There are two reports that I pay attention to each year to help guide what we do here at Stryde. The first is the Edelman Trust Barometer, and the second is The State of Search from Datos and Spark Toro. Today’s post is my take on the data from the Q4 2025 State of Search Report.
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I talk to a lot of brands each month and I keep hearing the same thing… “I feel like I’m doing everything right… running ads, writing and promoting content, optimizing my site, working with influencers, etc,” and I can’t break through my plateau. Something feels off, and I can’t put my finger on it”.
Their organic traffic is softer than last year. Their cost per click keeps creeping up. And every time they check your analytics, the numbers just don’t move the way they used to.
You’re not imagining it. It’s happening to more folks than just you.
The Datos/SparkToro State of Search Q4 2025 report, built on billions of anonymized desktop events across tens of millions of users, confirms what many ecommerce brands have been feeling in their dashboards: Google searchers are performing nearly 20% fewer searches per person than they were a year ago. Not fewer people searching. Fewer searches per person. Every query that disappears is a potential customer you never get a chance to reach.
And here’s the part that should worry you: the searches aren’t coming back. They’re being absorbed by AI Overviews that answer questions before anyone clicks, by longer and more specific queries that resolve in a single search instead of three, and by a slow but steady migration of user attention toward AI tools that may never send traffic to your site at all.
If you’re running or doing marketing for an ecommerce brand and your growth strategy still looks the same as it did 18 months ago, the data says you’re falling behind.
Here’s what actually changed in Q4 2025, and what to do about it heading into next quarter.
Google Still Dominates – But the Rules Are Changing
Let’s start with the good news: Google held 93–95% of US desktop search share throughout Q4 2025, and traditional search still accounted for roughly 10% of all desktop activity… far ahead of AI tools at 0.77% and ecommerce platforms at 3.6%. Despite what all the doomsdayers are spewing on LinkedIn… The opportunity is still overwhelmingly in Google.
But the nature of that opportunity has shifted. With searches per user declining significantly, each search carries more weight. The days of ranking for a broad head term and riding a wave of volume are fading. Users are typing longer, more specific queries. The report shows the biggest growth in 6-9 word searches and 15+ word queries (that is not a typo), which means they’re arriving at Google with clearer intent and less patience for generic results.
For ecommerce brands, this changes your content strategy. You need pages that answer specific, multi-part questions (fan-out queries). You need FAQ content that matches the conversational way people actually search now. And you need product pages that do more than list features; they need to directly address the exact problem someone typed into the search bar.
Zero-Click Isn’t Getting Worse, But It’s Not Getting Better
This one is a bit of a relief… About 22–25% of Google searches in Q4 ended with no click at all. That’s elevated, but the data shows stabilization rather than acceleration. Organic clicks to non-Google properties actually held steady in the 42–46% range through year-end, which means there’s still real traffic flowing to sites that earn it.
The keyword here is earn. When Google can answer a question with an AI Overview or a featured snippet, they will. The clicks that still happen are going to pages with compelling titles, clear value propositions, and content that goes beyond what a summary can provide. For ecommerce, that means rich product content, comparison guides, and buying advice that AI can reference but not fully replace. Most brands have a lot of work to do and need to get moving now.
AI Tools Are Small But Growing – And They Change Where Traffic Goes
AI tool usage nearly doubled over the year, going from 0.42% to 0.77% of desktop events. ChatGPT climbed to the 7th most-visited domain after a Google search. Gemini tripled its user base. These are still small numbers relative to traditional search, but the trajectory is consistent, and the behavioral patterns matter.
Here’s why: when users browse after interacting with AI tools, their traffic concentrates heavily around established platforms. Google, YouTube, Amazon, Reddit, and GitHub dominate the post-AI destination list. Smaller ecommerce sites barely register, if at all. That means if you want to capture attention from AI-assisted discovery, you need to be present in the sources AI tools reference: YouTube Shorts, Reddit discussions, authoritative review content, well-structured product information, and Amazon listings.
Google’s AI Mode is also worth watching. It went from 0.01% to 0.06% of events share between May and December 2025. That’s tiny, but the growth curve is steady and Google has barely pushed it yet. When, not if, AI Mode becomes more prominent, brands with AI-optimized content will have a head start. Again, brands have a lot of work to do here.
What to Actually Start Working On
The overarching message from this data is evolution, not revolution. The fundamentals haven’t collapsed, but the details of how users search are shifting in ways that reward different tactics than what worked two years ago.
- First, double down on long-tail and conversational content. The shift toward longer queries means users are expressing more complex needs directly in search. Your content needs to meet them there with specific, detailed answers, not generic category pages.
- Second, invest in the sources that feed AI. Reddit threads, product reviews on authoritative sites, and well-structured schema markup on your own pages all influence what AI tools surface. If your brand isn’t part of those conversations, you’re invisible to a growing segment of searchers.
- Third, protect your Google organic presence. It’s still where the vast majority of ecommerce discovery happens. But protect it by making your content harder to summarize, deeper comparisons, original data, buying guides with real expertise, so that when Google does show an AI Overview, your page is still the one users click through to.
- Fourth, don’t ignore Amazon. It held 44–50% of desktop ecommerce users in Q4 with the highest search intensity of any platform at 12–15 searches per user per month. If you’re selling products and not optimizing your Amazon presence alongside your DTC site, you’re leaving money on the table.
The brands that will grow next quarter aren’t the ones waiting to see what happens with AI. They’re the ones adapting their search strategy now, creating content for longer queries, building visibility in AI-referenced sources, and treating every remaining Google search as the increasingly valuable touchpoint it has become.
Greg is the founder and CEO of Stryde and a seasoned digital marketer who has worked with thousands of businesses, large and small, to generate more revenue via online marketing strategy and execution. Greg has written hundreds of blog posts as well as spoken at many events about online marketing strategy. You can follow Greg on Twitter and connect with him on LinkedIn.