Written by Julien Ricciarelli-Bonnal
28 July 2026
For twenty-five years, Google built its dominance around a gesture that became almost automatic: enter a query, scan a list of results, open several pages, compare the information and decide what to do next. Even as the search engine improved rankings, enriched result pages and began displaying direct answers, the responsibility for connecting the information remained largely with the user.
With AI Mode, Google is changing that mechanism far more profoundly. The search engine no longer tries only to understand the words being typed, but also the intention behind them, the constraints surrounding them and the decision the user is attempting to make. It can break a question into several searches, preserve the context of an exchange, compare options and support the gradual exploration of a complex problem. Google describes AI Mode as its most advanced search experience, capable of processing several sub-questions at once through a “query fan-out” technique.
The Essentials
With Google AI, search is no longer limited to providing answers or displaying links. AI Mode now helps users define their needs, compare options and reduce uncertainty until they reach a decision. For companies, the issue goes far beyond zero-click search: their offers can be understood, compared, rejected or recommended before anyone visits their website. Marketing must therefore provide information clear enough to be integrated into the engine’s reasoning, while preserving a sufficiently distinctive position to avoid becoming interchangeable. The real challenge is no longer simply to earn a click, but to influence the logic that shapes the user’s final choice.
A Search Query Does Not Always Describe the Real Need
Traditional search engines have long required users to translate a problem into keywords. Someone choosing customer relationship management software might search for “best CRM for small business”, then “CRM pricing comparison”, “GDPR-compliant CRM” and finally browse reviews or product demonstrations. Each query exposed one part of the need, but none described the full situation.
AI Mode allows the user to explain the situation directly: a company with twenty employees, a restricted budget, a sales team with limited technical expertise, a need to monitor prospects and a requirement concerning data hosting. Google can then break the request into several dimensions, search them simultaneously and combine the findings in a single response.
The engine is therefore no longer processing only what the user explicitly asks. It attempts to reconstruct the criteria shaping the decision. Price, compatibility, availability, reviews, location and previous preferences can all be combined within one experience, whereas they once required several separate searches.
This changes the value of keywords. They remain useful for understanding topics and intentions, but they no longer describe the entire journey. A single request may trigger dozens of invisible searches performed by Google, without the user formulating them or even knowing they exist.
Search marketing must therefore begin working around complete problems rather than isolated phrases. A company should no longer ask only which keywords it wants to rank for, but in which situations it could become a credible answer.
Google Is Turning Search Into a Continuous Conversation
The disruption does not come only from the first synthesis. It also comes from continuity. Users can ask an initial question, request clarification, change a constraint or compare another option without restarting their journey. Context remains available and the responses evolve with the conversation.
This brings search closer to a consulting process. A prospect can begin by exploring a market, eliminate several options, refine a budget, raise an objection and eventually ask for a final recommendation. Google is no longer merely presenting resources. It is structuring the sequence that leads towards a preference.
Companies have spent years analysing digital journeys as a succession of fragmented touchpoints. The search engine is now capable of concentrating an increasing share of those interactions within a single interface. Discovery, comparison, evaluation and sometimes action can take place without a visible break.
Google has also introduced richer search input capable of accepting text, images, files, videos and browser tabs, while suggesting formulations that go beyond traditional autocomplete. Users are no longer required to know exactly how to ask the question. The interface helps them construct it.
That assistance is strategically important. Whoever helps define the question already influences the criteria by which the answers will be assessed.
Zero-Click Search Explains Only Part of the Disruption
Discussion around generative search has focused heavily on the possible decline in clicks towards websites. The concern is legitimate. When Google summarises information directly, some users no longer need to open as many pages as they once did. Publishers, media organisations and businesses may therefore lose part of the traffic generated by informational queries.
But zero-click search mainly describes what is disappearing. It does not fully explain what is being created. With AI Mode, Google is not only keeping users inside its interface; it is taking a more important role in organising their choices.
A company may receive no click while still contributing to the answer, influencing the criteria or reinforcing a preference. Conversely, it may receive a visit much later, once the user has already compared the market and reduced the number of options being considered. The click still exists, but it occurs further down the journey.
Traditional metrics therefore become less complete. A decline in visits does not necessarily mean the complete disappearance of influence, while lower traffic may become more qualified. Companies will need to connect visibility in generative environments with branded searches, direct enquiries, conversions and commercial outcomes.
The real danger is not simply losing a click. It is no longer participating in the reasoning that happens before the decision.
