Overview
Wondering when AI will fundamentally alter online research, discovery, and search behavior? You're too late. Consumers are quickly defaulting to AI-powered search — through apps like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, and Claude, as well as Google's AI Overview to guide their choices, evaluate brands, and increasingly to discover new ones.
About 50 percent of Google searches already have AI summaries, a figure expected to rise to more than 75 percent by 2028. Half of consumers polled in a McKinsey survey now intentionally seek out AI-powered search engines, with a majority saying it's the top digital source they use to make buying decisions. By 2028, $750 billion in US revenue will funnel through AI-powered search.
The result: unprepared brands may experience a decline in traffic from traditional search of anywhere from 20 to 50 percent. Winning brands will need to rethink their content strategy and how they influence the broader set of sources that AI-powered search uses to generate answers.
The AI-Powered Consumer Decision Journey
More than 70 percent of AI-powered search users ask questions at the top of the funnel to learn about a category, brand, product, or service but the technology is heavily used across the entire consumer decision journey.
Consider a consumer looking for guidance on the best cross-training shoes. With AI-powered search, they can understand what factors matter (price, functionality, style), what features different brands excel at, and which models have strong reviews all in a single interaction. They can even fine-tune recommendations by including training goals or budget constraints.
In traditional search, reaching the same conclusion requires working through multiple review sites, scanning brand pages, and synthesising insights across many sources. It's no surprise that 40 to 55 percent of consumers in top sectors: consumer electronics, grocery, travel, wellness, apparel, beauty, and financial services, now use AI-based search to make purchasing decisions.
Already, 44 percent of AI-powered search users say it's their primary and preferred source of insight, topping:
- Traditional search: 31%
- Retailer or brand websites: 9%
- Review sites: 6%
This means gen AI engine optimization (GEO) must now be a key component of any holistic marketing and digital strategy.
Why Your Brand Might Not Show Up
Even market leaders aren't guaranteed visibility in AI-powered search. While traditional SEO focuses on own-site content, a brand's own sites typically comprise only 5 to 10 percent of the sources that AI search references. AI-powered search pulls from a broad, diverse array of sources including affiliates and user-generated content.
These sources vary by LLM, location, category, and question type and will evolve as the models themselves evolve. That makes meeting consumers where they make decisions significantly more complex than classic SEO.
Source diversity varies widely by category
For consumer electronics, AI search draws heavily on review aggregators and tech publications. For financial services, it leans toward regulatory and advisory sources. For grocery and wellness, user-generated content and community forums carry outsized weight. Brands that only optimise their own web properties are effectively invisible across the majority of sources AI engines consult.
The Four Dimensions of GEO
McKinsey's research identifies four interconnected dimensions brands must address to win in AI search:
1. Owned content optimisation
Brands must ensure their own digital assets: websites, product pages, FAQs, and long-form content are structured and written in ways that AI engines can parse, attribute, and cite. This means:
- Clear, factual, well-structured content that directly answers the questions consumers ask
- Authoritative tone with explicit sourcing and evidence
- Structured data and schema markup to improve machine readability
- Breadth of coverage across the full decision journey, not just bottom-of-funnel pages
2. Earned presence across third-party sources
Because AI engines draw primarily from third-party sources, brands must actively cultivate presence across the ecosystem of content that AI references:
- Review platforms (G2, Trustpilot, Amazon, sector-specific sites)
- Editorial and press coverage in publications AI models have learned to trust
- Community and forum participation (Reddit, Quora, industry communities)
- Affiliate and partner content that features the brand accurately and favourably
3. Sentiment and narrative management
The AI's synthesis of sources determines not just whether a brand appears, but how it is described. Brands need to:
- Monitor what AI engines currently say about them across categories and question types
- Identify negative or inaccurate characterisations being surfaced in AI answers
- Proactively generate content and press that corrects the record
- Engage with the community sources that shape AI narratives
4. Measurement and optimisation infrastructure
Most existing analytics frameworks are built for traditional search and do not capture AI-driven discovery. Brands need new measurement approaches:
- AI search visibility tracking across platforms (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews)
- Attribution models that account for AI-influenced decisions made before the first click
- Conversion quality analysis — McKinsey data shows AI search visitors convert at multiples of traditional search rates for high-intent queries
The Urgency Is Now
McKinsey's data makes clear that AI search is not an emerging trend to monitor it is an active disruption reshaping the consumer decision journey today. The brands building GEO competencies now will compound their advantage as AI search adoption accelerates toward the 75 percent+ AI summary coverage projected for 2028.
Brands that wait risk not just reduced traffic, but reduced relevance: if a brand does not appear or appears negatively in AI-generated answers, it may be excluded from consumer consideration sets entirely before a single click occurs.
The shift from SEO to GEO is not a future challenge. For categories with high AI search adoption, it is the present competitive battleground.
Key Takeaways
- 50% of consumers already use AI-powered search as their primary discovery tool
- $750 billion in US revenue will flow through AI-powered search by 2028
- 20–50% of traditional search traffic is at risk for unprepared brands
- Brand-owned websites account for only 5–10% of sources AI search references
- 44% of AI search users name it their preferred source above traditional search, brand sites, and review platforms
- Winning requires a four-dimension GEO strategy: owned content, earned presence, sentiment management, and measurement infrastructure
Source
This article summarises and adapts findings from McKinsey & Company's October 2025 report: New front door to the internet: Winning in the age of AI search, authored by Elizabeth Silliman, Julien Boudet, Kelsey Robinson, Desirae Oppong, and Nilay Shah from McKinsey's Growth, Marketing & Sales Practice.
