The future of search marketing, as with most tech-driven tools, is AI-driven. For Google, AI advancements give the search engine superpowers that make the pathway toward finding information more effortless than ever.
In reality, the picture this paints for brands feels bleak: Traffic is dropping and zero-click search is rising. Much like HBO’s The Last of Us, it’s hard to know where to go and how people are going to react to uncertainty.
Search engine optimization (SEO) as it currently exists is at a crossroads. AI-driven features for search aren’t retrieving information in ways that are presently predictable. And, though standards are being proposed, it’s difficult to know how generative engines might manipulate your content—even when you’ve done everything right, technically.
Yet the obvious conclusion is often the right one: If your audience can’t find you, they won’t choose you. That’s exactly what we underscored in our recent webinar (below), where marketing and legal experts came together to surveil the AI landscape.
A Zero-Click Search Deep Dive
Consumer behavior examined
When it comes to the future of search marketing, it’s no longer about earning a top spot in Google (or the other search engines) and waiting for clicks. It’s about being cited, summarized, and surfaced in a zero-click environment. With this, even if your audience never leaves the platform, the impression of your brand has a chance to make an impact.
Today, audiences aren’t browsing—they’re extracting. According to PAN research, 85 percent of users rely on AI-generated summaries to find information. They prioritize speed and ease, meaning they may never make it to your B2B website. In fact, Bain & Company reported in February that 60 percent of Google searches now end without a click, a trend driven by AI Overviews among other new features.
It all comes back to the effortlessness Google desires and the disruption large language model (LLM) engines like ChatGPT and Perplexity have caused. With AI, audiences are trained to expect instant answers with minimal effort.
Customer journeys have flattened
The traditional customer journey—from search to click to site visit to conversion—becomes non-linear. It’s compressed, if not bypassed entirely. Users often feel satisfied with a single, authoritative answer presented at the top of their search results regardless of where it comes from. For those who do pay attention to sources, brand awareness can now happen without a single activity recorded to your websites or channels.
The impact? Search is becoming less transactional and more contextual. People are still searching (perhaps more often than ever) but the intent is gradually shifting to micro-moments. If your brand doesn’t show up in those micro-moments via snippet or AI-generated overview, you effectively “don’t” exist to that user. It’s not just about ranking, it’s about representation.
Nowhere is this trend more apparent than among younger generations, whose comfort with the technology is only fueling its continued adoption and growth. Gen Z in particular reports the highest usage among four key generations at 82 percent. That comfort level can be dangerous when users don’t scroll through to check links or sources.
As attention spans shrink and trust in AI grows, brands must optimize not only for search engines, but for how LLMs understand, summarize, and cite content.
Clicks are no longer your barometer for success
If you’re still relying on click-throughs to prove your search strategy is working, you’re missing the zombie for the woods. A zero-click future demands a new mindset where visibility becomes a core metric of success. The brands that adapt will be the ones that get noticed, even if few consumers are clicking.
The Battle of AI Search Discovery
Fighting “super” search—and finding opportunity
In May, Google reported a phenomenon tied to AI search discovery: As more people interact with AI Overviews, they become increasingly happier with results, which leads them to use search more. (We feel there might be some slight editorializing happening there, but the fact remains: There are more queries happening on Google now.)
Coupled with the adoption of ChatGPT and other tools, we’re witnessing a titanic shift in how people interact with search engines to find and surface information. AI search engines are building their own discovery systems by ingesting vast amounts of online content to train LLMs. But there’s a catch: They don’t always cite sources, and when they do, it’s often inconsistent.
The result? A battleground for content visibility—in other words, a visibility crisis. Brands are competing not only against each other, but against the engines themselves. The AI intermediary is now a gatekeeper of discovery.
Context is everything in a zero-click world
Zero-click search doesn’t mean your content is underperforming. It means the infrastructure of visibility has changed. High-quality blogs, reports, and campaigns are still valuable, but they’re often intercepted or compressed before a buyer ever engages with them.
In this new environment, it’s not all doom and gloom. Traditional performance metrics, like clicks, sessions, or bounce rates, don’t tell the whole story. And visibility now happens upstream.
Where traditional search relies on keyword matching, AI search aims to understand intent, nuance, and specificity. For example, instead of searching “best workplace management software 2025,” a user might ask, “What’s the best software for a mid-sized startup with international employees?”
AI engines provide tailored answers to such a prompt. If it’s specific and context-rich, your content has the potential to be the source.
>> Related Read – Generative AI Search Engine Optimization Explained
An Outlook for B2B
How brands and marketers can keep up
The infestation of AI across all aspects of discovery and its permeation in content generation is inevitably followed by legal and ethical questions. As Samantha Rothaus, partner at Davis+Gildbert LLP, noted in a recent PAN webinar, AI tools can misrepresent or recontextualize brand content without consent. Marketers must consider intellectual property (IP) implications, prompt design, and brand safety when working in this space.
At the same time, the evolution of search still offers opportunities for B2B brands to gain visibility and authority. The new ways buyers query provides marketers with deeper context than ever before—they’re using AI tools not just for research but to compare vendors, evaluate content, and prepare RFPs. While it gets us closer to understanding search intent, this adds a layer of complexity to traditional buyer journeys.
To compete in the future of search marketing, B2B brands must evolve their strategic approach. Here’s how:
1. Content Design
Brand content must be AI-readable, structured, and semantically rich. This means:
- Using schema markup to define entities and relationships
- Writing with concise, answer-ready summaries that LLMs can extract
- Implementing H2s and H3s clearly for scannability and summarization
2. Public Relations
In some ways, this is back to basics. LLMs prioritize trustworthy sources, a Google staple from day one. With trustworthiness as the target, it makes earned media more valuable than ever.
- Maintain efforts to be quoted in publications that matter most for your audience.
- Syndicate expert commentary that AI tools can ingest.
- Proactively identify opportunities to cross-post content, whether on other partners’ sites or third-party publications.
3. Storytelling
In a search discovery environment that is AI-driven, authenticity and thought leadership win.
- Promote the voices of your internal SMEs and executives.
- Create content with personality, not just keywords.
- Use frameworks that help engines associate your brand with expertise.
4. Data Strategy
Discovery doesn’t start and end on Google anymore. Data will be your number one ally as you navigate AI disruption.
- Monitor how AI tools summarize and cite your content.
- Use analytics to track changes in search referral patterns and branded queries.
- Adapt your strategy based on real-time AI interaction signals—not just traditional SEO metrics.
>> Related Read – How to Get Listed in AI Platform Responses: A 3-Step Approach
AI Search Is Rewriting Your PR & Content Playbooks
AI search is here. It’s rewriting rules. Your brand can still lead the conversation—even if your clicks decrease.
The future of search marketing isn’t just about visibility—it’s about engineered discoverability across opaque, AI-driven surfaces. Brands that succeed won’t be the ones who chase algorithms. They’ll be the ones who build content that travels, earns trust, and shows up in a non-linear buyer journey.
The moment must be met with creative thinking from B2B marketers:
- Focus on influence over traffic.
- Write for machines and humans.
- Invest in long-term brand equity.
All in all, hope is not lost—unlike for most humans infected with cordyceps. Our experts are on the case and monitoring sentiment every day across numerous industries. If you’re looking for clarity, let’s talk! (We may even let you know about a new dashboard we’re launching to help B2B marketers make sense of AI Overviews.)
