SEO - the new brand channel?

AI Search Is Transforming Your Customers' Buying Behaviour: This is What You Need to Know.

Seven years ago, I never thought I'd write this post. I worked in-house at MADE.com, sitting alongside the Paid Search and Paid Social teams. We were focused on driving measurable, bottom-line results.

I was part of the acquisition team and firmly believed SEO was a performance channel.

I've viewed it that way ever since.

Today, after a wave of industry shifts from Google's AI mode to the rise of LLM search engines - SEO is evolving into something much bigger: a brand channel.

Why is SEO evolving into a brand channel?

The release of GPT (and other AI models) has transformed how people search.

Users now make more specific, conversational queries tailored to their personal situations and needs, expecting detailed answers in return.

Google's launch of AI mode adapts to this trend while maintaining traditional search functionality. The Google CEO has described AI mode as acting like a "contents page" for the rest of Google.

The launch of shopping features by GPT and Perplexity now enables them to fulfil the commercial aspect of search that was missing before.

This evolution is primarily driven by changes in how people search and how Google and LLM models are adapting to meet these new search behaviours.

A Real-World Example: How Changing Search Behavior Affects eCommerce Brands

Consider how people search for running shoes.

In a traditional search, someone would type "best running shoes" and browse through a list of blue links, reading blog posts and reviews across multiple websites.

In today's model, they ask an LLM chat, "What's the best running shoe for someone training for their first marathon with flat feet?" and immediately receive a synthesised answer that combines expert reviews, user ratings, specifications, and brand recommendations—all without visiting a webpage or scrolling through a traditional SERP.

This shift illustrates the new chapter of Search: your content must not only rank but also be retrievable, comprehensible, and ready for real-time integration into AI-generated answers.

Inspiration for this reference & way more depth of how it works can be read here.

What does this mean for you?

You need to understand why you'd invest in SEO and how this shift fits into the wider marketing mix.

• Impressions are evolving: Traditional "impression" metrics are being replaced by visibility in answer engines — a more nuanced and arguably more valuable form of brand exposure.

• Brand presence in prime real estate: Top-of-SERP visibility is more valuable than ever.

• Higher-quality traffic: There are fewer clicks, but visitors arrive better informed and more ready to buy/engage.

The way I like to frame this is:

SEO is evolving from one of the hardest-to-measure performance channels into one of the most data-driven, measurable brand channels available to marketers.

What does this mean for retailers and eCommerce?

For retail and e-commerce, zero-click searches include things like:

• Informational queries (e.g. "How to style Chelsea boots" might be answered by an on-page snippet)

• Navigational queries (user searches your brand name and gets store hours or a Google Maps result – no need to click your homepage)

• Quick facts (stock availability, price comparisons through Google's shopping graph, etc.)

• Zero-click interactions may lead to offline actions (e.g. calling a store from a Google My Business listing) or deferred conversions.

• AI Search opens up more opportunities for brand discovery, and the user could convert directly at a later date, potentially after doing their own validation searching.

This doesn't mean SEO is obsolete – but success is measured in visibility and influence, not just clicks.

Zero-click underscores the importance of brand strength: when users get answers instantly, they might choose where to purchase based on which brands they recognise or trust from the answer.

For example, an AI overview might list "Brand X's model Y is praised for quality" – a user might then directly navigate to Brand X's site later. If your brand isn't known, you risk being filtered out of that consideration set.

We unpack a lot of these points in this post here for eCom brands: https://seonovos.substack.com/p/how-does-the-rise-of-llms-impact?r=2qo9mq

How do we measure the value of SEO from 2025 onwards?

The game is evolving towards getting your brand in front of these relevant searches.

As a quick basic example, if your brand searches are 10,000 a month and you get your brand in front of 100,000 searches a month through SEO, then SEO has 10x the exposure and awareness of your brand through search.

A key point to highlight: your traffic won't disappear overnight. We're talking about a broader shift over an extended period, changing how marketers think about investing in, scaling, and measuring SEO in the future.

A few weeks ago, I went to a conference, and Mike King had the following table, which summarised what we could be moving towards to measure the value of SEO for brands.

Measure Attributed Influence Value (AIV)

These measures should apply to any conversational search surface, but AIOs (AI Overviews) are a great place to start.

Where are we now with SEO reporting?

Two of the points referenced above highlight our current situation with LLMs:

• What is the quality of traffic that clicks through from an AI interface?

