Search in 2027: six predictions for marketing leaders

By Ashley Urquhart, Head of Content, Firewire Digital

Search is changing faster than most marketing budgets. AI Overviews, AI Mode, and assistants like ChatGPT now answer questions before anyone reaches a website; Google Ads is handing more decisions to automation; and agentic checkout is about to let AI complete purchases on a shopper’s behalf. For marketing leaders planning 2027, the hard part is working out which of these shifts should actually change where your budget goes.

Below are six predictions for search in 2027, drawn from what we’re seeing across Firewire Digital’s client accounts and the most reliable search industry data available, with what I’d do about each one if I were setting your search budget.

The starting point: search didn’t shrink, the click did

In February 2024, Gartner predicted that traditional search engine volume would drop 25% by 2026.

Instead, Google says AI Mode passed 1 billion monthly active users within a year of launch, and Search queries are at an all-time high, while Similarweb’s 2026 Generative AI Landscape found that 95% of ChatGPT users still use Google.

So, what has fallen is the click. SparkToro’s study of Similarweb clickstream data found 68.01% of US Google searches ended without a click from January to April 2026, up from 60.45% in 2024 (measured on a different panel). Every prediction below follows from that shift.

1. Traffic stops being a credible KPI

Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025. Visits with an AI summary clicked a traditional result 8% of the time, against 15% without, and only 1% clicked a link inside the summary. Ahrefs’ study of 300,000 keywords found AI Overviews correlate with a 58% lower click-through rate for the top-ranking page.

Organic sessions will keep falling on informational queries even when your visibility improves. If your board still judges SEO on traffic, 2027 will look like failure when it isn’t. Move reporting to revenue per organic session, non-brand conversions and share of AI citations before the next budget cycle forces the conversation.

2. Citation becomes the new position one

Seer Interactive’s 2026 study of 53 brands, 5.47 million queries and 2.43 billion organic impressions measured what a citation is worth. On informational queries, cited brands earned about 20,743 organic clicks per million impressions, compared with 9,445 for brands that weren’t cited and roughly 33,500 when no AI Overview appeared. A citation more than doubles your clicks, but it doesn’t bring them all back.

Two moves follow. Write comparison and buying-guide content an AI system can verify and quote: clear specifications, named sources and genuine expert judgement. Then defend your commercial and product pages hard, because that’s where clicks and revenue still live.

3. AI assistants become a discovery channel, not a traffic channel

Similarweb puts generative AI platforms at 9.5 billion average monthly visits between June 2025 and May 2026, up 70% year on year. The same behaviour is showing up inside Google: in the US, the average AI Mode search is three times the length of a traditional query, and planning queries are growing 80% faster than AI Mode queries overall. People are researching, comparing, and shortlisting inside AI answers, then leave only to buy.

Track how often assistants mention and recommend your brand across a fixed set of prompts, and keep your entity information consistent across your site, Google Business Profile, retailers and review platforms. Assistants recommend brands they can corroborate.

4. Google Ads automation becomes the default, and your data becomes the edge

Google says AI Max for Search campaigns see an average of 7% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA or ROAS with the full feature suite, and it’s automatically upgrading Dynamic Search Ads campaigns to AI Max. Independent results are more mixed. Smarter Ecommerce’s analysis of more than 250 Search campaigns found median conversion value up 13% but median CPA up 16%.

When every competitor runs the same automation, the advantage moves to what you feed it. Pass margin or profit data rather than raw revenue, import offline conversions, set brand exclusions and review search terms every week. Automation spends confidently on whatever signal you give it, including the wrong one.

5. Agentic checkout arrives in Australia before most retailers are ready

Google launched the Universal Commerce Protocol earlier in 2026 so AI agents can carry a shopper from research to purchase inside AI Mode and Gemini. At Google Marketing Live in May, Google confirmed that UCP-powered checkout will roll out across Canada and Australia ahead of the UK.

In 2027 your product feed starts to behave like your category page. Merchant Center data quality, shipping and returns attributes, accurate stock and structured data will decide whether an agent can recommend and sell your product at all. If you’re an eCommerce brand, audit your feed with the same rigour you’d apply to your homepage.

6. Incrementality becomes the only measurement that counts

Fewer clicks, more automation and more journeys that start inside AI assistants all weaken last-click reporting. The question finance will ask in 2027 is simple: what would we have lost without this channel?

We learned how to answer that on our Hobbies Direct campaign, which won Gold for Best APAC SEO Campaign at the Global Search Awards 2026. We built the measurement before the content, filtered brand terms out of organic reporting and tracked paid and organic separately. Google Ads conversion value grew 84% on 4% less spend while organic revenue grew 33.7%, which showed SEO was adding customers rather than taking credit for them. Holdout tests, geo tests and brand-filtered reporting are now the price of a credible budget conversation.

What I’d do in the first quarter of 2027

I would start with measurement. Separate brand from non-brand, agree on an incrementality method with finance, and stop reporting traffic as an outcome. Then audit the inputs machines rely on: product feeds, structured data, entity consistency and the conversion values you pass to Google Ads.

Finally, put your best subject-matter thinking into content that deserves to be cited. The brands that win in 2027 will be the ones AI systems can verify, buyers already recognise, and finance can measure.

About the author

Ashley Urquhart is Head of Content at Firewire Digital, an independent specialist search agency based in Newcastle, NSW. She leads content production across Firewire’s client portfolio, builds the editorial frameworks the team uses, and directs the agency’s AI-assisted content workflow across keyword research, briefing, and editorial QA. Firewire’s content programmes don’t produce filler. Every brief Ashley scopes ties to a search intent, a stage in the buying journey, or a specific commercial outcome. The agency’s approach pairs editorial quality with the technical SEO depth the team brings: content that ranks because it’s genuinely useful, and that converts because it’s designed to.

Team page: firewiredigital.com.au/team/ashley-urquhart

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ashley-silver-04aa36aa

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