Brands Must Become Comparable Without Becoming Interchangeable
To be used by Google AI, an offer must first be understandable. The engine needs to identify what the company provides, who it serves, when it is relevant and how it differs from the alternatives. Vague language, universal promises and pages built around a single keyword become even less useful.
This favours companies capable of documenting their offers precisely. Use cases, pricing, limitations, methods, geographical coverage, client profiles, evidence, reviews and delivery conditions all help the engine establish a match between a situation and a solution.
Comparability, however, creates a risk. When every offer relies on the same language, benefits and arguments, they become easy to compare and difficult to distinguish. Artificial intelligence can then reduce them to a few objective criteria, often dominated by price, availability or brand awareness.
Brands must therefore resolve a new tension: provide enough structured information to be understood without giving up what makes the proposition distinctive. Clarity makes inclusion in the answer easier; differentiation makes the company identifiable within it.
That requires more than content production. A coherent marketing and communication strategy must connect positioning, evidence, content, reputation and the experience being offered. Google can summarise information, but it cannot invent a difference that the company itself has never defined.
Personal Intelligence Brings Google Closer to the Role of Adviser
Personalisation adds another dimension. Google is developing “Personal Intelligence”, which can, with the user’s permission, connect certain applications and adapt responses to their context. A recommendation may therefore depend not only on public information, but also on preferences, habits or personal constraints.
Two users asking a similar question could receive significantly different journeys because their circumstances are not the same. One may prioritise price, another convenience, a third compatibility with tools already in use.
For brands, this reduces the usefulness of a single message directed at an abstract audience. It strengthens the importance of specific situations, concrete evidence and the ability to correspond to several criteria without weakening the positioning.
The engine begins to resemble an adviser. It does not make the entire decision on behalf of the user, but it selects the information considered relevant, organises the options and facilitates action. In commerce, this logic is already visible through systems that connect needs, reviews, prices, variants and availability.
The marketing battle is therefore moving into territory deeper than visibility. Being seen is no longer enough; a company must be retained among the options compatible with the user’s context.
Marketing Must Learn to Influence a Line of Reasoning
Companies spent years optimising their presence for a results page. They must now optimise it for a dynamic reasoning process. That process may combine a product page, a review, an article, a local result, pricing information and third-party evidence without respecting the journey imagined by the brand.
This does not make the website irrelevant. It changes its function. Pages no longer exist only to attract an audience directly; they also provide information that search engines can interpret, connect and reproduce while a decision is being formed.
Consistency becomes essential. A company presenting one promise on its website, another on public profiles and a third in its content weakens its overall intelligibility. Conversely, a clear proposition, repeated without becoming monotonous and confirmed by external sources, improves the chances of being represented accurately.
Marketing must also accept that some of its influence will become less visible. A journey may begin, progress and become more precise inside Google before any identifiable visit appears in analytics tools. Investment decisions can no longer rely solely on last-click attribution.
Companies will finally need to produce fewer pages designed merely to occupy a query and more resources capable of informing a decision. A page answering a general question can easily be summarised. Expertise explaining trade-offs, limitations, conditions for success and the differences between several choices is much harder to replace.
Google AI Is Not Replacing the Decision; It Is Redesigning the Path Towards It
AI Mode does not turn Google into an absolute decision-maker. Users will continue to consult sources, ask for opinions, compare offers and retain their own preferences. Some decisions will remain too important, personal or complex to be fully delegated to an interface.
Google is nevertheless positioning itself between the initial expression of a need and the final choice. It helps formulate the question, researches several dimensions, preserves the context, reduces the number of options and can support the next action. That position gives it considerable influence over the way markets are perceived.
For companies, the answer is not to publish more text simply to feed machines. It is to become easier to understand, harder to confuse and more credible at each stage of the journey. Brands that have never clarified their difference risk being summarised as interchangeable variations of the same offer.
The transformation therefore goes far beyond zero-click search. Traffic may decline, move or become more qualified, but the central issue occurs before the visit: in the selection of criteria, the construction of the comparison and the formation of a preference.
Google is no longer only answering what users ask. With Google AI, it is progressively accompanying them towards what they may decide.
👉 When search engines interpret offers before a visit even happens, visibility is no longer enough. Ricciarelli Partners helps companies clarify their positioning and build a genuinely differentiated commercial strategy.
Written by Julien Ricciarelli-Bonnal
28 July 2026
