Is Your Hawaii Business Ignoring the Most Important Search Update in 20 Years?
Search engines have never been “must-have” gadgets. Nobody lines up for the new Google update the way they do for the latest iPhone. That is because search is not a toy. It is a utility. Phones ended up in the same place, less hype, more plumbing.
But utilities change too. Search is beginning to shift, not only Google but Instagram, TikTok, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Claude. The layer we have used for two decades as a research tool and marketing channel may not hold its shape for much longer.
The old version still works. People still use it. But adoption curves do not run forever. At some point an upgrade happens.
Think about the Razr to the iPhone. People did not cling to flip phones out of loyalty. They saw a categorically better experience and moved all at once.
Or it could look more like fax to email. Both coexisted for years until network effects tipped the balance, and suddenly one felt obsolete.
AI search may follow either path. What seems clear is that the conditions are there, a new form that feels categorically different. The move will not happen with a launch event. It will creep. One query asked in Perplexity. One answer trusted in ChatGPT. Then traffic patterns shift in ways nobody expected.
The Evidence of a Split
A recent study of more than ten thousand queries compared Google’s page-one results with ChatGPT’s answers.
The overlap was 62 percent.
The correlation between Google rank and ChatGPT position was 0.034. Almost random.
Some brands crossed over well, Coursera at 86 percent, GoDaddy at 83 percent. Others barely registered, Hostinger at 32 percent, edX at 47 percent. By category, online courses matched best at 65 percent. Hotel booking the least at 58 percent. Intent type did not matter. Exploratory, brand, feature, all clustered in the low sixties.
The signal is clear enough for now. Visibility in Google does not reliably carry into AI search. That drop in hotel booking overlap is especially telling for Hawaii, where tourism businesses still rely heavily on search visibility to reach travelers.
Another sign: when Google’s AI Overviews appear in results, click-through rates fall sharply. The #1 position drops from 7.3 percent CTR to just 2.6 percent.
The Industry Is Not Preparing
Here is where it gets more concerning. A survey of marketers on generative engine optimization found:
- 63% said their company is not investing time, budget, or staff in GEO
- On average, only 9% of resources go to GEO, compared to 24% for SEO and 36% for social
- Just 33% of marketers say they understand GEO well
- Yet 67% believe AI search visibility will be “very or extremely important” within two years
- Almost all cite barriers, from budget to lack of expertise
Meanwhile, AI search traffic is climbing. ChatGPT reached 0.21 percent market share earlier this year and is growing at 5.3 percent monthly. Perplexity is smaller at 0.02 percent but growing even faster at 7.7 percent month over month.
So the pattern is stark. The system is shifting. The data shows it. Most marketers agree it matters. And almost nobody is preparing.
What the Machines Actually Read
AI systems do not care that you are first in Google. They do not scan your site like a person. AI looks for structure.
- Who you are
- Where you operate
- What you offer
- How you connect to everything else
- Reviews they can parse
- Hours they can trust
- Services they can map to a need
- Citations that confirm your brand exists beyond your own website
If those signals are not there, the system cannot use you. You can rank in Google and still disappear in AI results.
Do Not Ignore This
Marketers already see the shift. Most are still doing nothing about it. That is the risk for business owners.
SEO is not dead. It still matters. But it is no longer the whole picture. Ranking in Google is one layer. Being legible to AI is another.
You cannot afford to assume ranking in Google will carry you everywhere else. Utilities do not send warnings before they upgrade. One day the old system just feels gone.