Smart business owners are making a mistake right now, and it starts with something true.
The true part: search is moving to AI. More people are asking ChatGPT for recommendations instead of Googling. I see it across our whole client base.
The mistake: “So let’s pull the budget out of Google.”
Too early. And expensive.
Here’s how a customer actually finds a business today. They ask an AI tool for options and get a handful of names. Then they verify. They Google those names. They read the reviews. They check that the website looks legit and the business looks active. Then they call.
AI opens the door. Everything else you’ve built either walks them through it or turns them away.
So play it out. You pull out of Google while that’s still the norm. The AI recommends you, the customer goes to check you out, and there’s not much there. Weak ad presence, thin reviews, stale results. You paid to get surfaced, then lost the customer at the exact step you defunded.
There’s a simpler reason not to bail, too. Google is still enormous, and they are not handing over their ad business without a fight. They’re rebuilding everything around AI as fast as anyone. A huge share of buying decisions still get finalized on Google, even when they started somewhere else. Walk away a year early and you’re handing that ground to whoever stayed.
One more thing before anyone gets excited about clean answers. I was in a client’s Analytics last week. Their customers keep telling them they found the business through “Google or web search.” The actual data barely backs that up. Attribution was already messy before AI showed up. Now a customer hears about you from ChatGPT, verifies you on Google, and calls from your website. Which channel gets credit? Wrong question. The system gets credit.
So here's what we're actually telling our clients at Eighty6:
Keep a real budget in Google Ads. Keep the SEO foundation funded, because the same work feeds Google and the AI engines at the same time. Add the new layer on top: the GEO work that targets AI visibility directly. And then track the whole thing as one picture. Not “how did Google do” and “how did AI do” in separate columns. Total leads, total cost, one system where the channels feed each other.
Judge it on phone calls, form fills, and booked appointments. That’s the number that pays your bills. Search didn’t move from Google to AI. It stretched across both. Budget like it.
Not sure where your budget stands? Ask. That conversation costs you nothing.
– Jay Eagleson, Managing Partner & Head of Growth
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