The search results page is dissolving
For twenty years, being found online meant one thing: rank in the ten blue links. That model has been dissolving in front of us. Google now answers many queries directly with AI-generated summaries - we covered the May 2026 AI search update when it reshaped local results - and a growing share of people skip the search engine entirely, asking an AI assistant and taking its recommendation.
We spend a lot of time in this space - it's why we've written about GEO, llms.txt, and how to get recommended by AI. This post is the forward look: what we think 2027 holds, and - more usefully - what's actually worth doing about it if you run a small business rather than an SEO agency.
What we expect more of in 2027
Fewer clicks, higher-value clicks. When the AI summary answers the question, fewer people click through - that trend is well established and won't reverse. But the visitors who do click arrive better-informed and closer to buying. Websites will see less traffic that matters more, and measuring success by raw visitor counts will mislead more than it informs.
Answers assembled from sources, not lists of links. AI search doesn't rank pages so much as read them, then assemble an answer with citations. That changes the goal from "rank first" to "be the source the answer is built from". Content that is clear, specific, factual, and well-structured gets quoted; vague marketing copy does not.
Recommendations, not just answers. The fastest-growing query type is the one that ends in a decision: "where should I stay in Franschhoek", "best pizza in Stellenbosch that delivers". Assistants answer these by triangulating public data - your website, your Google Business Profile, your reviews, mentions of you elsewhere. Businesses with thin or inconsistent public data simply don't make the shortlist, and never find out they were excluded.
Agents that act, not just advise. The next step beyond recommending is doing - assistants that check availability, fill in a booking form, place an order. This will arrive unevenly, but the direction is clear, and it quietly raises the stakes on something mundane: whether your website is machine-readable. A booking flow that only works with a human squinting at it will be invisible to an assistant trying to complete a task.
What we're sceptical of
A prediction post owes you its doubts, so, briefly: we don't expect traditional search to die in 2027 - Google still handles billions of queries and local intent still routes heavily through Maps. We don't expect any "AI SEO" trick, tag, or paid shortcut to reliably game assistant recommendations - the systems reward the same substance they read. And we'd treat any agency selling guaranteed AI rankings exactly as you'd treat one selling guaranteed Google rankings: politely, and briefly.
What a small business should actually do
The encouraging news: the sensible response to AI search looks almost identical to plain good practice - just with the tolerances tightened.
1. Keep your facts impeccable and consistent. Name, address, phone, hours, prices, services - identical on your website, your Google Business Profile, and everywhere else you appear. AI systems cross-check sources; contradictions read as unreliability, and unreliable sources get skipped.
2. Publish real answers to real questions. The questions customers ask you every week - about delivery, sizing, bookings, what's included - belong on your website as plain, well-structured text. Every one is a query an assistant may need to answer about you, in your words or someone else's.
3. Make your site technically legible. Clean structure, proper headings, schema markup, fast pages, content that isn't locked inside images or PDFs. Everything in our technical SEO and GEO guide applies double: you're now writing for readers with less patience than humans.
4. Accumulate reviews relentlessly. Reviews are the trust signal every recommendation system leans on. Steady, genuine, responded-to reviews - per our Google reviews post - are the closest thing to an AI-visibility programme that actually exists.
5. Watch what the assistants say about you. A new quarterly habit: ask a few AI assistants what they'd recommend in your category and town, and what they know about your business specifically. Wrong or missing answers almost always trace back to your own public data - which is fixable, per points one to four.
The through-line
Every wave of search has rewarded the same underlying thing: being genuinely useful and legible about it. AI search raises the bar on legibility - and it's noticeably kinder to small, specific, well-documented businesses than the old ten-blue-links contest, which favoured whoever could spend most on the game. A guesthouse with impeccable data, honest reviews, and clear answers can now outrank a chain's marketing budget in the answer that actually matters: the one given to a specific person asking a specific question.
That's the opportunity hiding in the disruption. If you'd like to know how your business currently looks to the machines - what they'd say about you today, and what to fix - get in touch. This is the work we do every day, and it starts with an honest audit.