THE DISRUPTION OF SEARCH

The Big Themes:

• Search is fragmenting

  • Google's share of search has fallen below 90% for the first time since 2008.

    
    

• Search is increasingly social

  • 2/3 of consumers report social being a significant part of their search journey

  • This has led to ~44% of searches on Google being branded (e.g. Brawny paper towels), a figure that has increased over the years

    
    

• Search is going zero-click

  • AI search engines are providing answers in stream, precluding site visits

  • 'Ranking' and answer creation is increasingly black box

Marketer & Agency Shifts

• Agencies

  • Overhauling SEO practices and moving towards Answer Engine Optimization - AEO

  • Introducing 'Share of Model' offerings (Brandtech + R/GA)

  
  

• Marketers

  • Shifting search budgets to social

  • LLM crawler friendly websites with less of a focus on digital

Takeaway:

• Search & discovery is no-longer a solved game