The 6 types of searches you should be thinking about

Think about the last five things you searched for.

Chances are, not all of them happened on Google. Maybe you looked up a product on Amazon, hunted for a tutorial on YouTube, and asked ChatGPT to compare two options you were considering. Search has splintered and if your marketing strategy still treats it as one thing, you might want to reconsider.

The way people find information, products, and brands has fundamentally changed.

What we know as “Search” is no longer a single channel. It’s a collection of behaviours happening across platforms, devices, and formats, each with its own algorithm, audience, and rules of engagement. Understanding the various types of search engines and discovery platforms is something you need to consider for your marketing strategies and plans.

In this blog, we’ll explore six types of the fastest-growing searches you should think about optimising your marketing for. But first, why has this shift happened?

How the search landscape has shifted

For years, “search marketing” essentially meant showing up in Google. Our SEO service served that purpose; we optimised websites, created content, ensured websites were technically sound, run some paid ads, and that was the strategy. That kind of marketing still matters today, and so traditional search is still often the biggest driver of results, but it’s no longer the whole picture.

Search behaviour is fracturing along generational, contextual, and intentional lines. Different people use different platforms depending on what they’re looking for, how much they trust the source, and how quickly they want an answer.

A 24-year-old looking for a restaurant recommendation isn’t usually opening Google; they’re opening TikTok.

A B2B buyer comparing software isn’t reading a blog first; they’re probably asking ChatGPT.

A shopper looking for kitchen equipment isn’t visiting a brand’s website; they’re typing directly into Amazon.

Google itself has acknowledged the shift. With users coming to its platform to ask longer, more open-ended questions than ever before, thanks to the reasoning power of AI built into its search experience.

But acknowledging the shift and adapting to it are two different things. The brands that win are the ones building visibility across all types of searches, not just one. Now, let’s jump into the various types of searches:

1. Traditional search

Traditional search: typing a query into Google and clicking through to a website

Make no mistake. This is still the dominant form of search globally. Google handles more than 8.5 billion search queries every single day. For most businesses, this remains the biggest source of organic traffic and the biggest opportunity for long-term visibility.

But traditional search is changing. AI Overviews now appear in 25% of all Google searches, meaning a growing share of queries are answered directly on the results page before the user ever clicks through to your site.

The fundamentals of good SEO still apply: authoritative content, strong technical foundations, and relevance signals (which are generated with good digital PR campaigns). But in 2026, you need to optimise not just for rankings, but for visibility within AI-generated answers too.

Takeaway: Traditional search isn’t going anywhere, but the goal posts have moved. Ranking first is no longer enough: you need your content to be cited.

2. Video search

YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine, with 2.53 billion monthly active users and over 4.8 billion monthly visits. People don’t just use it for entertainment but to research, compare, and make decisions. Companies that use video in their marketing generate 41% more web traffic from search, and YouTube videos frequently rank in Google’s organic results for commercial queries.

The opportunity is real, and it compounds over time. A well-optimised YouTube video keeps generating views, clicks, and trust long after it’s published. And with YouTube now being the world’s largest media company by revenue, the platform’s reach and influence aren’t slowing down.

Takeaway: If your brand isn’t on YouTube, you’re invisible to a huge chunk of the search landscape. Start with how-to content and explainers; these formats rank well and build trust simultaneously. Videos are crawled frequently by AI, increasing your chances of showing up there, too.

3. AI search

Platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Mode are fundamentally reshaping how people research, particularly for complex, comparison-based, or information-heavy queries. ChatGPT had 883 million monthly users as of January 2026 and processes 2 billion queries daily.

The interesting thing about AI search isn’t just its scale but it’s the quality of the traffic it sends. According to some sources, AI search traffic converts at 14.2% compared to Google’s 2.8%, which makes every AI-referred visitor significantly more valuable. Users arriving from AI search have typically done more research, asked more nuanced questions, and are closer to a decision.

