What is Generative AI Search and How Will It Change Digital Marketing?
Generative AI Search is one of digital's biggest shifts that we started to see throughout 2024, and has further grown into 2025. It completely changes the landscape of how people find information online. Rather than typing a query into Google or Bing and then sifting through a list of potentially useful links, people are now entrusting AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini to give direct and conversational answers.
For businesses in all industries, this completely changes the game. It’s not just about simply ranking on Google or Bing anymore, it’s about making sure that your brand/company is the source that these AI models take from to answer queries and questions.
Statistics
From a study in April 2025, around 60% of people in the UK ages 16 to 75 are aware of generative AI tools, with about 36% having used one. 26% of these use it weekly, whilst 10% use these tools daily [Deloitte].
From December 2024, around 13% of UK respondents said they prefer using an AI tool over traditional search engines for certain queries [TechRadar].
From a study released in September 2025, around 63% of people ages 15 to 24 had used AI tools, with around 21% of these using them every day [IAB UK]. Additionally, a total of 20.2 million people in the UK had used AI tools in July 2025.
Below shows a Google Trend of the search term ‘ChatGPT’ and its popularity defined from 1 to 100 over the last 5 years. This started picking up traction around the start of 2023, but didn’t really start climbing in popularity until 2024 before rising to its current level of 100 as of 29th September 2025.
Google however still dominates the search engine market with about 93.35% share in the UK [Klatch]. Due to the way that AI tool usage is measured, ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini wouldn’t necessarily feature in the search engine market statistics. However ChatGPT saw an estimated 37.5 million search-like prompts per day in 2024, which would give it roughly a 0.25% share in the market, which is small in comparison to Google’s 14 billion searches per day [SearchEngineLand].
What is Generative AI Search?
Generative AI search works by taking your question and building a customised answer using its training data and information it finds online. Instead of loads of blue links on a Search Engine like we have been used to for the last 20 or so years, you get a single and contextual response that aims to directly answer your query.
For example if someone asks ChatGPT "Who are the top digital marketing agencies in London?", it wouldn't return a standard results page, it would instead generate a curated list based on which agencies it sees as the most credible, relevant and visible. If we use ourselves as an example, ensuring PinPoint Media appears in such lists requires strategic focus on building the kind of visibility and credibility that AI models prioritise.
We’ve curated our website to show off the exact work we produce, and all of the client wins that our employees have. PinPoint Media have focused on continuous blog writing and case studies, as well as other generative-AI friendly tasks. We would absolutely hope to see ‘PinPoint Media’ come up with searches like this, as we have looked to position ourselves as industry-experts, with credibility and openness.
But that is why this big shift matters. If your business isn’t showing up in these types of responses then you are losing out on discovery altogether.
How It Differs From Traditional Search
Traditional SEO is about optimising for algorithms that rank websites. Generative AI search is about optimising for answers.
Some key differences:
Relevance over keywords: Rather than just matching search terms, AI looks at the context and authority of the content to provide the best clarity.
Content depth: AI prefers context-rich, specific resources over thin pages or small blogs. At the end of the day, it’s about providing high quality, valuable content.
Trust signals: Backlinks, case studies and consistent brand mentions help AI models decide who to feature.
Tone and personality: Expertise and personality matter more than ever, not just keyword-stuffed, robotic-like content aimed to please the Search Engine crawlers.
Why This Matters for Marketers
The shift from traditional search engines to ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini is changing the way that potential clients discover agencies, tools and services. Rather than a Google search, these potential clients are now asking AI platforms for recommendations.
That means:
You’re less likely to be included if your website is vague, generic and not very detailed.
You’re more likely to be featured if your case studies are detailed, human-written and any claims are backed up with results.
If your brand is mentioned across multiple credible sites, your chances of being surfaced grow.
If your brand/business features across other credible sites then your chances of appearing in Generative AI increases, however this one is out of the brand/business’ hands.
Generative AI search rewards the businesses who are already taking content seriously.
How to Prepare Your Website for Generative AI Search
While this space is still developing, there are steps you can take right now:
Be specific: write detailed content that answers questions directly with authority.
Show your work: case studies, data, and results give AI tangible proof points.
Get backlinks: Aim for followed backlinks on relevant and trusted websites. Authority still matters a lot.
Optimise your structure: Logical site structure and foundations, good meta data and clearly defined headings help AI parse and understand content.
Keep it human: Write with personality and expertise, AI will pick up AI content so it’s best to humanise it.
A few of these look like traditional SEO practices, and that’s not by fault. The foundations of a clearly structured website and good, authoritative content still matter. What’s different with Generative AI search is that the authority, trust and credibility shown within your content matters much more than it did. This is much different from the keyword-stuffing of looking to feature via search engines.
We break this down into further detail here.
The Future of Digital Marketing in a Generative AI World
We’re still only at the beginning of the shift, however the trend is very clear. More and more people will use ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini as their default search platform, and thus businesses will need to think beyond traditional SEO to keep up.
This doesn’t mean traditional search engines are irrelevant, far from it. However, it does mean that the winners of this change will be those that create authentic, useful and trustworthy content enough to be included in AI-generated answers.
Generative AI search isn’t just a new channel, it’s a complete change in how people discover information, businesses and brands. Those who adapt early will have a serious advantage.
Stay Informed with PinPoint Media Blog
