For more than 25 years, search meant typing a query into Google, visiting websites and doing the research yourself. Generative AI changed this by providing answers directly. Now we are entering the next phase, where AI agents are doing the research for us.

Collusion.wiki provides a fascinating example of this shift. It documents thousands of AI agents undertaking web research, finding information, sharing useful sources and reusing previous research to complete tasks. This is no longer simply a prediction about what AI agents might eventually be able to do. It is already happening.

Instead of conducting ten searches, opening multiple websites, reading reviews and comparing alternatives, we can increasingly ask an AI agent to research the best options, compare them and recommend what we should choose. The agent can search websites, gather information, analyse reviews, compare products and services, evaluate alternatives and return a recommendation. We are moving from searching to delegating.

This has significant implications for SEO, Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). Traditional SEO asks whether Google can find and rank your website. AEO asks whether AI can understand your content and use it to answer a question. GEO asks whether generative AI will select your business as a trusted source. Agentic Search introduces another question: when an AI agent does the research, will it find, understand, trust and recommend you?

There are three important things businesses should be thinking about.

First, your next customer may never visit your website. An AI agent can research your company, competitors, products, pricing and reviews before making a recommendation. The customer may receive the answer without ever clicking through to your site. Businesses therefore need to ask whether they are giving AI enough useful and authoritative information to recommend them.

Second, machines are already a huge part of web traffic. Cloudflare reported in 2026 that more than half of Internet traffic is now non-human, with bots responsible for approximately 57% of HTML requests compared with 43% from humans. This doesn’t mean 57% of customers are AI agents, but it demonstrates an important shift: websites increasingly have machines as visitors as well as humans.

Third, ranking #1 may eventually matter less than being the best source. AI agents can investigate multiple websites, compare information and decide which sources they trust. The competitive advantage therefore starts shifting from simply ranking highest to providing the clearest, most authoritative, structured and unique information that AI systems want to use.

For businesses, the evolution of search is becoming clear. Google helped us find websites. Generative AI started giving us answers. GEO is about becoming a trusted source for those answers. AI agents are now doing the research for us.

The question businesses should now be asking is simple: when AI does the research, compares the options and makes the recommendation, will it choose you?