Editorial
The Gist
- Search disruption is accelerating. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity are eating into Google’s dominance, with market share dipping below 90% for the first time in nearly a decade.
- AI overviews slash traffic. Website visits from Google can drop 30–70% when AI-generated summaries replace clicks, with some predicting a 90% loss in human visitors.
- The Post-Website Era is coming. Brands must adapt by being AI-recommended, building their own agents, owning key channels and fostering brand loyalty that drives direct visits.
Traditional search—and Google, in particular—is under serious threat of being dislodged as the starting point for many buyers’ journeys. In January, ChatGPT and other alternatives drove Google’s search engine market share below 90% for the first time since 2015, according to Statcounter.
And the sharks are circling more aggressively now, with both OpenAI and Perplexity set to release browsers to compete with Google’s market-leading Chrome, and with at least a dozen AI startups also vying to gobble up some of Google’s market share.
To be fair, the biggest loser here isn’t Google, which has introduced its own generative AI search results in the form of AI Overviews. The biggest losers are website operators, who are having their content regurgitated by generative AI engines in exchange for a source link (sometimes) and are seeing their web visitor traffic plunge.
For instance, research shows that website traffic from Google has declined between 30% and 70% depending on the search terms used because of AI Overviews, according to AI magazine. That’s in line with Ahrefs research showing that an AI Overview in a search results correlates with a 34.5% lower clickthrough rate on average for the top-ranking page, compared to similar informational keywords without an AI Overview.
And the worst is yet to come. “Your website doesn’t need to go away,” says Chris Andrew, CEO & Co-founder of Scrunch, “but 90% of its human traffic will.”
Welcome to the Post-Website Era
Driven by generative AI search and agentic ecommerce, the Post-Website Era will be characterized by websites getting more non-human traffic than human traffic. In other words, AI will control some major gateways between you and your customers.
To thrive in this new era, which will unfurl over the next decade, brands need to accomplish one or more of five feats:
1. Be Routinely Recommended by Popular AI Engines or Agents
The $85 billion search engine optimization (SEO) industry is furiously trying to adapt to this changing environment. The change is so new there’s not even agreement as to what they’re trying to transform themselves into yet—maybe AI optimization (AIO) or answer engine optimization (AEO) or generative AI optimization (GAIO) or generative engine optimization (GEO) or LLM search engine optimization (LLM SEO or LEO).
Regardless of the exact tactics used and what we ultimately call them, the goal is to be cited or recommended by AI engines routinely. This is independent of any paid or sponsored results or preferred partner agreements.
Related Article: Is Universal Search Optimization Queen in New SEO Landscape?
2. Develop Their Own Popular AI Engine or Agents
Consider this is the successor to today’s site search, as well as some mobile app features. Imagine branded AI agents that understand all of your past purchases (and perhaps purchases through sister brands, select partners and other third-parties) so they can recommend and complete additional purchases given your specific needs, help troubleshoot problems, schedule servicing of a product based on your calendar availability, make usage recommendations and much more.
Most likely, brands will have scores of AI agents that all work together to fulfill a wide variety of customer needs. However, in many cases, all of those AI agents will likely operate under one name and all be accessed in one place, with the coordination of AI agents being invisible to customers.
3. Have an Effective Presence Where Consumers Are Already Congregating
While many new AI tools are looking to displace Google, that’s not the only place that people begin searches. Amazon, YouTube and TikTok are other popular starting points, just to name a few. Having a substantial presence in places like that that are relevant to your business will be important, whether it’s through direct partnerships, influencers, affiliates or other means.
Related Article: X, Meta and the Great Social Media Meltdown
4. Have Permission to Reach Many Consumers via Digital Marketing Channels
Consumers’ email and SMS inboxes will continue to be another common starting point for searches. Mobile and browser push will also spark buyer journeys.
Today, these inboxes already act as a personally curated mini-mall, bringing together all of a consumer’s favorite and most trusted brands. Even though gen AI and agentic AI may disintermediate brands in a more powerful way than search does, most consumers still have and will continue to have strong brand preferences—to the degree that they are willing to pay more, wait longer or drive farther to transact with those brands.
Related Article: Is Your Brand Trusted Significantly More Than ChatGPT?
5. Be So Trusted, Lauded, Valued or Coveted that a Significant Number of Consumers Visit Directly or Ask for Brand by Name
Speaking of brand trust and brand loyalty, even if human website visits do drop by 90%, as Chris Andrew boldly predicts, that remaining 10% is likely to be highly valuable. Perhaps they’ll account for 40% of online sales and we’ll call it the Half-Pareto Principle.
But chances are that far more than 10% of visitors will know exactly what they want from a brand or will want to browse the old fashioned way without an AI filtering and intermediating what they can see.
Related Article: Building Customer Trust — Statistics in the US for 2025
Brands Reduced to Their Product-Delivering Guts?
In a dark vision of the Post-Website Era, many brands will be reduced to fulfillment centers for AI agents. That seems overly reductive and culturally too revolutionary. While brand loyalty has been slipping in recent years, most consumers will continue to have significant preferences, just as they always have.
While price is one way to win, consumers favor brands and routinely pay higher prices because they offer convenience, faster delivery, better quality or reliability, more generous return policies, free services (e.g., free alterations at Nordstrom), easy and reliable servicing, charitable giving (e.g., Newman’s Own) and loyalty program perks—not to mention brand cachet.
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Of all of today’s brand differentiators, advisory content leadership is the most at risk. Reviews and advice will just be too easy for AI to scrape, aggregate and generalize. The exception is when your products are exclusive.
Indeed, the more unique your brand is the better you’ll fare. So, in some ways, the rules of the game won’t actually change that much. But some of the players in the game are definitely changing.
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