A CMO at a midsize enterprise software company had a moment recently. Her team spent three years building top-of-page-one SEO dominance. Then someone ran a simple test: typed the company's core use case into ChatGPT and asked for vendor recommendations. The company didn't appear. Not once. "We thought we had search figured out," she said. "Turns out we optimized for the wrong engine"
That scenario is playing out across industries. Most organizations haven't caught up.
The numbers that explain the shift
Generative AI has moved from novelty to primary research channel faster than almost any technology before it. ChatGPT alone has over 900 million weekly active users. Google AI Overviews now appear in more than 25% of all searches, up from 13% just a year ago .
