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What shapes a decision before the Google search happens
Publication date: 15.09.2026
Коротко
- Search increasingly confirms a decision made in advance rather than shaping it — the funnel has moved earlier than the query itself.
- This applies to any business with a non-impulse purchase: services, electronics, furniture, local goods.
- Investment needs to shift toward video, accurate product data and third-party conversations, not just search rankings.
What changed in the funnel
Karly Scott, Manager of Client Services at Logical Position, states the shift bluntly in her piece for Search Engine Land: the familiar "awareness to action" sequence has been replaced by "passive exposure → preference development → confirmation searches → purchase." Early-stage influence on choice has become invisible to marketers who only watch search analytics.
Her example makes the point concrete: she photographs a plant on a walk using Google Lens, identifies it — then buys it locally without a single text query or ad exposure. Discovery happened through a camera and recommendation algorithms, not a search box.
Where pre-search influence comes from
| Strategy | What to do |
|---|---|
| Video library | answer product and brand questions on video regardless of ad spend — the base material for AI citation |
| Data health | give product feeds and profiles maximum accurate, consistent information across channels |
| Unowned conversations | join threads like Reddit — they feed AI Overviews whether the brand takes part or not |
84%earned media — reviews, review videos, third-party mentions — drives this share of AI citations, not the brand's own website
YouTube holds a unique spot in this picture: AI cites it second among social platforms on "machine trust," while more than two-thirds of people trust it on "human trust" for purchase decisions. Up to 70% of Gen Z follows an influencer, and 44% buy based on that recommendation.
The practical takeaway: brand reputation and search visibility have stopped being two separate jobs with separate teams and budgets. AI systems draw their citations from the same sources reputation is built on — reviews, review videos, community mentions — so a reputation manager and an SEO specialist are now working toward the same outcome, even if they formally sit in different departments and report against different metrics.
What this means for business in Ukraine
Ukrainian SMBs have a structural gap here: ad budget mostly goes to search and targeting, not to explainer video and reputation work — yet those are exactly what feeds AI citations and recommendations. Our takeaway from client audits: most local businesses' Google Business Profile is filled in halfway, and reviews go unmoderated for months — meaning that pre-search layer is either empty or actively working against the brand. The practical move isn't to drop paid search but to close three gaps alongside it: build a short explainer video library on YouTube for key products, bring product-feed listings up to full accuracy (specs, current prices, photos), and systematically manage reviews through online reputation management — that's what algorithms read today instead of the website. Scott herself warns against abandoning search: query volume hit an all-time high in early 2026, it's just no longer realistic to expect it to do upper-funnel discovery work.
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