Search Is Changing & So Are Buyers
Search Is Changing: So Are Your Buyers Search isn’t just evolving because of Google’s latest algorithm tweaks. The bigger shift is happening on the buyer’s side. People are no longer relying solely on traditional search engines to find what they need. They’re getting instant AI summaries, asking voice assistants for recommendations, and making purchasing decisions in conversations that never touch a web page you can track in analytics. The latest ebook from the Search Engine Journal, The Future of Search: 16 Actionable Pivots That Improve Visibility & Conversions, digs into this transformation and how marketers can adapt. It explores what “optimisation” really means when visibility, engagement, and conversions happen across fragmented, AI-driven channels. Here are five of the biggest insights from the report, and what they mean for your strategy. 1. Ranking Well Doesn’t Guarantee Visibility Once upon a time, topping the search results meant you’d get seen. Now? Not so much. AI summaries, voice assistants, and on-platform answers can intercept your audience before they even click through to your site. And even if you’re ranking first, your content might be invisible if it’s not structured in a way large language models can easily parse. Research shows AI-generated answers often pull single-sentence summaries or structured content like tables and bullet lists. They rarely rely on exact-match keywords, instead favoring clear, contextual responses. If you want to stay visible, you need to think beyond traditional SERPs and consider how your content is interpreted by multiple AI systems — not just Google. 2. Many Conversions Happen Offscreen Your analytics dashboard isn’t telling you the full story. High-intent actions — phone calls, text messages, in-person conversations — are often missing from attribution reports. But in service-based industries and B2B deals, these are exactly the moments that close sales. One business discovered nearly 90% of their Yelp conversions came from phone calls they weren’t tracking. Another saw appointment bookings surge once they connected organic search activity to call data rather than just clicks. We call this the “insight gap” — and closing it with conversation tracking can completely change how you measure success. 3. Listening Beats Guessing Marketers are swimming in customer input — from call transcripts to live chat logs — but much of it sits unused. Those raw conversations contain the exact language buyers use to describe their needs. When marketing teams analyze them, they gain a real competitive edge: sharper messaging, better-performing landing pages, and campaigns that resonate. In one case, a marketing agency boosted qualified leads by 67% just by swapping in customer-used terminology throughout their campaigns. It’s a simple mindset shift: stop assuming what people want to hear, and start using the words they already trust. 4. Paid Search Works Best When It’s in Sync Search behavior is messy — and so is the buyer journey. People bounce between organic results, paid ads, and AI-generated answers in a single session. The top-performing campaigns don’t treat these channels as silos. Instead, they keep messaging consistent across all touchpoints: ad copy that reflects real customer concerns, landing pages tailored to the buyer’s decision stage, and offers that match the problem they’re actively trying to solve. And don’t forget — optimising “after the click” is just as important as winning the click itself. 5. Attribution Models Are Behind the Times Most attribution models still assume conversions happen on one screen, in one session. Reality looks more like this: A manager sees your brand in an AI-generated snippet on desktop → sends the link to themselves on Slack → later calls your sales team from their iPhone after reviewing the content on mobile. If you’re relying on last-click attribution, you’re probably making decisions on incomplete — or misleading — data. Our report argues for models that account for multi-touch, cross-device, and offline activity. This isn’t about tracking everything just because you can. It’s about focusing on the signals that actually influence a buyer’s decision. Rethinking Search Means Rethinking Buyers The ebook, created in partnership with CallRail, is more than a set of tactical pivots. It’s a reminder that behind every search query is a human making a choice. Marketers who thrive in this AI-shaped landscape aren’t just optimising for rankings or clicks. They’re optimising for how people discover, evaluate, and decide — wherever and however that happens.
Google March 2025 Update
Google March 2025 Core Update Complete Google has now officially completed the rollout of its March 2025 Core Update, ending around two weeks of significant volatility in the search rankings. This update began on March 13 and has created notable shifts in search visibility across various sectors and website types. Data collected during the update’s rollout period revealed some of the most volatile search engine results pages (SERPs) in the past 12 months, according to tracking from Local SEO Guide. Their system, which monitors 100,000 home services keywords, showed unprecedented movement beginning the week of March 10th. SISTRIX’s Google Update Radar confirmed these findings, detecting substantial changes across UK and US markets starting March 16th. One of the most significant trends emerging from this update is a recalibration of how Google values forum content. After approximately 18 months of heightened visibility for forum websites following Google’s mid-2023 “hidden gems” update, many forum sites are now experiencing substantial drops in visibility. SEO strategist Lily Ray highlighted this trend, noting steep visibility declines for platforms like proboards.com, which hosts numerous forum websites. Ray pointed out that while Reddit continues gaining visibility, many other forum sites that benefited from the 2023 algorithm changes are now diminishing their rankings. “The SEO glory days of ‘just be a forum and you’ll rank’ might be coming to an end,” Ray observed. Additional Patterns IdentifiedAndrew Shotland, CEO of Local SEO Guide, identified several other potential patterns in this update: Improving Search Result Diversity Industry professionals commenting on the update have noted the potential connection to Google’s broader efforts to improve search result diversity and combat low-value content. This recalibration may also relate to the ongoing integration of AI-generated content in search results. With the update now complete, SEO professionals can begin to assess the full impact on their sites and implement appropriate strategies. For those managing forum content, this update signals the importance of quality over quantity and suggests that simply having forum content is no longer sufficient for strong rankings. Sites negatively impacted by the update should focus on improving content quality, removing programmatic or low-value pages, and ensuring their content genuinely addresses user needs rather than being created primarily for search engines. Search Engine Journal will continue to monitor the aftermath of this core update and provide additional analysis as more data becomes available.
Welcome Sibylle Clerey Interiors
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