How have things changed since the 10 blue links… It’s completely crazy. From AI-generated results to platform-led discovery, the future of search is already here and changing how brands appear and how audiences find what they’re looking for.
At Passion Digital, we’re not sitting back and watching the change unfold, we’re helping our clients lead the charge. This means building smarter content strategies that reflect how people are actually searching today and crafting performance marketing that keeps pace with AI’s impact on the discovery journey.
Our latest event explored exactly that: how to master new tactics, connect meaningfully and ensure your brand gets found, not lost, in the evolving search landscape.
The search landscape has changed. Dramatically.
If you want proof, look at the numbers:
- Google’s AI Overviews now appear in 33% of searches and 74% of problem-solving queries (Authoritas, January 2024)
- Zero-click searches are rising, with organic click-through rates dropping 54.6% when AI Overviews appear in search results. (Seer Interactive, February 2025)
- Large Language Models (LLMs) are actively recommending brands based on prompts, making platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity additional touchpoints in your users’ buying journey
- Visibility today means being included in AI-generated results, not just organic rankings. And that requires content that’s structured, trustworthy and primed for machines and people alike
Gartner might predict a 25% drop in traditional search volume by 2026, but we think the reality is more nuanced. Google’s aggressive rollout of AI Mode shows it’s actively changing the way we search instead of surrendering.
The numbers behind the shift
Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, user behaviour has shifted dramatically.
Google’s AI Overviews, which originated as the Search Generative Experience (SGE) in May 2023, now live across more than 130 countries, and both consumer and B2B journeys are being reshaped.
Global number of searches per day in 2024
SparkToro, 10 March 2025
Despite ChatGPT’s growth, Google Search remains the giant, handling over 5 trillion searches a year and being 373 times larger than ChatGPT.
But search queries themselves are evolving. People are using natural language, asking questions and expecting nuanced answers. That’s where AI Overviews come in, offering context-rich summaries right at the top of the results.
AI Overviews: The new search real estate
AI Overviews have become the new prime real estate in search results, typically appearing above traditional organic listings but below transactional ads. Their prevalence is significant for organisations:
- 74% of informational queries feature AI Overviews
- 69% of navigational searches include them
- 30% of transactional searches display them
This development brings both challenges and exciting opportunities. On one hand, you might see a dip in traditional organic website traffic as users find their answers directly within these AI Overviews. However, if your brand can secure a spot within these summaries, you’re looking at significantly higher visibility and a major boost in credibility. This is particularly valuable for complex B2B queries, where businesses can really showcase their deep expertise and provide detailed, trusted insights.
Think of it this way: while those traditional organic listings are getting pushed further down the page, brands that are featured in AI Overviews are enjoying a huge jump in visibility and perceived trustworthiness. And for B2B, where buyer journeys are often long and complex, demanding detailed answers and expert input, that’s incredibly powerful.
Industry specific AI Overview impact: Where AI is reshaping search
BrightEdge, February 2025
It’s clear that the way AI Overviews show up can really differ depending on the industry. We’re seeing some sectors experiencing truly dramatic growth in how often these AI summaries appear. Understanding these industry-specific trends is super important for any brand planning out their content and trying to boost their visibility.
Here’s a breakdown of where AI Overviews are making the biggest dent by industry as of February 2025:
- Education leads the transformation, with AI Overviews appearing in 71% of searches, a staggering 407% increase from just 14% in May 2024. When you think about all those research-based questions in education, it totally makes sense
- Healthcare shows strong adoption at 84%, growing from 63% in May 2024. Given how crucial authoritative, well-cited, and trustworthy information is in the medical field, it’s a perfect match for what AI Overviews need to thrive
- B2B Tech reaches 57% coverage, up from 32% in May 2024. This significant growth reflects the sector’s reliance on technical, information-rich content that AI systems can effectively synthesise and present to users seeking complex solutions
- Insurance demonstrates steady growth to 47% from 18% over the same period, suggesting AI is playing a growing role in simplifying complex financial details for consumers
- Travel maintains a consistent presence at around 30%, while Finance shows moderate adoption at 10% by February 2025
Now, while earlier data showed lower AI Overview penetration for E-commerce (around 4%) and Entertainment (around 3%), this landscape is actually changing very quickly. Historically, these sectors relied more on visual product displays or experiential content that didn’t easily translate to text-based AI summaries. However, recent developments highlight a dramatic expansion:
- Between March 13 and 27, 2025, the presence of AI Overviews increased dramatically in these categories:
- 528% for entertainment queries (e.g., “Julia Roberts movies”)
- 387% for restaurant searches (e.g., date night restaurants”)
- 381% for travel queries (e.g., “things to do in London”)
This rapid expansion into travel and entertainment really shows how committed Google is to weaving AI into almost every search experience. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, even announced that as of Q1 2025, AI Overviews are reaching over 1.5 billion users monthly! That’s a massive indicator of their growing influence on how people find information online, touching virtually every part of their lives.
