Is your brand ready for the future of search? Wavemaker’s general manager of performance and analytics, Zac Godkin examines how AI will transform the search experience for users and brands.
The world of search is getting a major upgrade, and AI is leading the charge. No surprises there. But what’s exciting is that the future of search promises to unlock richer, more personalised experiences that help brands connect with users on a deeper level – opening up fresh, dynamic ways to engage like never before.
As with anything new, however, navigating this evolving landscape requires caution, calling on brands to distinguish between genuine enhancements and noise created by broader AI hype.
To best assess how brands can prepare for the AI transformation of search, let’s start at the beginning.
What’s Changing?
AI is fundamentally shifting how users search for and process information. Despite the rise of several AI-centric search competitors, Google’s dominance remains strong, holding approximately 94 per cent of the market share in Australia.
Given Google’s deep integration into our daily lives, it’s well positioned to merge AI into the search experience, beginning with its recently introduced AI Overviews – already live in the US and now also being tested in Australia – alongside AI-supported paid search advancements in targeting and ad formats.
AI Overviews introduces AI-generated results that appear above traditional search listings. Powered by Google’s Gemini technology, AI Overviews provides detailed answers to users’ queries in a conversational format, also allowing users to ask follow-up questions.
Put simply, AI Overviews aims to enhance the search experience by delivering answers, faster. However, as answers are made available directly within the search environment, it is likely users will spend more time within Google’s ecosystem and reduce the need of users to click through to brands’ websites for some queries.
How Can Brands Prepare?
1. Integrate organic and paid search strategies and measurement
AI is not just influencing organic search listings, it’s shaping paid search messaging and ad formats within search ads. Ads are becoming more tailored – based on search queries – and Google continues to test more visual formats.
Initial testing of AI Overviews has also shown that ads will seamlessly coexist alongside the AI-driven organic results. So as both organic and paid listings continue to evolve and integrate, it’s critical for brands to adopt a unified search strategy that aligns organic search and paid search efforts to ultimately work towards driving the most efficient incremental growth.
When measuring performance, it’s crucial for brands to see search as one cohesive channel, not two separate silos. By taking this holistic approach, brands can ensure that teams working on paid and organic search are aligned and driving towards the same goal. This unified strategy is the key to maximising results.
A unified search report guarantees that gains in paid or organic search are truly adding value, rather than cannibalising each other. This is especially critical when both channels are evolving so rapidly.
2. Monitor and adapt to behavioural changes
AI is likely to change how people use search engines, sparking new trends and keyword themes, while the rise of conversational search experiences will no doubt drive the growth of long-tail queries.
Organic content strategies will need to evolve to address new keyword themes that emerge in line with behavioural changes. From a paid search perspective, brands should adopt agile AI paid search targeting, such as leveraging simplified broad match targeting in conjunction with smart bidding strategies (modern search).
This will allow for the growing variations in search terms to be targeted while keeping bids and budget in line with meeting performance goals.
3. Prioritise high-quality content
As AI becomes a bigger part of the search experience, having high-quality, accurate content is crucial for keeping your organic visibility strong. Brands should focus on creating relevant and authentic content that fosters lasting engagement.
Plus, with AI’s focus on providing quick answers, it’s smart for brands to include FAQs in their content, offering clear and concise answers to common questions.
Google will continue to prioritise content based on:
Experience: First-hand knowledge of the creator
Expertise: The creator’s authority on the subject
Authoritativeness: The credibility of both the content and the website
Trust: Accuracy, honesty, safety, and reliability
4. Importance of outreach and earned media
It’s not enough for brands to create quality and engaging content. They also need to explore how to support the content with targeted outreach, focused on relevant and trusted publications.
This will help amplify your content beyond just search (through Digital PR) and earn high-quality backlinks to your site. These backlinks boost your site’s authority and signal to Google that your content should be prioritised.
5. Maintain SEO hygiene
Traditional SEO practices are not going anywhere. If anything, they are becoming more important to ensure brand content is not wasted and is accessible to search engines.
To do this, brands must continue to use structured data, optimising title tags, alt tags for video and expanding schema, to name just a few necessary SEO hygiene factors.
6. Expand and enhance paid assets
AI-powered ad campaigns like Google’s Performance Max (PMAX) take creativity to the next level by dynamically customising headlines, descriptions, and visuals based on user intent and performance goals.
As PMAX evolves, it’s essential for brands to learn how to use its dynamic features safely to stay ahead of the competition. This format extends your reach from search to display, so it’s crucial to adopt a structured and controlled testing approach to ensure you’re driving real, incremental growth.
What’s Next?
The AI-driven transformation of search is not just a passing trend – it’s a paradigm shift. And it will impact both organic and paid search. Brands that fail to adapt risk losing visibility, while those that embrace AI’s evolving capabilities will connect with users in deeper, more personalised ways.
As AI reshapes search advertising and user behaviour within search, integrating organic and paid strategies, prioritising high-quality content, testing evolving paid search targeting and maintaining SEO hygiene are essential.
The future of search is here, and those ready to evolve will lead the way.
