Search behavior has changed drastically in the last few years thanks to AI.
In fact, only 8% of visits end in a traditional click when an AI summary appears, according to Pew Research.
The links inside those summaries get clicked on in just 1% of visits, meaning brands are losing traffic even when they appear inside the answer itself.
Ken Braun, co-founder and chief brandtender of growth marketing and web design experts Lounge Lizard, says the first break happens at strategy because of two reasons:
- Paid teams chase acquisition
- SEO teams chase rankings
Plus, nobody fully owns how the brand shows up across AI answers, snippets, maps, ads, and social signals.
In this DesignRush interview, Braun makes the case for one search strategy instead of disconnected channel teams.
Who Is Ken Braun?
Ken Braun is a globally recognized digital strategist, entrepreneur, and speaker who co-founded Lounge Lizard Worldwide in 1998. As Co-Founder and Chief Brandtender, he’s led the creation of award-winning websites, digital campaigns, and growth strategies for enterprise and mid-market brands worldwide. Ken is also a Webby Awards Judge and a contributor to Forbes, where he writes about website design, user experience, SEO, AEO, and digital innovation.
Siloed Search Teams Are a Problem
Braun says the first breakdown happens at the strategic level, where SEO and paid search teams tend to work in separate silos.
“Messaging becomes inconsistent, data gets fragmented, landing pages fail to align with intent, and valuable search intelligence never gets shared across channels,” Braun tells DesignRush.
This is a problem since buyers now jump between AI answers, ads, maps, snippets, and social content before ever reaching a website.
With so many touchpoints to cover, it simply doesn’t make sense for search teams to stay disconnected.
View this post on Instagram
The funny part, if there is one, is that companies still spend a fortune collecting search data and then lock it into separate dashboards as if it’s contraband.
Braun’s point is to operate “from one unified search strategy instead of multiple disconnected channel strategies”.
Modern Search Briefs Start With Audience Intent
He also believes that “the modern search brief” starts with audience intent, and not channel ownership.
“At Lounge Lizard, briefs are increasingly built around the questions customers are asking, the problems they are trying to solve, and the answers the brand needs to dominate across search,” he adds.
Doing so allows execution to become more connected:
- Paid search data informs SEO content priorities
- SEO insights shape ad messaging
- AEO requirements influence content structure and schema implementation
- UX teams optimize pages for machine readability and AI discoverability
“The wall between ‘organic’ and ‘paid’ is disappearing because the customer no longer experiences search that way,” Braun says.
Customers now move between AI answers, ads, organic listings, and social content in the same session before making decisions.
A Gartner survey of 377 U.S. consumers found that AI-generated summaries are extending the research process instead of speeding it up:
- 31% said AI summaries cause them to spend more time searching for information.
- More than two-thirds continue searching after reading Google’s AI Overview.
- 31% said AI summaries lead them to evaluate more product options during purchase research, compared to 7% who consider fewer options.
Longer research journeys also make clicks a less reliable way to measure search performance.
View this post on Instagram
Braun’s agency looks at performance through factors like:
- AI answer inclusion
- Featured snippets
- Branded search growth
- Assisted conversions
- Lead quality
- Engagement quality
- How often a brand appears in the answer before a customer clicks through to a website
“The reality is that many customers are making decisions directly from the search experience itself,” he says.
“If your brand is repeatedly surfaced as the trusted answer, whether through AI summaries, paid placements, local results, or organic visibility, that creates measurable influence long before a website session is recorded.”
Braun’s approach looks at what search teams are dealing with across different areas:
- SEO, paid media, AEO, UX, analytics, and content work tend to perform better when they are connected instead of running separately.
- Content has to work for people reading it and also be structured in a way that AI systems and search tools can process without confusion.
- AI search rewards authority, relevance, trust signals, and connected content rather than isolated optimization tactics.
- Keyword stuffing, chasing rankings as a standalone goal, generic mass AI content, and checklist-style AEO work are losing effectiveness.
- People no longer follow a single path when searching. They move between AI answers, ads, organic results, and brand pages while making decisions.
Agency Talents Also Need A Skillset Upgrade
Agencies still need people who can work across technical SEO, schema, paid media, search intent, conversion work, content design, AI search behavior, analytics, UX, and brand storytelling.
However, they also need talents who can connect all those areas in practice instead of keeping them separate processes.
“The overrated skills are the ones rooted in outdated search thinking, chasing vanity rankings, producing generic AI-generated content at scale, keyword stuffing, or treating AEO like a checklist layered onto traditional SEO,” Braun says.
Those skills are still not widely reflected across organizations, where Adobe’s 2026 report shows just 54% are preparing to optimize content for AI-powered discovery tools.
This leaves a large portion of the market still unprepared for AI-driven discovery.
“Many brands still treat AEO as simply an extension of SEO when it actually impacts the entire digital discovery ecosystem,” Braun says.
Teams miss that when they try to force AEO into old structures without changing how they plan, write, and measure.
At Lounge Lizard, Braun sees AEO as “an intelligence layer that influences content strategy, paid media targeting, landing page architecture, schema implementation, brand messaging, and even UX decisions.”
That’s why the work has to stretch across disciplines. AEO changes how content is written, structured, connected, distributed, and surfaced in AI-driven environments.
View this post on Instagram
He’s equally clear on where brands go wrong.
“The biggest mistake brands make is assuming AEO belongs only to the SEO team,” Braun adds.
“In reality, it affects how ads are written, how authority is built, how content hubs are structured, how search intent is mapped, and how brands establish trust before a customer ever reaches the website.”
What This Means for Brands and Agencies
Braun’s point is not just that search has changed.
It’s that teams should work from the same brief, measure visibility as part of performance, and stop treating AEO as one team’s job.
Brands should review how search work is assigned, how success is tracked, and whether content is being built for both AI systems and real buyers.
Agencies that still sell separate SEO, paid, and AEO work will continue creating internal handoffs that don’t match how people search.
