Your Next Customer Isn’t Googling You. They’re Asking AI

Why the Click is Dying and Consumers Let AI Do all the Shopping.

No one wants to do manual labor anymore. Consumer behavior has shifted from automatic browsing to delegating work to AI to do it for them. These days, we are all asking AI to research tasks, compare options for the best prices and better deals, and decide for us, and so businesses still optimized for the blue-link click are invisible in responses and buried, invisible.

I can attest to this on a personal level and have seen the behavior shift in myself as a marketing expert. For example, I use an AI assistant to do all of my shopping research, comparing options I would like based on my algorithm, and AI does everything for me including the final purchase, without me having to open a million tabs. Why is browsing becoming the exception and not the rule? The pattern becomes to create a laundry list of things I have to do and have AI decide for me and do them. Are we simply becoming lazy or too busy?

In 2026 alone, almost 65 percent of all google searches end without a click while the average zero-click rate spikes to 83 percent when Google AI overviews appear. Consumers are quickly weaving AI into daily research and buying decisions.

In 2026, 64.82% of all Google searches end without a click, while the average zero-click rate spikes to 83% when Google AI Overviews appear. Consumers are rapidly weaving AI into their product research and considering purchase workflows. [1, 2] This isn’t just starting right now. It’s how busy people shop now and they are the ones with money to spend on everyday purchases. 

AI Overviews has become our new bestie- they give us the answers before we have a chance to think on the results page. Chatbots don’t even use the results page. But in both cases, the takeaway is that no one will land on your website either way.

So have websites become obsolete in a sea of AI summary – is this the new first impression of you and your business? It seems that way. So let’s say I am searching for the best chef near me, AI will pull up an answer and not a list of links to click through. This means something. What is my takeaway here? “We spent twenty years optimizing for the click, but now that click is dying and the AI answer is becoming everything.”

So what can we do as small businesses to stay afloat amid the sea of AI summaries?

Answer-engine optimization (AEO) is key, so when you create and structure content, make sure you keep asking yourself, how do I structure this so AI can find, trust, and cite it with clear FAQs, direct answers, schema markup, making it easy for people and taking the guesswork out?

The importance of using reviews as training data. AI models depend on third-party reviews and mentions, so you have to build your reputation to be machine-readable, so every review counts, so make sure to ask customers for real reviews that will populate online.

Do great PR and get articles about you and your business online so that you become the business AI recommends so, if AI doesn’t mention you, you don’t exist.

What can you do as a first step? Claim and complete every business profile, publish helpful Q&A content, make your expertise quotable plainly and get yourself in the news by pitching reporters, build a wikipedia page, create that google knowledge panel, and you and your business have to show up everywhere.

What do we do at Upwynn Marketing to achieve this goal?

First of all, we use AI agents to support the admin work and as thought leaders to help us find things that we normally wouldn’t have or to speed up the process. Something for research that would have taken us 3 hours may now take us 20 minutes. This helps us speed up, do more, and do so with more accuracy for clients. We have AI agents on the team that work as team members, such as a chief of staff, a CMO, executive assistants for each team member, etc. that help us update CRMs, tasks, and keep us accountable as well.

We rebuilt our own operations around this new movement, so we know how to build it for clients too. We show clients what the AI is doing and what it’s producing so that you get an inside look into how it all works and actually understand AI so you can work with it, not against it. In my own words, I always say, “You can’t sell the future if you’re not living in it.”

We had one paid media client who was spending too much on ads and got their ad costs down 27% on the same budget because systems and testing beat gut feel. Our plastic surgery client achieved a lower cost-per-lead, down 33% in three months because we did the research. 

So what can we take from all this? The businesses that will win in the next five years aren’t the ones with the prettiest websites. They’re the ones AI trusts enough to recommend. Audit how you show up in AI answers today by asking a chatbot about your category and see who it names. If it isn’t you, that’s your marketing plan.

“Your next customer isn’t Googling you. Make sure the AI knows your name.”

For more, visit upwynnmarketing.com

Liz Mbwambo is the founder and CEO of Upwynn Marketing, a full-service digital agency in Orlando, Florida that works with service-based businesses: attorneys, healthcare practices, med spas, and home-service companies. After years in corporate marketing – spanning traditional media buying and digital strategy – Liz left her six-figure job and bootstrapped the agency in 2024. No investors. No safety net. Just the conviction that small businesses deserve a marketing partner as sophisticated as the big agencies, without the lock-in. Upwynn runs on a no long-term contracts, no hidden markups, and reporting tied to the KPI’s that actually mater to each client.  The results back it up – cutting one client’s cost-per-click 27% in 60 days with no budget increase, and driving 646 tracked calls in eight months. In its second year, Upwynn grew to a 13-person, remote-first team on client results alone, and rebranded from The LMB Marketing Group to Upwynn Marketing in April 2026. Liz is known for plain-spoken, ROI-obsessed advice: if a metric can’t be traced to a business objective, it’s decoration.”