• Although difficult to track perfectly, mechanisms can evolve to capture AI-assisted discovery processes better.

We don't see these platforms as significant traffic drivers like we did with traditional Google Search. While they will generate some traffic, it will be significantly less than traditional Google Search - though the quality should be higher - as Google is also trying to highlight in their documentation.

While we can now track this traffic in GA4, the focus isn't on the volume. Instead, we must measure your brand's appearance and performance within LLM platforms before users click through.

Currently, the data is mainly correlative, but we anticipate that Google or ChatGPT will provide more detailed insights into value metrics, especially since Google has introduced ads in AI Overview and will need to demonstrate their impact on paid advertising.

We've outlined examples of what LLM reporting will look like here > https://seonovos.substack.com/p/this-is-what-llm-ai-reporting-looks

The changing landscape of eCommerce SEO

All these changes transform SEO from a pure traffic-driving exercise into more of a brand visibility play.

Retail and e-commerce brands must now optimise beyond traditional "blue links" to focus on appearing within rich results.

This optimisation includes:

• Securing featured snippets (making your content the primary answer)

• Managing your Knowledge Panel (ensuring accurate brand information appears in the sidebar)

• Implementing schema markup for rich snippets (displaying product ratings, prices, and availability)

• Building authority so Google's AI and answer boxes choose your brand as a trusted source.

However, these SERP features lead to fewer clicks — users might see your brand information without visiting your site.

Consider this scenario: when someone searches for "[Brand X] return policy," and Google displays the policy in a snippet, they get their answer instantly. While they won't visit your site, they still see Brand X's information, building trust. This shift requires new success metrics, such as brand impressions or SERP share of voice.

The bottom line is that SERP visibility ≠ website clicks in the age of AI and rich results, and forward-thinking eCommerce teams are adapting by treating search as a brand channel.

How does brand impact SEO?

A few points you need to be aware of here:

• For a long time, brand plus non-brand searches have had a big impact on rankings. That's why brands like John Lewis / Argos, etc., still ranked so well when their websites were poor. It's because so many people search "John Lewis Sofas" - Google can't not rank them somewhere. So, this is a good way to quantify the strength of your brand via search volume.

• Rankings still correlate to AI visibility; it's estimated that rank 1 in SERPs has a 25% higher chance of appearing in AI Overviews. See this example below

• Mentions or Citations matter more. Standard search relies so much on links to crawl the web that AI can understand the context and citation of a brand name and whether this sentiment is positive or negative, more than what a standard backlink can. Hence, the need for Digital PR and/or Brand PR activity to continue to send strong signals to these models that you are a reputable brand in your industry.

These points are backed up by the aHrefs study below, which shows the correlation of brand appearance in AI overviews.

How do you compete in AI Search if you are a smaller brand?

AI search makes things even more interesting for smaller e-commerce brands.

Our next post will discuss adapting your content to AI search, but for now, you should focus on your core USPs and what you stand for compared to the big guys.

SEOs have always told smaller brands to focus on the long-tail searches that are less competitive.

Based on the trends outlined at the start, Google searches grew 22% last year, and more people are conducting even longer searches. This means there's even more long tail to compete for - you need to be true to your key selling points compared to competitors in the market, and build a loyal customer base.

Our next post will focus on how to future-proof your content for AI Search.

Conclusion

SEO in 2025 is a brand-driven, multifaceted channel, especially in retail and e-commerce.

In the UK market (mirrored by trends in the US), success isn't just about tweaking keywords for incremental clicks. Instead, it's about building a brand that AI Search systems recognise as authoritative and that consumers trust.

The data shows SEO is transforming from a pure performance marketing channel into an integrated part of brand strategy. Retailers will eventually measure "share of search" and adapt content to shape perceptions and influence users across the whole marketing funnel (more on this in our next post).

To reemphasise my point at the start, SEO is evolving from being the hardest performance channel to measure into the most data-driven and measurable brand channel available.

This shift extends to platforms like TikTok and Pinterest (Social Search), where visibility has always been the primary focus. While SEO previously overlooked these platforms due to unclear ROI, we're working across a broader search landscape with one goal: amplifying your brand wherever your audience is searching.

The industry is at the beginning of this transformation. In the coming year, we'll share more real-world examples of brands adapting to this new SEO landscape.

If you found this insightful, please share it with a fellow eCommerce leader so they won’t rely on their LinkedIn feeds to gather knowledge and insights on a complicated industry change.