It sounds crazy now, but just Google it may start to sound like “just fax it” soon.

You can already hear it in conversations.

 “I asked ChatGPT,” or “Gemini said this-and-that.” 

And how are people using it? Where does it shine and where does it fumble?

We dug into the data to map out the new search landscape and the picture is anything but simple.

TLDR

🔵 AI is the new starting line. 37% of users now begin their search journey directly with AI tools, and 56% already use them as a primary information source which puts AI hand-in-hand with traditional SEO.

🔵 Efficiency wins, but trust lags. Users love AI for summarizing content (46%), finding deals (56%), and comparing products (54%), but 40% still struggle with complex questions and 37% want better source citations.

🔵 The journey is splitting in two. Younger users treat AI as a creative collaborator, while older generations stick to traditional search for structured answers. Reviews, pricing, and local info remain Google’s turf. For now.

How are users approaching AI search?

Gone are the days when search was just for finding the nearest pizza joint. 

Today’s users are treating AI tools as a creative canvas, a personal shopper, and a deep-dive researcher all rolled into one.

The shift in search behavior is heavily divided by generational lines and intent:

17% of both Millennials and Gen Z now use search primarily for creative projects and brainstorming, showing that search moves from looking for something to…well, creating it.

Also, 20% of Millennials use AI to explore topics in-depth for new insights, showing a hunger for more than just surface-level results.

Boomers and Gen X still cling to traditional search engines for structured, factual answers (26% and 28% respectively). The rules are a bit different for the old guard.

There’s a split between “utility search” (traditional) and “discovery search” (AI). 

Younger generations view search as a collaborative partner, while older users still see it as a digital encyclopedia.

What to do: If you optimize for keywords only, stop. In the new era, you optimize for ideas. 

Create content that answers “how” and “why” to capture the brainstorming crowd, but keep your facts easily scrapable for the traditionalists.

How are users approaching conversational AI?

Uh-oh. It seems like AI will be reading bedtime stories for us.

Users are increasingly leaning on conversational AI to skip the fluff and do the “heavy lifting” of reading.

When it comes to the “what,” efficiency is the undisputed king:

• The top use case for conversational AI is summarized content at 46%, as users battle information overload.
• 45% use AI for product/service details, and 44% use it for comparison insights, meaning the AI is now the ultimate pre-purchase advisor.
• 39% seek creative ideas, proving that “writer’s block” might soon be a relic of the past.

See that? Users want the gist without the click. If your content is a 2,000-word wall of text without a clear summary, you’re basically invisible to 46% of AI users.

A content tip: Use TL;DRs and clear bulleted summaries at the top of your long-form content. If the AI can summarize your point easily, it’s more likely to cite you as the source.

What is missing in AI search tools?

Even the smartest robot has its “clunky” moments. 

While AI is fast, users are starting to notice the cracks in its armor, particularly when the questions get tough.

The “honeymoon phase” with AI is meeting the reality of complex logic. The biggest frustration (40%) is the struggle with complex, multi-step questions.

Furthermore, 37% of users are annoyed by lack of clear, cited sources while 34% want more actionable next steps, rather than just a summary.

There’s also a localization lag. Almost a third of respondents find it difficult to compare local options, which explains why local SEO is still a traditional search stronghold.

What this means: AI is currently a great “summarizer” but a mediocre “problem solver.” 

Users are craving transparency and utility. They don’t just want to know what something is; they want to know where it came from and what to do next.

Actionable Tip: Anchor your content in original data and clear citations. When AI tools struggle to find the “source of truth,” being that source makes you the high-authority winner.

Where do users still prefer traditional search engines to AI?

Don’t count Google out just yet. 

For certain types of high-stakes or visual information, users still want to see the original source with their own two eyes.

There are “trust territories” where traditional search remains dominant:

• Reviews & Pricing: 47% prefer traditional search for product reviews and prices, likely due to the need for visual proof and real-time accuracy.
• Hyper-Local & News: Local info (45%) and news/recent events (44%) stay traditional, as AI often lags on “up-to-the-minute” updates.
• Visual Discovery: Images and videos (44%) are still best served by traditional grids rather than a chat interface.

Traditional search is there for confirmation. Users might start a search with AI to get ideas, but they go to Google to check the price tag and see the reviews before hitting “buy.”

For transactional and local keywords, stick to traditional SEO. For broad informational and “awareness” queries, start shifting your focus toward AI-friendly, structured data.

The first intentional search touchpoint is…

Before users can get frustrated with AI or use it to summarize a review, they have to decide where to “knock” first.

It turns out, Google’s front door is still heavy, but AI is installing a very popular side entrance.

The battle for the “starting line” is tighter than you might think:

• The Incumbent: 47% of users still reflexively head to Google or other traditional search engines to begin their journey.
• The Challenger: A massive 37% now start directly with AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Copilot. That is a significant chunk of high-intent traffic moving away from the ad-heavy SERP.
• The Rest: Voice assistants (11%) and social media (4%) are still specialized niches, but they aren’t currently the primary “start” buttons for most.

AI is no longer a secondary “check.” For nearly 4 in 10 users, the search journey starts and potentially ends within a chatbot’s interface, bypassing traditional websites entirely.

Claim your “Answer Engine” territory. Use schema markup and provide clear, direct answers to common industry questions so AI tools can pull your brand’s “truth” as the first response in these 37% of new-age searches.

Where in the customer journey can AI help the most?

The days of the funnel are over.

The buyer’s journey is now an AI-assisted flight and tools are becoming a pervasive guide from the first “I wonder” to the final “buy.”

