An operator's briefing from Shayne Williams, Founder and Group CEO of SugarNova Group. Six shifts that will decide which brands get found, named and chosen next year, and a checklist to work through before spring.
At Google I/O in May 2026, Google said AI Overviews had passed 2.5 billion monthly users and AI Mode had passed 1 billion, and showed searchers moving straight from an AI Overview into follow-up questions in AI Mode. More buyers now meet your category through an AI-written answer before they see a list of links.
What to do: find the questions buyers ask before they buy from you, and answer each one plainly, near the top of a page that deserves to be cited.
Pew Research Center tracked real search sessions from US Google users in 2025 and found people clicked a normal result 8% of the time when an AI summary appeared, against 15% when it did not. Traffic from informational searches will keep thinning.
What to do: judge content by whether it gets your brand named, not only by the visits it sends. A citation inside an AI answer is the new page one.
AI answers lean on what the rest of the web says about you: press coverage, review sites, comparison articles and community threads. A brand that only talks about itself on its own site is hard for an AI engine to trust.
What to do: treat PR, reviews and inclusion in the lists your buyers read as search work. It is why we run PR and AI search as one plan.
AI engines work out who you are, what you sell and who you serve from consistent signals: your site, structured data, profiles and the way others describe you. Mixed messages make you easy to leave out.
What to do: write one clear description of your business and use it everywhere. Add Organization, Service or Product and FAQ schema, and keep your Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and directory listings consistent.
SparkToro found that only 0.34% of US Google searches continued into AI Mode between January and April 2026. Adoption is growing fast, but most searches still run through the results page you already know, and AI answers are built from pages search engines can already find and trust.
What to do: don't rebuild your marketing around AI alone. Fix the technical basics, build pages for the searches that make you money, and earn the links that lift both.
Rankings alone no longer tell you if you're winning. The numbers that matter in 2027 are searches for your brand name, how often AI engines name you for the questions that count, and what each customer costs as authority builds.
What to do: run a fixed set of buyer questions through ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Mode every month and record whether you're named. Track branded search alongside it.
Sources. Google, I/O keynote, May 2026: AI Overviews and AI Mode user figures. Google Search I/O 2026 update: AI Overviews to AI Mode follow-ups. OpenAI, February 2026: ChatGPT weekly users. Pew Research Center, July 2025: clicks on searches with and without an AI summary. SparkToro, January to April 2026: share of US Google searches continuing into AI Mode.
Baseline, AI visibility test, technical fixes, schema and the buyer question map.
PR campaign live, review flow running, priority pages rebuilt to answer buyer questions.
Comparison and list placements, paid amplifying what's proven, first read on branded search and AI mentions.
AI search is when a search engine or assistant writes an answer to a question instead of only listing links. Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity all do this, and they name the brands and sources they rely on.
Yes. AI answers are built from pages search engines can find and trust, and most searches still run through the normal results page. In 2027 SEO and AI search are one job: rank the pages that matter and make them easy for AI engines to cite.
SEO earns rankings in search results. GEO, generative engine optimisation, earns mentions and citations inside AI-written answers. They share the same foundations, and GEO adds entity clarity, answer-first content and third-party authority on top.
Make it easy for AI engines to be sure about you. Describe your business the same way everywhere, answer buyer questions plainly on your own site, earn coverage and reviews on sites AI engines already trust, and test what ChatGPT says about you every month.
It depends on your starting authority and how competitive your category is. We work to a 90-day plan with monthly measurement, so you can see what is moving and what is not.
Ask a fixed set of buyer questions across the main AI engines each month and record whether you're named, alongside your branded search volume. That is how SugarNova reports AI search for clients.
Book a free growth audit. We'll run your AI visibility test and show you the first three moves for 2027.
Book your free growth audit