Research: AI Search Trends

How We Think About This

The Problem

Businesses react after they've already lost ground

Structured data, entity work, and AI-visibility signals get addressed only after a competitor is visibly ahead.

The Impact

Catching up costs more than building ahead

Retrofitting the technical foundation after the fact is slower and more expensive than building it in from the start.

The Solution

Build toward the direction of travel now

Structured data, entity clarity, and AI-visibility work done proactively, before it's table stakes.

AI-mediated queries keep growing as a share of total search

More questions are being asked directly to AI assistants instead of typed into a search bar, especially for research, comparison, and how-to queries. This doesn't replace Google, it adds a second channel that needs its own visibility work.

Structured data is becoming table stakes, not a nice-to-have

As models rely more on structured, machine-readable signals to reduce hallucination and improve accuracy, sites without solid schema markup and entity clarity are at a growing disadvantage.

Answer engines are starting to transact, not just inform

Shopping and booking flows increasingly let an assistant complete an action, not just recommend a source. Being structured for that (clear pricing, availability, and purchase paths in machine-readable form) is starting to matter for commercial queries.

Attribution is getting harder before it gets easier

As more discovery happens inside an AI conversation rather than a click-through, traditional last-click attribution undercounts the AI-search channel's actual influence. Measurement tooling is catching up, but isn't there yet, and we're upfront about that gap rather than overselling current tracking.

Real client, real numbers

5.6x clicks · 5.1x impressions

Google Search Console data for optimabags.com, before and after Afily's SEO/GEO work went live. This is the one client whose numbers we can show you in full.

Read the case study →

Where this is headed, and what to build toward now.