Virtual roundtable — AI changes online search forever
I've had a fascinating afternoon with the folks from Reflect Digital and other guests taking part in Takeaway Talks: Search is Changing Forever, Are You Ready?
Here are some key findings from Reflect’s Q3 report that it’s crucial marketers and comms people understand for shaping strategy and building credibility.
Key report takeaways for marketers and comms people
1. The multichannel ecosystem. People aged 18–44 (a huge chunk of many of our clients' target demographic) use an average of five search platforms regularly. This is driven by "The Mere Exposure Effect," where appearing on a greater proportion of platforms makes audiences more likely to consider a brand.
2. Trust is still a key barrier to AI adoption. Over one-third still have trust issues with AI. These concerns revolve around data privacy, poor experience, and inaccuracy.
3. AI use is strongest in specific sectors. AI search adoption is heavily concentrated in major cities (with London leading) and industries such as Information technology (85% usage) and marketing, advertising and PR (76% usage).
4. Search intent governs platform choice. There are four main search motivations, fact finding, crowdsourcing, taste tuning, and streamlining. For instance, social media is the destination for inspiration and learning, while AI is gaining ground rapidly for research.
What can you do today?
What's the best way to start putting these findings into practice?
It's easy for AI overwhelm to set in, but the key is splitting things into bite-sized chunks — set your goal, sure; but think about smaller, achievable tasks to get you on your way.
Here are the steps I recommend you consider now.
1. Implement the "human augmentation" workflow to save time.
Use AI as an "intern" to manage repetitive tasks, so you can focus on growth and creativity.
Choose one recent piece of human-created content. This could be a a short video, or a complex white paper. Immediately use an AI tool (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini) to repurpose this into several smaller distribution assets. For example, convert a video transcript into three social media posts, a set of FAQs, or a draft for a newsletter introduction.
This will give you time back immediately and ensure the original creative spark and core message come from the human expert.
2. Get "authority signalling" in a piece of core content
Visibility with AI is about being cited, not just ranked. And while what I'm describing below has been good practice for as long as I can remember, it doesn't hurt to take a look with fresh eyes and see where you can make improvements.
Pick a key piece of client content (e.g., a main service page or a recent blog post) and —
Ensure it features stats, quotes, research, or expert commentary to build human credibility
Include customer testimonials or third-party reviews (social proof), AI models like Perplexity and ChatGPT favour these as authoritative sources
And finally, structure the content to answer real questions early, optimising for generative answers
This is a safe step that requires zero new technology but directly addresses the core barrier of trust and actively shapes how search works for your client's brand.
3. Launch a multichannel relevance audit
The future of search is a dynamic, multichannel ecosystem so choose a client audience and identify one priority non-Google channel (e.g., YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok) where that specific segment is really active.
Commit to creating one piece of platform-appropriate content (e.g., a video script optimised with keywords for YouTube transcripts) to test engagement on that channel.
Conclusion
Search isn't disappearing, it's fragmenting. Your audience is already searching across multiple platforms, often starting with AI tools for research before moving to social media for validation.
The brands that thrive aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest AI budgets. They're the ones that understand their audience's search intent, show up consistently across the right channels, and build trust through authoritative, human-led content.
Start small. Pick one of the actions above and implement it this week. Then build from there.
Huge thanks to the Reflect Digital team for hosting such a thought-provoking session, if you haven't already, grab the Q3 report for the full data and insights. Why not pop it into Google Notebook LM along with some other AI news sources and turn it into a podcast? Or a mind map?