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💡Key Findings:
- 64% of marketers predict customers will use traditional search engines less in the next 2-3 years, with AI-powered search visitors projected to overtake traditional search by 2028.
- 52% of marketers are creating content designed for AI and conversational search, making it the top preparation strategy.
- 72% of marketers have plenty of data but struggle to turn it into actionable customer insights.
- Only 16% of in-house marketers aren’t preparing for AI-driven search changes.
Why Is AI Search Replacing Traditional Search Engines?
Your customers are already changing how they find information.
They’re asking ChatGPT instead of Googling. They’re having conversations with Claude instead of clicking through search results. They’re getting direct answers from Perplexity instead of scanning ten blue links.
This isn’t a future trend – it’s happening now. By 2028, search traffic from AI tools is expected to surpass traditional search engine traffic entirely.
The question isn’t whether this shift will impact your business. The question is whether you’re ready for it.
What Are Marketers Doing to Prepare for AI Search?
According to a recent Funnel survey of 238 marketers, the vast majority are taking action:
How Are Teams Creating AI-Optimized Content?
52% are writing for conversations, not keywords. This means answering real questions the way a helpful human would, not gaming algorithms with keyword density.
Practical action: Review your top-performing content. Read each piece aloud as if you’re answering a customer’s question. If it sounds like you’re talking to a search engine instead of a person, rewrite it.
What Training Are Marketing Teams Receiving?
- 44% are training their teams on AI-driven search and visibility practices. You can’t adapt to what you don’t understand.
- Practical action: Schedule 30 minutes this week for your team to use ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity to search for topics in your industry. Document what appears, what’s missing, and where your brand shows up (or doesn’t).
How Are Advertisers Adapting to AI?
- 35% of in-house marketers and 46% of agencies are testing AI-powered advertising formats. The platforms are evolving—your ad strategy needs to evolve with them.
What Technical Changes Are Marketers Making?
- 33% are investing in structured data and metadata. AI needs context to understand and surface your content. Schema markup, clear metadata, and organized information architecture matter more than ever.
- Practical action: Audit one high-value page. Does it have proper heading hierarchy? Schema markup? Metadata that accurately describes the content? Fix it, then move to the next page.
Are Marketers Automating SEO Tasks?
30% are automating repetitive SEO and content optimization tasks, freeing up time for strategic work that requires human judgment.
What Challenges Do Marketers Face With AI Search?
Why Is Data So Hard to Use?
Here’s the paradox: 72% of in-house marketers say they have plenty of data but can’t turn it into useful customer insights. Among agencies, it’s 55%.
You’re drowning in information about AI search but struggling to figure out what it means for your actual customers.
The solution isn’t collecting more data. It’s asking better questions.
How Fast Is Change Happening?
47% of in-house marketers and 32% of agencies find it difficult to keep up with data-driven marketing’s pace of change.
But here’s the encouraging part: 44% consistently experiment and adapt based on testing, while another 47% sometimes do. Agency marketers are even more experimental, with 57% consistently testing and adapting.
What Questions Should Marketers Ask About AI Search?
- Stop asking: “How do I rank in AI search results?”
- Start asking: “What questions are my customers asking AI about the problems I solve?”
- Stop asking: “What’s the algorithm doing?”
- Start asking: “How can I be the most useful answer to my customer’s question?
The marketers winning at AI search aren’t trying to game new systems. They’re focusing on being genuinely helpful at scale.
How Should You Start Preparing for AI Search Today?
Don’t try to do everything at once. Pick one action:
- This week: Create one piece of content designed for conversational AI. Answer a real customer question completely and helpfully.
- Or: Audit one important page for structured data. Add schema markup. Fix your headings.
- Or: Spend 30 minutes researching what AI tools say about your industry and your brand.
The marketers who are prepared aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets. They’re the ones who started.
What’s the Bottom Line on AI Search?
Traditional search engines are fading. The blue links your SEO strategy was built around are disappearing.
But the need for clear, helpful, human answers? That’s permanent.
AI search rewards the same thing great marketing always has: being useful to the people who need you most.
The only difference is that now, you need to be useful in a conversation, not just on a results page.
Start today. Start small. But start.
About the Author
Nicola Ziady is a CMO with over two decades of experience in higher education and healthcare marketing. Connect with Nicola on LinkedIn.
Article Information
Published: February 2026
Last Updated: February 14 2026
Author: Nicola Ziady
Reading Time: 5 minute
