit ever takes place.
2. People are running dual searches
A growing number of users, particularly younger ones, are searching in two places for the same task. They might google something to check facts or find a local business, then separately ask ChatGPT or Perplexity to summarise, compare or explain something in more depth. Gen Z and millennial usage of AI chat tools for research and discovery is notably higher than older age groups.
This isn’t necessarily replacement behaviour. It’s additive. People are building a slightly bigger toolkit rather than swapping one tool for another.
3. AI Overviews have changed what a "good ranking" even means
For years, ranking on page one, ideally in the top three, was the goal. Now, Google itself can generate a synthesised answer above the traditional results, often pulling from several sources at once. Being cited inside that AI Overview is becoming its own kind of visibility, separate from a classic blue link ranking.
Research increasingly suggests that AI Overviews can significantly reduce organic click-through rates. Ahrefs‘ 2026 analysis of 300,000 keywords found that the presence of an AI Overview was associated with a 58% lower CTR for the top-ranking organic result. That represents a meaningful risk for content-heavy sites that rely on informational search traffic.
4. AI chatbots are becoming genuine research and discovery tools
Even though the raw referral numbers for ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini are small compared to Google, their usage for certain kinds of tasks, like comparing products, summarising complex topics or getting a quick explainer, has grown fast. ChatGPT alone handles tens of millions of search style queries a week, and that number keeps climbing.
The nuance here matters. These tools are becoming a meaningful part of the research journey for some queries, particularly complex or comparative ones, even if they’re not replacing Google as a general purpose search utility.
Why hasn't Google actually lost ground, then?
A few reasons, and they’re worth understanding because they tell you where to focus your energy.
Habit is incredibly sticky
Billions of people have “just google it” wired into their behaviour. Changing that habit takes years, not months, even when a genuinely good alternative exists.
Google owns the intent that matters most commercially
AI chatbots have grown fastest for informational and research style queries, the “explain this to me” or “compare these two things” type of search. Google’s share is holding up, and in some cases growing, on transactional, local and shopping queries, the ones that actually drive revenue for most businesses. If someone wants to book a plumber, buy trainers or find a restaurant nearby, they’re still overwhelmingly likely to reach for Google Maps, Google Shopping or a plain old Google search.
Google isn't standing still
Google has folded AI directly into its own results page through AI Overviews and AI Mode, rather than losing users to a rival. In effect, Google is absorbing a lot of the “AI search” behaviour into its own product rather than losing that behaviour to competitors.
Trust and verification habits haven't fully shifted
Many users still want to see the original source, compare a few links, or double check an answer, particularly for anything with financial, legal or health implications. That instinct keeps a lot of traditional search behaviour intact.
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What this actually means for your marketing strategy
Right, enough on the state of play. Here’s where it gets practical.
You don't need to abandon SEO
We want to be really clear on this one, because it’s the question we get asked most often. Traditional SEO is not dead. Google is still sending the overwhelming majority of search traffic to websites, and that isn’t going to change overnight. If you drop your investment in SEO now on the assumption that AI search has taken over, you’ll simply lose visibility on the channel that still matters most.
You do need to widen your definition of visibility
The smarter move isn’t to abandon SEO, it’s to broaden what you’re optimising for. That means thinking about:
- Traditional organic rankings, still the backbone of most strategies
- Featured snippets and knowledge panels, which sit above the fold and often get zero click views
- AI Overview citations, being one of the sources Google’s AI summary pulls from and links to
- Answer engine optimisation (AEO), structuring content so it’s easy for AI tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity to find, understand and cite
- Brand mentions and reputation, since AI tools increasingly favour brands they recognise and trust from training data and web mentions, not just from a single optimised page.
Content needs to answer questions directly, and early
AI Overviews and chatbots tend to favour content that gets straight to the point. Long winded introductions before the actual answer don’t serve users well in an AI summarised world. A useful habit is to answer the core question in the first paragraph or two, then expand with detail, context and nuance afterwards for readers who want to go deeper.
Structured data and clean technical foundations matter more, not less
AI systems, whether that’s Google’s own crawlers or third party tools like ChatGPT, rely heavily on well structured, clearly written, technically sound pages to understand and extract information accurately. Basics like clean headings, schema markup, fast loading pages and clear internal linking aren’t just ranking factors anymore, they’re also what makes your content “readable” to AI systems in the first place.
E-E-A-T matters more than ever
Google’s guidelines around Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness were already important before AI Overviews arrived. Now they matter even more, because both Google’s AI systems and third party tools like ChatGPT tend to lean on sources that demonstrate genuine expertise and credibility rather than thin, generic content. Practically, that means:
- Publishing content written or reviewed by people with real, demonstrable expertise
- Being transparent about who wrote something and why they’re qualified to
- Backing up claims with data, case studies or original research where you can
- Building a genuine reputation across the web, reviews, mentions, backlinks from credible sites, not just on your own domain
Don't ignore local and transactional search
Since Google’s share is holding up strongest exactly where the money is, local and shopping queries, this is not the moment to neglect your Google Business Profile, local SEO or product feed optimisation. If anything, doubling down here is a safer bet than chasing every emerging AI platform at once.
Track visibility differently
Clicks alone are becoming a less reliable metric of success. If your content gets cited in an AI Overview or referenced by ChatGPT, that’s a form of visibility and brand exposure even without a click. Many businesses are starting to track brand mentions across AI platforms alongside traditional analytics, to get a fuller picture of their actual reach.
A practical way to think about it
We tend to explain it to clients like this. Imagine search as a big front door, Google, with several smaller side doors that have started appearing, AI chatbots, voice assistants, and so on. Most people are still walking through the big front door. But a growing number are also popping in through a side door now and again, particularly for research heavy tasks.
Your job isn’t to abandon the front door and rush to guard the side doors instead. It’s to make sure your business is genuinely well built, so that whichever door someone comes through, they find something credible, useful and easy to understand.
So, should businesses panic?
No. But should they update their strategy? Also, yes.
The businesses that will come out ahead over the next few years won’t be the ones who bet everything on Google staying exactly as it is, nor the ones who chase every new AI platform with equal urgency. They’ll be the ones who:
- Keep investing in solid, technical SEO fundamentals
- Create genuinely useful, expert led content that answers real questions
- Start paying attention to how they show up in AI generated answers, without obsessing over it
- Protect their strongest revenue channels, local and transactional search, rather than neglecting them for shinier new trends
- Build a recognisable, trustworthy brand presence across the web, not just on their own website
The bottom line
AI search engines aren’t replacing Google, at least not yet, and the data simply doesn’t support that narrative right now. What’s actually happening is more subtle and, honestly, more interesting. Search is fragmenting slightly, user behaviour is diversifying, and the definition of a “good result” is expanding beyond a blue link on a results page.
For businesses, that means evolution rather than revolution. Keep doing the fundamentals well, widen your view of what visibility looks like, and stay close to the data rather than the headlines. Search isn’t disappearing. It’s just getting a bit more interesting.
If you’d like a second opinion on where your search strategy stands, or want help adapting your content and SEO approach for this shifting landscape, that’s exactly the kind of thing we help businesses work through every day. Contact us today to get the best services.
