For two decades, search marketing had a comfortable scoreboard. Rankings, organic sessions, and keyword positions told a clean story that any executive could follow. Then buyers started asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google’s AI Overviews to do their vendor research for them, and that scoreboard quietly stopped reflecting reality. Gartner projected that by 2026, traditionalsearch engine volume would drop 25%, with search marketing losing share to AI chatbots and other virtual agents.