For over three years, the marketing industry has been gripped by a singular anxiety about the looming ‘death of search’. The narrative seemed set in stone: traditional search, the pillar of the digital economy for decades, was destined to be rendered obsolete by conversational AI.
Last week, that narrative was officially debunked.
Alphabet’s Q4 2025 earnings report revealed Google has smashed through the $400 billion annual revenue milestone. Far from shrinking, search revenue accelerated by 17% year-on-year.
For brands operating across the APAC region’s diverse markets, the uptick highlights the reality that AI is fueling search growth by making it more useful and integrated into daily life. But while search is thriving, its shape has fundamentally changed. To remain visible in this new era, marketers must move beyond the ‘keyword’ and embrace the ‘conversation’.
The most telling aspect from the report is what I call the 3X rule. Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai noted that queries in AI Mode are now three times longer than traditional searches. This represents the most significant shift in user behaviour in a decade. For years, we trained users to speak ‘machine’ through shorthand queries like ‘best laptop’ or ‘Hong Kong hotels’. Now, users are finally speaking like humans.
I’ve seen this shift in my own behaviour. I’m a runner myself, and recently I needed to find a shoe with more support for my training. I didn't type ‘running shoes’ or ‘best sneakers’. I asked: ‘I need a high-stability daily trainer with extra arch support for marathon training on concrete surfaces. What are the best options available now?’
If a brand's strategy is still built on short-tail keywords, it is becoming invisible to the most engaged segment of the market. The bridge between brand and consumer should no longer be a single word, but a nuanced answer to a complex problem.
This evolution is particularly relevant across Asia’s mobile-first landscapes, from Seoul’s commerce hubs to Southeast Asia’s social-selling powerhouses. Aside from the length of the query, the medium itself is changing. Google reported that nearly 15% of AI-mode queries are now non-text. Between voice search and visual tools like Circle to Search, the camera is becoming the new keyboard.
Consumers now point their phones at a product on a busy street or a landmark in a new city and ask their AI to ‘find this’. If imagery and product data are not optimised for this visual discovery, brands lose the consumer at the exact moment of inspiration.
Think about the complexity of sending a gift to family overseas—something I deal with often for my mum in Edinburgh. In the past, that was a multi-step process of checking shipping zones and currency conversion. In this new era, I can simply say: ‘Find a local florist in Edinburgh who can deliver a bouquet to this address tomorrow for under £50.’ AI takes all the heavy lifting out of the equation, finds the florist, and it facilitates the transaction.
While this reduces friction, it poses a challenge for brand loyalty and data ownership. With the Gemini 3 model driving significantly higher engagement, the platform is keeping consumers within its own ecosystem longer. This will likely lead to a squeeze on organic traffic shares for external websites.
Additionally, as the volume of search grows, the cost of entry is rising. As these AI surfaces are monetised, ad inventory will become premium. At NP Digital, we are forecasting double-digit growth in cost-per-click over the next six months as brands scramble to occupy these slots. In this environment, I don’t recommend marketers put all their eggs in the Google basket. To handle this inflation, marketers must treat media diversification as a necessity.
The predicted search apocalypse was a myth, but the AI-based evolution we are now seeing is anything but. We are moving into an era of agentic commerce, where AI performs tasks rather than just finding information. To win in 2026, brands must stop trying to rank and start trying to solve.
Google’s $400 billion milestone proves search is more powerful than ever. The only question is whether your brand is speaking the same language as the modern consumer.
Guy Jarvie is the managing director of NP Digital in ANZ.
Source: Campaign Asia-Pacific