For B2B companies, this brings both challenges and incredible opportunities. While you might see traditional organic traffic dip a bit as users find answers directly in AI Overviews, actually securing a spot in these prominent summaries offers significantly higher visibility and credibility. This is especially vital for those complex B2B queries where your brand can truly demonstrate its deep expertise and provide comprehensive, trusted solutions. For B2B tech companies, in particular, developing advanced, highly technical content that directly answers customer pain points and details specifications isn’t just a good idea anymore; it’s crucial for getting that coveted AI Overview visibility.
Conversational search is here to stay
The future of search is definitely leaning towards a more conversational experience. This is especially important for B2B buyers, who often have really complex, multi-faceted questions that don’t fit neatly into a few keywords. Both Google’s AI Mode and OpenAI’s SearchGPT are pushing us firmly from old-school keyword searching to a more natural, question-based way of finding information.
For example, a B2B buyer seeking CRM software might evolve from searching “CRM software” to asking, “What are the key integrations I need for a CRM in the manufacturing sector?” or “How can a CRM improve sales forecasting accuracy for a mid-sized SaaS company?” It’s all about natural language now.
Evolution of Search behaviours
Research shows ChatGPT triggers SearchGPT (which means it goes out and searches the web) on a significant 30-46% of queries. This happens most often with what we call FLIP questions—that’s Fresh, Local, Information-rich, and Personalised. These are the queries that demand current, location-specific, detailed, or highly personalised information, and they represent prime opportunities for your brand to appear in those valuable AI responses.
So, what exactly are FLIP queries?
Simply put, these are the types of questions that practically demand a web search from ChatGPT because they’re looking for really specific, up-to-date, or personal details.
Seer Interactive
Deep Research agents: A game-changer for brand recommendations
Forget AI just summarising content; we’re now seeing a massive leap where LLMs are evolving to actively recommend solutions. Think about it: Deep Research agents, like those found in ChatGPT and Gemini, can now spend 12-20 minutes digesting hundreds of sources. They then provide comprehensive analyses, often thousands of words long, that don’t just present information; they actively recommend specific brands based on a thorough evaluation.
This is a complete transformation from traditional search, which never used to recommend individual brands. Now, AI agents are stepping in to directly influence purchasing decisions. For B2B companies, this means platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini are becoming critical new touchpoints in your prospects’ buying journey.
The big takeaway here? Your potential clients could be getting vendor recommendations even before they land on your site.
This makes it absolutely crucial that you’re feeding these LLMs the precise, accurate information they need to include your brand in their recommendations. It’s why this is a core focus of our AI SEO services: we’re helping clients ensure they’re seen as the authoritative choice when AI agents start suggesting solutions.
How to ensure my brand is cited by AI platforms during customer searches?
Content strategy excellence
Create content that AI systems trust:
- Develop concise, informative content with clear product features and technical specifications
- Build comprehensive technical reviews and Q&A formats addressing complex buyer questions
- Invest in original research, case studies and expert commentary showcasing industry expertise
- Structure content hierarchically with collapsible sections, making complex information digestible
- Answer longer search queries reflecting B2B decision-making complexity
Technical optimisation
Ensure AI accessibility:
- Focus on static HTML content over JavaScript-dependent elements to ensure AI crawlers can access your content
- Verify that different AI crawlers can access your site without restrictions
- Consider implementing llms.txt files to guide AI understanding of your content
- Maintain proper content structure with clear headings and logical information hierarchy
Authority building
Establish credible presence:
- Secure citations in authoritative B2B publications and industry journals
- Build presence on respected platforms like Wikipedia and industry-specific knowledge bases
- Engage in professional forums and industry communities where prospects seek advice
- Create multi-faceted web presences that AI systems recognise as authoritative
- Include relevant quotes from industry authorities and cite credible sources (limit to 5-6 citations per page for natural flow)
Platform specific citation strategy
Different platforms require different approaches. To understand what each platform values, ask the AI platform directly.
