Search hasn't disappeared. But it is no longer the only place people go looking for answers.
Consumers are increasingly using AI-powered tools to research products, compare businesses, ask for recommendations and decide who or what to trust. That creates a new question for marketers: when someone asks an AI about your category, does your brand appear at all? And if it does, how is it described?
Being searchable and being discoverable are not necessarily the same thing.
This doesn't mean abandoning SEO or paid search. Both remain important. It means understanding what now sits alongside them.
Brands need to know how AI systems understand their business, which competitors are being surfaced, what information is shaping those answers and where gaps or opportunities exist.
The practical response isn't to suddenly build an “AI strategy” because everyone is talking about AI. It's to understand whether changing discovery behaviour matters to your customers and, if it does, what you can actually do about it.