A pattern I've been watching with some unease: branded organic search volume is decreasing across most categories. The decline isn't dramatic month-over-month, but it's persistent, and across our client portfolio it's now visible enough to be the dominant feature of organic-traffic conversations rather than a footnote.
The implications for brands and for the agencies that serve them are uneven. Brands lose some of the easiest traffic in their organic line. Agencies whose business model is heavily oriented around brand-keyword work — and there are more of these than the industry tends to admit — lose more.
This post is the case for why this is structural rather than cyclical, and what the right response looks like.
What's happening
Three things, simultaneously.
AI search interfaces are absorbing branded queries. When a user asks ChatGPT, Perplexity or an AI Overview "what is [brand]" or "where can I buy [brand product]", the model often answers without a click. The user got the information. The brand's organic search line lost the click.
The kinds of users who used to type a brand name into Google are increasingly using other entry points. App icons. Direct navigation. Voice assistants. The query that used to start "search for [brand]" now often starts "open [brand app]" or "show me [brand product]" inside a different interface entirely. The traffic isn't being captured by a competitor — it's being captured by a different user behaviour.
The branded queries that do still go to Google are increasingly being answered by Google's own panels. Knowledge panels, answer boxes, in-SERP product listings. The user gets the answer without clicking through. Click-through rates on branded queries have been declining for years; the decline accelerated through 2025 as Google leaned more aggressively into in-SERP answers.
Across our portfolio, branded organic clicks are typically down 20-40% compared to two years ago at similar impression volume. The shape of the decline varies by category — consumer brands have lost more than B2B, e-commerce more than services — but the trajectory is consistent.
Why this is structural
The temptation is to assume this is cyclical. Search engines have, periodically, eaten chunks of the SERP and the industry has adapted. The brands rebuild traffic in new ways. The agencies pivot.
I think it's structural this time, for two reasons.
The mechanism by which AI engines and on-SERP answers absorb branded queries is technically efficient and aligned with what users actually want. The user types a brand name to get information about the brand. The engine has the information. Returning the information directly is, from the user's perspective, an improvement. There's no reason for the engines to step back from this. The trajectory continues.
The fraction of total search behaviour that's happening inside Google as the canonical entry point is decreasing. Google still gets the bulk of search volume, but the trend lines for AI search interfaces are aggressive. Two years from now, an even larger share of branded queries will start in non-Google contexts, where the click-back-to-the-brand behaviour is less central.
These two patterns reinforce each other. The branded organic line keeps shrinking.
What this means for brands
The strategic response, I think, is to stop treating the branded query as the primary measurement.
Brands historically have used branded organic traffic as a proxy (and have been hit hard by the structural shift visible in March 2026's Core Update) for brand strength. The proxy isn't accurate anymore. A brand can be strong, growing, well-known — and have falling branded search clicks, because users are getting information about the brand through channels that don't show up in Google Search Console.
The right replacement metrics are some combination of:
Brand mentions across AI search engines. Are the AI engines aware of the brand. Are they recommending it. Are they citing it. This is what we measure with amivisible.co and what most large brands are now starting to track.
Direct traffic and app engagement. When users go directly to the brand — to the website, to the app — that's still an indicator of brand strength. Direct traffic has been getting more important as branded organic has been shrinking.
Branded search where it still matters. The transactional branded queries — "[brand] login", "[brand] checkout", "[brand] support" — still happen and still convert. The drop in branded search isn't uniform; it's concentrated in informational branded queries where AI engines now answer. The transactional branded queries are more durable.
Earned media and brand mentions in adjacent contexts. When the brand appears in articles, podcasts, conversations — places that get crawled by AI engines — the brand's representation in those engines strengthens. This earned-context volume is now a proxy for future AI-search visibility in a way it didn't used to be.
Together, these are a more accurate read of brand strength in 2026 than the branded organic line.
What this means for agencies
Less straightforwardly. A meaningful share of agency revenue is, in honest terms, brand-bidding work and content optimised to rank for branded queries. As the branded organic line shrinks, the demand for that work weakens. Some clients will keep paying for it out of inertia. Many won't.
The agencies that are well-positioned for this are the ones that can demonstrate value in the new measurement frame — AI-search visibility, earned media, brand mentions in adjacent contexts. The agencies that are poorly positioned are the ones whose service offering and reporting are still primarily about classical branded SEO.
The transition isn't immediate. Brands continue to spend on branded SEO for years after the underlying need has weakened, because nobody wants to be the marketer who shut down the work and got blamed when traffic fell. The drift to better-positioned agencies will be slow but persistent.
For agencies that want to make the transition: the case to clients is straightforward. Branded organic traffic is shrinking. The investments that used to defend it are diminishing in value. The investments that build presence in AI search engines are the new defence — and, usefully, also the new offence. The agency that brings this case to clients with credibility wins the budget.
For agencies that don't want to make the transition: the next two-to-three years will be uncomfortable. The clients with the budget to spend will spend it on agencies that have the capability to operate in the new measurement frame. The agencies that don't will see their share of strategic conversation decline.
What I'd do if I were an in-house marketer at a major brand
Two practical actions.
Add AI-search visibility metrics to the dashboard now. Not to replace classical SEO metrics — keep those running — but to stand alongside them. Track the brand's presence in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Copilot. Track competitor presence. Track the trend lines. Have these numbers in front of leadership at the same cadence as the SEO numbers.
Reframe the budget conversation around the new shape of brand visibility. The historic split between paid, organic, social, PR, and content has assumed a stable measurement frame. The frame is changing. Some of the budget that's been going to classical SEO probably belongs in earned media, in structured content, in AI-search visibility work. The reallocation isn't dramatic in any single quarter, but the cumulative effect over 18 months is significant.
The brands that do this in 2026 will be in a better position than the brands that wait until 2027 to start.
Closing
The death of the brand-keyword strategy isn't a sudden event. It's a long curve that's now visible enough to be planned around. The brands and agencies that take the curve seriously will navigate it cleanly. The ones that wait for it to be obvious will be doing so in a context where the work is more expensive and the position is harder to defend.
This is one of those moments where the right answer isn't subtle, but the willingness to act on it varies a lot. The agencies and brands that act earliest get the most benefit. The cost of being right but late is usually higher than the cost of being early but slightly wrong about the timing.