Now, you can ask an even more pointed question – perhaps adding in a preference for arch support, a shopping mile radius – to a large language model (LLM) and get a clear, context-rich answer: “Here are three nearby options that fit your criteria. The top-rated one is available for pickup in 40 minutes.”

It’s an improved interaction, but not at the cost of a more complex user experience. This new way of search is redefining consumer behavior and expectations, and how marketers must approach brand visibility. In fact, it represents a reconfiguration of digital marketing and a new economy of visibility.

As these interactions become more complex and context-rich, the way we measure success must evolve too.

Visibility Is the New KPI

In traditional SEO, success means ranking on page one of Google. In the AI era, success means being part of the answer — cited, mentioned, or described accurately when an AI system responds.

This is not a mere marketing nuance: it’s a structural shift in how digital presence is valued. Companies that understand this will treat AI visibility as a new form of brand capital, something to monitor and manage as carefully as reputation or market share.

Advertising economics are already following this pattern: U.S. advertisers are projected to spend over $25 billion annually on AI-powered search placements by 2029, which is nearly 14% of total search budgets.

But, understanding how visibility is measured is just the first step. To capture it effectively, brands must recognize that product discovery itself is being reconstructed, with two distinct search experiences shaping how users find and interact with information.

Two User Experiences, Two Optimization Models

We now have two search experiences — traditional search and AI-driven search — each serving different user needs.

Frankly, this is the simplest framework to offer, when in fact, it is even more complex and nuanced once you take into account AI agents that act autonomously on behalf of the customer.

Traditional search is navigational, guiding users through lists of pages. Effectively, it points them in the right direction.

Meanwhile, AI-driven search is conversational, contextual, and consultative. It’s able to perform multi-step research, interpret context, and merge data from multiple sources into one synthesized response. For marketers, that means building for two visibility models: in SEO, we optimize for keywords; in AI discovery, we optimize for prompts.

The shift in user behavior is measurable and gaining ground. According to Semrush AI Visibility Index, between August and October 2025:

To stay visible, brands must start by identifying which questions matter most to their business – prioritizing prompts that are both high-volume and high-impact. Irrelevant traffic is wasted effort; rare relevance won’t scale. The sweet spot has always been where volume meets relevance, and AI discovery only raises the stakes—rewarding context, authority, and precision the same way great SEO always has.

As AI-driven and traditional search continue to evolve, the line between them is beginning to blur. Brands that optimize for both experiences today will be best positioned to thrive as these models converge into a single, unified discovery interface.

Preparing for the AI + Traditional Search Convergence

Eventually, you’ll see conversational answers alongside maps, reviews, and transactional links — a mix of synthesis and structure. When that happens, businesses will track two main metrics:

• Traffic, the traditional measure of visits
• AI Visibility, a new measure of how often and how accurately a brand appears in AI-generated responses

But visibility alone won’t be enough. The next wave of competition will happen at the content layer.

Brands will need to build for both bots and humans — crafting content that reads naturally, ranks intelligently, and feeds the context these models rely on. It’s a new kind of content development, where clarity for users and machine readability carry equal weight.

When that becomes common, websites will need to work as seamlessly for bots as they do for people. Features like SMS-based authentication or manual verification could block machine-driven transactions entirely. Businesses will need to rethink checkout and navigation to accommodate non-human operators.

While optimizing for visibility and content readiness is essential, the larger shift is economic: the convergence of AI and search is redefining how value is created, measured, and captured across the digital landscape.

AI Discovery and the New Economics of Search

The economics of search are changing.

This convergence of SEO and AI visibility is not a short-term marketing trend. It’s a deeper transformation — the creation of a discovery layer that connects information accuracy, credibility, and commercial outcomes in a continuous loop.

Within five years, we’ll unlikely distinguish between “search engines” and “AI assistants.” Instead, we’ll talk about several intelligent systems from companies such as Google and OpenAI that decide what people see, trust, and buy.

While the system itself is changing, the opportunity remains open. AI Search doesn’t belong only to the biggest players — it’s a reset. Smaller brands can rise faster by being precise, credible, and contextually relevant, while larger enterprises must relearn agility and authority at scale.

In traditional SEO, the strongest often dominated; in AI discovery, the most relevant wins.

Businesses that measure and manage their visibility within this new system will define the next era of digital competition.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

Bank of America’s “Bull & Bear Indicator” rose from 7.9 to 8.5 in the last few days, triggering its contrarian “sell” signal for risk assets, according to a note from analyst Michael Hartnett and his colleagues seen by Fortune this morning. The indicator is derived from BofA’s regular fund manager survey, which asks 200-plus investment managers about their appetite for risk. The logic of the Bull & Bear Indicator is that when everyone in the market is bullish, it’s time to leave.

S&P 500 futures were up 0.25% this morning. The last session closed up 0.79%. The index remains a little less than 2% beneath its all-time high. Markets in Asia largely closed up this morning. Europe and the UK were flat in early trading. Whether stocks are overvalued—especially tech stocks—has been a running theme in the equity markets all year long. 

BofA’s sell signal has been activated 16 times since 2002, Hartnett says. On average, the MSCI All Country World Index (an index that represents stocks globally) declined by 2.4% afterwards, the bank says, with a maximum average drawdown of 8.5% by three months later.

The indicator has a record of being right 63% of the time—so it isn’t flawless. But BofA also notes that investors are in an unusually “risk-on” mood in equities right now: Last week saw a record inflow of $145 billion into equity exchange-traded funds, and the second-highest ever weekly inflow of money into U.S. stocks ($77.9 billion), Hartnett wrote. The indicator thus implies that a smart investor might want to become fearful given that others are too greedy.

Investor sentiment roughly correlates with sentiment in the Purchasing Managers Index, a survey of supply chain managers responsible for corporate buying. Right now, investors have broken ranks with the PMI, with the former being much more positive about future than the latter. They appear to be expecting the PMI to follow their lead, Hartnett argues.

“Investors [appear to be] bull positioned for ‘run-it-hot’ PMI & [earnings per share] acceleration on rate cuts, tariff cuts, tax cuts,” he told clients.

Conversely, assuming the market does not pull back—or a revesal is temporary—he predicts EPS growth of 9% for stocks in 2026 despite increased U.S. unemployment, and the threat of “bond vigilantes slowing [the] AI capex boom.”

Here’s a snapshot of the markets ahead of the opening bell in New York this morning:

• S&P 500 futures are up 0.33% this morning. The last session closed up 0.79%. 
• STOXX Europe 600 was flat in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was flat in early trading. 
• Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 1.03%. 
• China’s CSI 300 was up 0.34%. 
• The South Korea KOSPI was up 0.65%. 
• India’s NIFTY 50 was up 0.59%. 
• Bitcoin was at $88K.