How advertisers are reacting to Google’s declining share of the search market

Google’s market share decrease belies big changes in the way that users search for information online. Today’s consumers use a wider variety of search tools than they did in previous years, from TikTok to Perplexity to Amazon, depending on their goals. Research published by Omnicom in January suggested clients accordingly consider investing their search across a more diverse set of channels.

Because the tech giant has been synonymous with search, it’s the player with the most to lose — but advertisers are on the hook, too. A spokesperson for Google didn’t immediately return a request for comment on this story.

According to nine media buyers and SEO experts who spoke with Digiday, brand marketers are beginning to notice the impact of changes in search behavior. In response, some are altering investment plans and asking their agencies to rethink their organic search presence, or appointing new shops to SEO briefs.

SEO has gone from being “the last thing brands thought about” to a key lever in clients’ response to a changing search environment, said Catherine Lux, head of SEO at Assembly. 

This month Assembly recently expanded its brief with Brooks Running to include SEO in Europe — its North American business already handled paid media for the footwear brand — while media agency PMG’s European business picked up meal subscription service Gousto as a client.

“We are seeing more clients unlocking extra budget for new projects and different ways of working,” said Lux.

Agency execs say that work often translates to auditing client websites to ensure they’re easier for LLMs to scan: adding clearly structured data, fewer standalone landing pages, blog posts or pages featuring concise FAQs, more bylined blogs and more material that mirrors the conversational tone used by AI chatbots and search tools.

“We need that cohesive site content that is super up to date and relevant and chock full of all of the keywords that