Search is Changing: So Are Your Buyers
Search isn’t just evolving because of Google’s latest algorithm tweaks. The bigger shift is happening on the buyer’s side.
People are no longer relying solely on traditional search engines to find what they need. They’re getting instant AI summaries, asking voice assistants for recommendations, and making purchasing decisions in conversations that never touch a web page you can track in analytics.
The latest ebook from the Search Engine Journal, The Future of Search: 16 Actionable Pivots That Improve Visibility & Conversions, digs into this transformation and how marketers can adapt. It explores what “optimisation” really means when visibility, engagement, and conversions happen across fragmented, AI-driven channels.
Here are five of the biggest insights from the report, and what they mean for your strategy.
1. Ranking Well Doesn’t Guarantee Visibility
Once upon a time, topping the search results meant you’d get seen. Now? Not so much.
AI summaries, voice assistants, and on-platform answers can intercept your audience before they even click through to your site. And even if you’re ranking first, your content might be invisible if it’s not structured in a way large language models can easily parse.
Research shows AI-generated answers often pull single-sentence summaries or structured content like tables and bullet lists. They rarely rely on exact-match keywords, instead favoring clear, contextual responses.
If you want to stay visible, you need to think beyond traditional SERPs and consider how your content is interpreted by multiple AI systems — not just Google.
2. Many Conversions Happen Offscreen
Your analytics dashboard isn’t telling you the full story.
High-intent actions — phone calls, text messages, in-person conversations — are often missing from attribution reports. But in service-based industries and B2B deals, these are exactly the moments that close sales.
One business discovered nearly 90% of their Yelp conversions came from phone calls they weren’t tracking. Another saw appointment bookings surge once they connected organic search activity to call data rather than just clicks.
We call this the “insight gap” — and closing it with conversation tracking can completely change how you measure success.
3. Listening Beats Guessing
Marketers are swimming in customer input — from call transcripts to live chat logs — but much of it sits unused.
Those raw conversations contain the exact language buyers use to describe their needs. When marketing teams analyze them, they gain a real competitive edge: sharper messaging, better-performing landing pages, and campaigns that resonate.
In one case, a marketing agency boosted qualified leads by 67% just by swapping in customer-used terminology throughout their campaigns.
It’s a simple mindset shift: stop assuming what people want to hear, and start using the words they already trust.
4. Paid Search Works Best When It’s in Sync
Search behavior is messy — and so is the buyer journey. People bounce between organic results, paid ads, and AI-generated answers in a single session.
The top-performing campaigns don’t treat these channels as silos. Instead, they keep messaging consistent across all touchpoints: ad copy that reflects real customer concerns, landing pages tailored to the buyer’s decision stage, and offers that match the problem they’re actively trying to solve.
And don’t forget — optimising “after the click” is just as important as winning the click itself.
5. Attribution Models Are Behind the Times
Most attribution models still assume conversions happen on one screen, in one session. Reality looks more like this:
A manager sees your brand in an AI-generated snippet on desktop → sends the link to themselves on Slack → later calls your sales team from their iPhone after reviewing the content on mobile.
If you’re relying on last-click attribution, you’re probably making decisions on incomplete — or misleading — data.
Our report argues for models that account for multi-touch, cross-device, and offline activity. This isn’t about tracking everything just because you can. It’s about focusing on the signals that actually influence a buyer’s decision.
Rethinking Search Means Rethinking Buyers
The ebook, created in partnership with CallRail, is more than a set of tactical pivots. It’s a reminder that behind every search query is a human making a choice.
Marketers who thrive in this AI-shaped landscape aren’t just optimising for rankings or clicks. They’re optimising for how people discover, evaluate, and decide — wherever and however that happens.
