For most of 2026, the dominant story in search has been that AI is taking over and traditional search is losing relevance.
I have never thought it was that simple.
AI is undoubtedly changing how people find information, research products and discover brands. We are already seeing that across the work we do for clients at Honchō.
But people haven't stopped using Google. And it certainly doesn't mean everything we have learned about SEO should be ripped up and replaced with the latest acronym.
Semrush's State of Search Q3 2026 report adds some useful evidence to that argument.
In September, 46.11% of US desktop Google searches generated an organic click to an external website. That was up from 39.74% in July and the highest level recorded during the 15-month study.
In Europe, organic click share reached 49.56%, up from 40.72% in June.
After a year of being told that AI answers are killing organic search, Google is currently sending a greater share of desktop searches to external websites.
Maybe SEO is not dead after all.
This is not simply users changing how they search
My first reaction to the data wasn't that users had suddenly decided to start clicking organic results again.
What I find more interesting is how often Google changes the way it delivers those results.
In Europe, the proportion of searches producing a click to a Google-owned property fell from 20.36% in June to 14.19% in September. In the US, it fell from 17.84% in August to 14.19% in September.
Zero-click searches also declined. In the US, they fell from 24.97% in July to 22.99% in September. In Europe, the September figure was 20.99%.
The report cannot tell us exactly what caused those movements. But it does show why we should be careful about treating search behaviour as something that changes independently of Google.
Google designs the results page. It decides when to show an AI Overview, how much space is given to advertising, where its own properties appear and how far down the page an external organic result sits.
When Google changes that experience, it changes what users do next.
That is particularly important now because Google is trying to balance three competing priorities.
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Make Search feel more like an AI assistant
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Protect the advertising revenue that funds the business
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Continue sending people to external websites
It cannot ignore the third one.
If Google answers everything itself, publishers, retailers and brands have less reason to invest in the content, products and information it relies on to produce those answers.
AI is growing alongside search, not simply replacing it
There's no point pretending AI search is insignificant.
AI tools accounted for 1.29% of US desktop activity in September, up 79% from 0.72% a year earlier. In Europe, their share increased from 0.86% to 1.42% over the same period.
But those numbers need context.
Across Q3, traditional search represented 9.80% of desktop activity in the US and 10.17% in Europe. AI tools accounted for 1.27% and 1.30% respectively.
Traditional search also grew year on year in Europe, from 9.68% of desktop activity in September 2025 to 9.95% in September 2026.
The current picture is not AI replacing search. It is people adding AI tools to the ways they already discover information.
For brands, that means an additional visibility challenge, not a replacement channel.
You still need to be found in traditional search. You also need to understand whether your brand appears when someone asks an AI platform a relevant question, which competitors are being recommended instead and what sources are shaping the answer.
Doing one does not remove the need to do the other.
People are bringing AI behaviour back into Google
One of the most interesting findings in the report is the growth in longer Google searches.
In the US, searches containing more than 15 words reached 2.58% in September, up from 1.67% in August.
In Europe, searches of more than 15 words increased from 0.71% in July to 1.32% in September. That was four times their share a year earlier.
My reading is that people are starting to use Google more like an AI assistant.
They have become accustomed to asking ChatGPT detailed questions and expecting it to understand the context. Increasingly, they are taking that same behaviour back into Google.
The line between traditional SEO and AI visibility is therefore already becoming blurred.
The questions are longer. The journeys are less linear. The platforms overlap. And the same brand, content and authority signals can influence visibility in several different places.
Treating SEO and AI search as two completely separate disciplines makes less sense by the month.
More searches do not necessarily mean more value
Semrush also recorded a surprising increase in Google searches per US desktop user.
Search intensity reached 123.36 searches per user in July, roughly 20% above the previous range, before easing to 113.84 in September.
There are several possible explanations. AI Overviews may be encouraging people to use Google for more detailed questions. Agentic shopping features can trigger multiple searches. Or users may simply be searching again because the first results did not get them where they wanted to go.
The report cannot prove which explanation is correct.
But more searches should not automatically be presented as better engagement. They do not necessarily mean a better experience, more external traffic or greater commercial value.
Again, Google is not simply observing user behaviour. The way it builds the results page actively shapes that behaviour.
Agentic commerce has not transformed ecommerce yet
For ecommerce brands, the report includes another useful reality check.
There is little evidence that AI shopping agents are materially reducing the use of established ecommerce platforms yet.
Amazon remained the largest ecommerce destination in both regions. Searches per Amazon user reached new highs during Q3, rising to 17.62 in the US and 14.06 in Europe during September.
If agentic commerce were already taking a meaningful share of shopping activity, we would expect broader declines across the platforms that support it. The report did not find that pattern.
That does not mean brands should ignore agentic commerce until it becomes mainstream.
It means we need to separate what the technology could do from evidence of what customers are actually doing today.
There is a lot of noise around AI. Strategy still needs to be based on observable behaviour and commercial opportunity.
The harder question is how we measure all this
The organic click-share recovery is encouraging. But the wider change in search creates a difficult measurement problem for brands and agencies.
Clicks and revenue remain the most important commercial outcomes. I would never argue otherwise.
But they can no longer be the only way we judge search performance.
Someone might ask ChatGPT which product is best for a particular need and see a client's brand recommended. They could research the brand elsewhere, return through a branded Google search and eventually convert through a paid advert or direct visit.
The AI recommendation may have influenced the decision, but most analytics platforms will give it no credit.
The same problem exists when a brand appears in an AI Overview or another search feature without generating an immediate click.
At the other extreme, a screenshot showing that a brand was mentioned in ChatGPT is not proof of commercial value. We cannot replace proper measurement with a collection of citations and call it success.
The answer is not to lower the bar. It is to broaden what we measure.
That includes clicks and revenue, but also traditional visibility, AI visibility, brand mentions and citations, branded demand and the influence search may have on conversions credited elsewhere.
None of that is perfect yet. Attribution was never perfect in the first place.
But making no effort to understand this changing journey will leave brands unable to see where they are visible, where competitors are being recommended instead and what may be influencing their next customer.
What should brands do now?
The Semrush report is not proof that every website is recovering organic traffic.
It covers desktop activity only. The headline figure measures the share of searches producing an organic click, not total clicks, traffic or revenue. The European data also combines 32 markets rather than providing a standalone UK result.
Every brand still needs to look at its own performance.
Separate brand from non-brand demand. Look at informational content and commercial pages differently. Compare desktop and mobile. Connect visibility to conversion value wherever the data allows it.
At the same time, start measuring how the brand appears within AI search rather than waiting for attribution to become perfect.
The growth of AI Overviews and LLMs was never a reason to rip up everything we know about SEO and start again.
If anything, the job has become much broader.
Perform in traditional search.
Become visible within AI answers.
Connect both to commercial outcomes.
About the data
The figures in this article come from Semrush's State of Search Q3 2026 report, which analysed desktop activity in the US and 32 European countries from July 2025 to September 2026. Mobile activity was not included.