Engage with ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity and ask them what brands they recommend for your specific industry, product, or service. Once you have their recommendations, you can reverse-engineer their preferences. Look closely at:
- Content structure: How is the information about the recommended brands organised? Is it concise, bulleted, or long-form?
- Sources: What websites, publications, or types of content are they citing as their basis for the recommendations? Are they favouring industry reports, peer reviews (like G2 or Capterra), or expert opinions?
- Language and tone: Is the language formal, conversational, technical, or benefit-oriented?
By directly interrogating the AI and analysing its responses, you’ll gain invaluable insights into the specific characteristics and sources it favours for brand recommendations. This allows you to tailor your content and citation strategy to meet the unique preferences of each prominent AI platform.
The value of community engagement
With AI Overviews still generally skipping over most user-generated content, where can your brand still shine? Turns out, platforms like Reddit (1.2 billion monthly users, 32 million in the UK) and Quora (400 million monthly users, 23 million in the UK) remain valuable spaces for brands to:
- Showcase expertise and become the go-to expert within the industry online communities
- Gain insights into your customer needs, concerns and challenges, it’s like free market research!
- Repurpose blog content, videos and resources and turn them into engaging discussions
- Zero in on specific professional groups for super-targeted content and even ads
- Use relevant keywords and helpful backlinks for SEO in community responses, it’s a subtle way to boost your brand’s presence
Ultimately, these platforms provide opportunities for higher-quality customer engagement through timely answers to user queries. This engagement often translates into higher-quality leads, as users who click through from these communities tend to demonstrate a genuine, deeper interest in your offerings. Measuring the true impact of this engagement is something we specialise in with our data and analytics services, ensuring your community efforts translate into tangible business results.
Looking ahead: What’s next in search marketing
So, the search engine landscape is changing fast, but there’s no need for fear; adaptation is key. It’s interesting how B2B buying habits have kind of shielded traditional search for a while. Since brand awareness campaigns usually handle a lot of that initial discovery, search’s role hasn’t really shifted that much. But get ready, because that’s about to change in a big way.
The next 12 months will bring:
- Google AI Mode becoming the new normal: Expect AI-powered results to be everywhere, getting smarter and more integrated into your everyday searches
- Search that feels more like a natural chat: Talking to search engines is going to feel way more human, moving past simple keywords to handle even complex questions
- AI agents actually handling your to-do list: Imagine AI not just giving you info, but helping you buy stuff, book appointments, or even give you precise directions
- Way more pictures, videos, and voice search: Visual and audio search are going to blow up even further, so brands really need to start thinking about optimising for these formats
Brands that adapt now by focusing on E-E-A-T principles (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) and creating genuinely helpful content are going to be the ones that will be best positioned for success in this exciting, AI-first future.
The bottom line for B2B organisations
The future of search isn’t coming soon, it’s already here. While this transformation presents challenges like reduced web traffic and increased attribution complexity, it also offers unprecedented opportunities for hyper-personalisation, conversational engagement and direct brand recommendations in the B2B buying journey.
Your potential clients are increasingly turning to these AI-powered search tools when they’re researching and evaluating vendors. The brands that are going to truly thrive are the ones that figure out how to feed these systems the right information and position themselves as the undeniable go-to choice when AI agents start making those crucial recommendations.
So, it’s not really a question of whether you should adapt, but how quickly you can get your B2B brand ready for success in an AI-first search world. Here at Passion Digital, we’re all about helping you navigate this transformation and making sure your brand doesn’t just survive the change, but leads it.
Imagine Better.
Ready to future-proof your B2B search strategy? Don’t hesitate to get in touch to discuss how we can help your brand thrive in the new search landscape and ensure you’re the recommendation when prospects turn to AI for guidance.
Check out our highlights reel from the event
Special thanks to our speakers
A huge thank you to everyone who joined us in a room full of curious minds and future-facing brands. And of course, hats off to our brilliant host, Chily de la Viesca, who brought insight and energy in equal measure.
- Frank Harrison, Founder of Croft Analytics
- Alexandre Hoffmann, Growth & Innovation Director at Passion Digital
- Marenco Kemp, Founder & CEO of Brandweave
- Myles Clarke, Marketing Director at Cloud Gateway