Search has changed. Here’s what that means for your brand.
The way consumers find products online has shifted more in the past 12 months than in the previous five years combined. Search is no longer just a keyword game. AI Overviews, conversational queries, visual search and zero-click results have rewritten how discovery works, and most brands are still operating with a strategy built for a world that no longer exists.
If you’re an ecommerce or retail brand, this isn’t a trend to monitor. It’s a change to act on now.
Want to go deeper on this? We’re hosting a morning session at Google Sydney on 29 April with a team of Pattern and Google experts to walk through exactly what’s shifting and what to do about it. Save your spot now.
AI is now deciding what consumers see
A recent Capgemini survey found that 58% of consumers now use AI to research and discover products, up from just 25% in 2023. Google’s AI Overviews alone reach over one billion people across 100 countries every month.
What’s changed fundamentally is who controls visibility. It used to be keyword rankings and bid strategies. Now it’s Large Language Models deciding which brands to surface, how to describe them and whether they’re worth recommending at all.
If your content isn’t structured in a way AI can read, interpret and trust, it simply won’t show up. Not because your product isn’t good, but because the engine couldn’t find the information it needed to include you. Want to know if your website is AI ready? Book your complimentary LLM Access Audit now.
The way people search has changed, too
It’s not just where people search. It’s how. Queries are getting longer and more conversational. Google has noted that the average search now contains five or more words as consumers get comfortable asking questions the same way they’d ask a person.
Visual search is accelerating this further. Google Lens now processes 20 billion visual searches every month, many driven by 18 to 24-year-olds using images as a starting point. One in four of those searches has direct commercial intent. A photo of a bag or a jacket now triggers a cascade of comparisons, recommendations and purchase options. If your product imagery and structured data aren’t optimised for this, you’re invisible at a high-intent moment.
The rise of zero-click results adds another layer. Ahrefs has reported a 35% decline in click-through rates as AI-generated summaries answer questions directly on the results page. Traffic to your site from search is under pressure regardless of where you rank.
Most brands don’t know how they appear in AI search
This is the gap that matters most right now. Many brands assume that if they rank well on Google, they’re in good shape. That assumption no longer holds.
AI models don’t just crawl your site for keywords. They look at product data completeness, description quality, structured attributes, sentiment in reviews and user-generated content. They’re building a picture of your brand from everything available across your digital footprint and that picture may not reflect your brand the way you’d want it to.
The first step is understanding where you stand. New diagnostic tools can show you whether AI engines can access your content, how they’re describing your products, how you compare against competitors and where the gaps are. Without that visibility, you’re optimising blind. Book your complimentary LLM Access Audit now.
What the brands getting this right are doing differently
The good news is that the brands acting early are seeing real results. Strand, a leading bag and travel accessories retailer, worked with Pattern to optimise its product feed across more than 1,600 SKUs using AI-driven tools. Within 30 days, free listing visibility increased by 186%, clicks rose 31% with no increase in ad spend, and online revenue grew 37% year on year. Read the full case study here.
Click here to understand how your product feed stacks up with a complimentary feed audit.
The approach wasn’t complicated. Better product titles. Richer descriptions. Cleaner structured data. The kind of information AI needs to confidently surface a product in response to a relevant query.
Practically, brands should be focused on three things.
- Audit how AI platforms currently see and describe your brand
- Improve the quality and completeness of your product data across every channel.
- Build content that answers the questions your customers are actually asking, not just the keywords they used to type.
The brands that adapt fastest will win
AI-led search isn’t coming. It’s already here, and it’s already shaping whether consumers see your brand or a competitor’s at the moment they’re ready to buy.
The brands that win won’t necessarily be the ones with the biggest budgets. They’ll be the ones who understood the shift early and moved quickly.
We’re unpacking all of this and more at Google Sydney on 29 April. It’s a half-day session for brands and retailers who want to know what’s changing and what to do about it. Register now.
Ready to build an ecommerce model that’s future-proof, adaptable, and AI-ready? Let’s talk.
