Digital Marketing Agency... Websites | Google Ads | SEO
We created our first Goggle Ads campaign in 2007 and was one of the first agencies in the UK to be awarded the Google Partner badge. In 2018 we were handpicked by Google to their exclusive Elevator scheme, designed enhance the UK’s top-performing agencies.
Award winning search, marketing, websites & advertising
Search as we knew it is gone. Here’s what’s actually happening inside Google’s AI engine — and how to stay visible in the new landscape.
| 50% Queries with AI Overview | 58% Searches end zero-click | 89.9% Google’s market share |
Counterintuitively, AI hasn’t killed search — it’s turbocharged it. Google’s Q1 2026 earnings showed query volume at an all-time record, with AI-driven experiences credited as the primary driver behind a 19% revenue increase in Search. The Gemini model sits at the heart of this, processing over 16 billion tokens per minute via direct API use alone — a 60% jump on the previous quarter.
So the volume of searches is up. But the nature of those searches, and crucially what happens after them, has changed fundamentally.
“It’s no longer enough to rank number one. Your content now has to be good enough for Google’s AI to cite it — that’s the new first place.”
Two features are reshaping the SERP simultaneously, and conflating them is a common mistake.
AI Overviews (previously called Search Generative Experience) now appear in around 50% of all US queries, generating a synthesised answer directly above traditional blue links. They are especially prevalent in health, finance, SaaS and e-commerce — sectors where informational intent is high.
AI Mode is a deeper, more conversational interface powered by Gemini’s ‘query fan-out’ technique. It breaks a single query into multiple sub-questions, searches across sources for each, and returns a rich, multi-layered answer. It supports text, voice, image, and even PDF inputs. It expanded globally to over 200 countries in March 2026 and is now integrated into the Android Search bar, Chrome’s address bar, and the iOS Google app.
A third layer — Search Live — adds real-time conversational querying, while Deep Search kicks in automatically for complex research topics, pulling from a broader source pool.
The uncomfortable truth: 58% of Google searches now end without a click. AI Overviews answer the query on the page, and users move on. Studies of 40,000 large US-based websites show an average traffic drop of around 2.5% year-on-year — not the catastrophic collapse some predicted, but a meaningful structural shift that will compound over time.
The consolation — and the opportunity — is this: pages appearing between positions 11 and 20 are still being cited inside AI Overviews. Rank is no longer the sole indicator of visibility. Being selected as a trusted source is the new currency.
AI-driven SERP features now appear in 30–45% of informational searches, with AI Overviews live in 200 countries across 40 languages.
Google’s systems now analyse full context and subtopics, not just phrases. Build content around topic clusters and cover every related angle — not just one target keyword.
Pages consistently cited in AI Overviews use question-based headings, concise section openers, and scannable formats. Help the AI extract meaning quickly and confidently.
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust. AI Mode selects sources based on quality and credibility — not link volume. Backlinks are becoming less decisive than authority signals.
Use JSON-LD types like FAQPage, HowTo, Article, and Product. Schema turns your content into machine-readable data — the format AI systems prefer to cite.
AI Mode supports multimodal responses. Pages enriched with relevant images, video, and infographics perform better at being cited, as Google can pull richer answers.
AEO is the evolution of SEO — optimising to become the trusted source that AI systems reference, not just the page that ranks. Ask yourself: what question does this page definitively answer?
Google’s ambitions extend beyond search answers. The company is pushing a Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), enabling users to browse, compare, and complete purchases entirely within AI Mode. Early retail partners include Etsy and Wayfair, with Shopify, Target, and Walmart to follow. For e-commerce brands, this is a wake-up call: the customer journey may soon complete inside Google’s ecosystem without ever visiting your site.
On the paid side, shopping ad formats are being tested inside AI Mode, and sponsored placements are beginning to appear within AI-generated responses. Search ads are evolving from static text links into discovery-native experiences embedded in conversational results.
Even YouTube is being reshaped. Google is currently testing an ‘Ask YouTube’ feature that responds to queries like multi-day trip planning with a structured mix of video clips and text — surfacing relevant creators alongside the answer. For brands investing in video SEO, this opens a new discovery surface worth watching closely.
“Traditional SEO is not dead — it’s evolving from optimisation for ranking into optimisation for understanding. The brands that adapt early, building content for both humans and AI systems, will dominate discovery across the entire Google ecosystem.”
Google still commands nearly 90% of the global search market and brings in 98 billion visits a month. SEO remains essential. But the game has changed: visibility now depends on trust, structure, topical authority, and brand signals far more than on raw ranking positions or backlink counts.
The question to ask for every piece of content you publish is no longer ‘will this rank?’ — it’s ‘will Google’s AI choose to cite this?’ The shift is real, it’s accelerating, and the window to get ahead of it is now.
© 2026 Getextra Ltd
