A growing share of people skip the list of links. They take AI answers instead.
That is the picture in a new nine-country survey from the Reuters Institute at Oxford. It shows AI answers moving into the place search engines used to hold.
Getting information is now the top use of generative AI. In the six countries tracked since 2024, it rose from 11% to 24% to 38% in the past week.
Why People Switch
The reason is convenience. About 64% of AI information users named faster, easier answers as a reason for using AI instead of other options.
Another 56% like the natural language interface. Some 54% value the amount of information it pulls together.
Only 21% said they use AI because its information is more reliable. The authors say people seem to “satisfice,” taking an answer that is good enough.
AI also reaches people who never chose it. In the past week, 57% saw AI summaries in search engines such as Google and Bing.
That is more than the share who used a standalone AI system on purpose. Many users meet AI before they decide to try it.
The effect on search is visible. People who use AI for information say they use search engines less, by a net 13 points.
What Publishers Lose
The report links this to a drop in traffic for publishers. Chartbeat data shows Google search referrals to more than 2,500 news sites fell by a third. The drop ran from November 2024 to November 2025.
The authors caution that the data cannot prove AI caused it. Still, they say a shift from search to AI could contribute.
There is a revenue angle too. Among people who use AI for news, 17% had used it to get around paywalls in the past week.
The report cannot say whether those attempts worked. It does show that AI is changing how people reach content.
The Miami Business Version
The same shift is under way for local businesses. A customer who asks an AI for the best provider in town may never see a search results page.
MAIN reported on an Evoke Strategy study of Florida businesses missing from AI search. It tested 28,488 businesses in nine cities, including Miami.
Only about 6% appeared in even one of the AI searches the researchers ran. They asked ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Google AI Overviews buyer-style questions.
“AI search is still new and evolving incredibly quickly,” said Devon Vocke, Evoke Strategy co-founder. He said it is not surprising businesses have gaps.
Shoppers are already ahead of retailers. Ryder’s e-commerce study found that 64% of surveyed shoppers now use AI-assisted tools to make buying decisions.
MAIN covered Miami retailers racing to win AI shopping searches. Ryder’s executive warned that brands not optimized for AI results may lose consideration entirely.
South Florida marketing firms Absolute Web and White Shark Media have built generative engine optimization services for that reason, MAIN reported.
The point is not that search is dying. It is that the first answer a customer sees increasingly comes from a model.
That answer names a handful of businesses at most. Being absent is the same as being invisible.
The Reuters data and the Florida studies measure different things. One tracks habits across countries, and the other tracks whether businesses appear in AI answers.
Together they point the same way. People ask AI more, and AI names few local businesses.
Owners can start with a simple check. Ask the major AI tools the questions customers would ask, and see who gets named.
Then fix the basics: accurate listings, clear descriptions of services, and content other sources can cite.
Search is not gone. But the first answer a customer sees may no longer come from a link.
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