AI is most powerful when the user is just starting to poke around or is ready to pull the trigger:

• A massive 73% of users find AI most helpful for learning broadly about a category or brand.
• In the decision stages, 61% use it to compare specific products and 60% use it to summarize reviews, effectively cutting out hours of manual research.
• 60% use AI during the consideration phase to explain features or technical specs.

AI is shortening the consideration phase. It’s taking the “messy middle” of the customer journey and tidying it up into a neat, AI-generated comparison table.

Create “Comparison Hubs” on your site. Use structured data to clearly define your specs versus competitors. 

If you make it easy for the AI to compare you, you’ll win the “decision” stage.

What’s the general opinion on AI tools? 

It might’ve been a science fiction curiosity a few years ago. 

But by now most people have started viewing AI as the Robin to their Batman.

AI is in its side-kick era.

• 39% view AI primarily as a helpful assistant or sidekick, suggesting it’s used to augment daily tasks rather than replace them.
• 26% already see AI as a new kind of search engine, which is a significant jump for a technology that only went mainstream a few years ago.
• Interestingly, only 11% use it as a source of advice or a creative partner, showing that while we trust AI to find things, we’re still a bit picky about its “opinions”.

We’re definitely in the middle of a massive rebranding of “Search.” If your marketing doesn’t provide “answers” that a sidekick can easily pass along, you’re missing the caped crusader entirely.

Shift your SEO focus from “keywords” to “conversational answers.” Structure your data so that an AI “assistant” can easily summarize your value proposition in a single sentence.

Most people use AI as search engine 

If search is the engine, AI is the high-performance fuel. 

Users are increasingly leaning on these tools to cut through the digital noise and handle the mental heavy lifting of their daily lives.

Bad news for SEOs? Over half of users (56%) use AI tools as a primary source of information, effectively treating it like a search engine. That’s a lot. 

50% utilize AI as a creative collaborator for brainstorming and overcoming blocks, meaning search is now part of the “making” process.

45% see it as an everyday assistant for handling calendars and automating tasks, proving that AI is sticking its nose into every part of the user journey.

We can call this an “Integrated Discovery.” Users are looking for both facts and solutions that help them do things. 

Information and utility are of equal value. If you can offer tools, calculators, or templates that AI can suggest to a user during their “creative collaboration” phase, you may win.

Where did AI prove to be helpful in search?

AI is quickly becoming the ultimate personal shopper, helping users skip the endless scrolling and get straight to the best deals without the headache of manual comparison.

When money is on the line, AI is used as a precision tool for finding the best prices or deals (56%). This efficiency extends into the research phase, where 54% of people use it for product comparisons and 48% rely on it to summarize those long-winded review sections.

The modern buyer might be less interested in reading every single 1-star review and more interested in the AI spitting out the curated opinion.

Furthermore, nearly half of users are utilizing AI to decipher product specifications, which shifts the power dynamic from emotional marketing to data-driven shopping. 

If an AI can explain a technical feature better than your landing page can, the user is going to stay in the chat interface rather than clicking through to your site.

AI is killing friction. It takes the most annoying parts of online shopping like review mining or bargain hunting, and turns them into a three-second chat.

Make your product data as “scrapable” as possible. Use clean, structured technical specs and high-quality summaries so AI can accurately compare you to the competition without hallucinating your features.

Marketers are preparing for AI search, here’s how

From keywords to conversations, everything is moving at an absurd pace. How to prepare? 

SEO was a game of cat and mouse and now AI search has turned it into a high-stakes match of 4D chess where the board is constantly shifting.

Over half of in-house (52%) and agency (54%) marketers are prioritizing content specifically designed for conversational and AI search.  

The “blue link” era is being superseded by a “citation” era where being the source AI pulls from is the new #1 ranking.

A notable divide appears in AI-powered ad testing and structured data investment. 

Agencies are leaning more aggressively into these technical “under-the-hood” optimizations, with 46% running AI ad formats and 40% advising on metadata, compared to 35% and 33% of in-house teams respectively. 

This likely stems from agencies needing to prove immediate ROI across diverse client portfolios while in-house teams remain laser-focused on internal team training (44%) to bridge the AI skill gap.

What this tells us: Marketers are moving from “content creators” to “AI supervisors,” ensuring their data is clean enough for a machine to digest without hallucinating.

Start writing for summarizers. Audit your core pages. If an AI can’t summarize your value proposition in one clear, structured paragraph, you’re invisible. 

How will AI impact advertising in the near future?

The customer journey is about to get a lot shorter and a whole lot more unpredictable. 

Traditional search is losing its crown, and conversational interfaces are moving into the palace.

The next 2-3 years will see a total reconfiguration of digital space.

• 64% of marketers expect a reduced use of traditional search engines like Google.
• 50% predict an increased use of AI chatbots and conversational interfaces as the primary entry point for users.
• 43% foresee shorter consumer journeys due to AI-assisted decision-making, which means your ads have less time to make an impression.

The behavior will shift from “search and find” to “ask and receive,” which will fragment the journey but also make it more personal. 

Our advice? Experiment with AI-powered marketing as much as possible.

“I’ll just ask ChatGPT…”

There might be a misconception here that AI is replacing traditional search, but it doesn’t. 

It’s splitting it in two. One lane for discovery, brainstorming, and shortcuts. Another for trust, visuals, and receipts. To find success in this new era, you might want to be fluent in both. 

So stop optimizing for algorithms alone and start optimizing for the conversation. 

Because ready or not, the search bar is learning to talk back.