For marketers, the implication is that being cited in AI answers is becoming as important as ranking in traditional SERPs. The content formats that get cited most are structured, data-rich, and freshly updated. Content with authors. statistics, citations, and quotations achieve 30–40% higher visibility in AI responses.

That might sound familiar to how to rank in traditional search, and that’s because it is. AI SEO is our service that supports businesses getting ranked in AI, get in touch to learn more about it or read more about what we do.

Takeaway: AI search is the fastest-growing discovery channel with the highest-converting traffic. If your brand isn’t appearing in AI answers, often you’re missing high-intent buyers.

4. Social search

Social platforms are no longer just places people scroll for entertainment. They’re active discovery engines and for younger audiences, they’re often the first port of call. Nearly half of US consumers (49%) used TikTok as a search engine in 2026, up from 41% in 2024, a 19.5% increase in adoption in just two years.

What makes social search different is the type of trust it generates. Users aren’t looking for the most authoritative source; they’re looking for the most relatable one. A creator who’s been to the restaurant, tried the product, or used the software carries more weight than a well-ranked webpage ever will.

This is where social media marketing and search marketing start to blur.  Optimising your social content for discoverability, using the right keywords in captions, timing your posts strategically, and building content that answers real questions is now a genuine SEO consideration.

Joe Di-Gesse, recently wrote a piece about how social media is affecting your brand’s AI visibility. If you wanted to know more about what’s performing well in that space, click here.

Takeaway: Social search rewards authenticity over authority. The brands winning on TikTok and Instagram aren’t the biggest ones, they’re the most credible ones.

5. E-commerce search

When someone knows they want to buy something, they don’t always start with Google.

52% of consumers start their online product searches on Amazon which bypasses Google entirely and head straight to the marketplace. For brands selling physical products, Amazon isn’t just a sales channel. It’s a search engine in its own right, with its own keyword logic, ranking signals, and advertising ecosystem.

And Amazon is getting smarter. By October 2025, Amazon’s AI assistant Rufus was handling 274.3 million daily queries. Almost 15% of all Amazon searches with projections suggesting it could reach 35% by the end of 2026.

The same principles that apply to Google SEO apply here: relevance, reviews, and content quality. But the intent is sharper. People searching on Amazon are closer to the point of purchase, which means the stakes and the rewards are higher.

Takeaway: If you sell products and you’re not optimising for Amazon search, you’re handing sales to competitors who are.

6. Visual search

Visual search has been on the horizon for years, but 2026 is the year it’s become genuinely mainstream. Google Lens allows users to point their phone camera at an object, a piece of furniture, a product on a shelf, an outfit on the street and instantly surface information, purchase options, and related content.

Modern consumers interact with the world through images and videos, and Google Lens will become increasingly central to brand discovery in 2026. Meaning brands must ensure they have high-quality, diverse images across their sites not just for aesthetics, but as searchable assets that feed visual search algorithms.

This changes how brands should think about their product imagery, website photography, and even their packaging. An image isn’t just a visual asset; it’s a potential entry point for discovery.

Takeaway: Audit your imagery. High-quality, properly tagged, and contextually relevant product images are now part of your SEO strategy.

The mistake most brands are still making

Most businesses are still treating search as a single channel. They focus their energy on Google rankings, ignore everything else, and wonder why their visibility is declining.

The reality is that search is now omnichannel  and the brands getting found most often are the ones showing up across multiple types of search, not just one.

That doesn’t mean you need to do everything at once. It means you need to understand where your audience is searching for products and services like yours and build visibility there. Systematically, not reactively.

The brands getting this right in 2026 aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets. They’re the ones with the clearest understanding of how their audience behaves across the full search landscape.

Where to start

If you’re reviewing your search strategy, the first question to ask is simple: where does my audience start their search journey? Not where you assume they start. Where does the data actually show they are?

Run a quick audit of your current visibility across the platforms covered in this blog. Where are you showing up? Where are you invisible? The gaps in that picture are your opportunity.

Search has never been more fragmented  or fuller of potential for brands willing to show up in the right places.