Monthly Search Insights, How AI is changing search: October 2026
How AI is changing search and the way we measure success
Imagine opening your monthly SEO report and seeing several important Google rankings suddenly drop, yet enquiries are still coming in and customers are continuing to find your business.
So what’s behind these unexpected changes?
October has highlighted some important developments that help explain why the figures don’t always tell the full story. From misleading Google ranking reports to changing patterns in website visits, artificial intelligence is influencing how search works and how online performance is measured.
For businesses, this makes it increasingly important to look beyond individual rankings and visitor numbers to understand what’s really happening and whether digital marketing is delivering meaningful results.
As AI makes website analysis and recommendations more accessible, specialist expertise becomes even more important. Not every suggested improvement is accurate, relevant or worth prioritising. Understanding information from different sources, recognising what matters and making decisions that support the wider business strategy requires experience and judgement.
Why some Google ranking reports are showing misleading results
One of October’s biggest developments has been an industry-wide problem affecting how Google search rankings are monitored. Since September, this disruption has led to misleading ranking reports across the SEO industry, including sudden drops that may not reflect what customers actually see when searching.
Google appears to be showing some automated tools different search results from those a person would normally see. Industry experts believe this may be connected to Google’s efforts to restrict AI bots and other automated systems that collect large amounts of its search information. Unfortunately, the tools used to monitor website rankings are also being caught up in these changes, although Google hasn’t confirmed the precise reason.
What this means for your business
Some ranking reports may suggest that your website has dropped significantly, or even disappeared from Google, when its actual visibility hasn’t changed. Equally, they could show improvements that aren’t genuine.
This doesn’t mean rankings are no longer important. They remain a useful way to understand how visible your business is in search, but unexpected changes need to be checked before drawing conclusions or making decisions about your SEO strategy.
What we are doing to support this
At Artemis, we’re taking particular care when reviewing unusual ranking movements. Our reporting provider, AgencyAnalytics, has confirmed the industry-wide problem and is actively working on a fix. A solution is expected shortly, although the exact timing hasn’t yet been confirmed.
In the meantime, we’re checking unexpected changes against other reliable information to distinguish reporting errors from genuine changes in your search visibility.
This includes Google’s own search performance data, longer-term trends and website visits. We’re also considering the enquiries, bookings and sales being generated to understand whether changes in visibility are affecting business results.
Where ranking information is unreliable, we’ll explain the limitations. Where we identify a genuine decline, we’ll investigate the likely causes and recommend appropriate action.
Our priority is making sure the information guiding your SEO strategy is reliable, so decisions are based on what’s actually happening rather than potentially misleading figures.
How AI is changing the way websites are accessed
We’re also seeing more automated activity across the internet. Ranking tools use automated systems to check Google’s search results, while AI platforms such as ChatGPT use different systems, known as AI bots, to access information from websites. These bots can read website content without someone physically visiting the site.
For businesses, this can be beneficial. Some AI bots help platforms discover and understand your products, services and expertise, which can support visibility in AI Search. However, not all automated activity is useful, and excessive visits from bots can put pressure on websites and affect their performance.
As we highlighted in August, Artemis is investigating ways to manage unwanted bot activity while keeping websites accessible to legitimate search engines and AI platforms. The aim is to protect website performance without restricting opportunities for your business to be discovered.
Why Direct traffic is becoming more important
Another important change we’re paying attention to is how people discover businesses online and how those visits are recorded.
For many years, organic search traffic has been a key measure of SEO performance. When someone searches Google, visits a website and makes an enquiry or purchase, we can often follow that journey through website analytics.
But the way people research and choose businesses is changing. AI tools such as ChatGPT are becoming part of that process, helping people discover companies, compare products and services, and explore their options before deciding who to contact.
Why Direct doesn’t always mean direct
In Google Analytics, Direct traffic doesn’t necessarily mean someone typed your website address into their browser. It can also mean that Analytics couldn’t identify where the visit came from.
Some visits originating from AI platforms such as ChatGPT are recorded as Direct because the information identifying their source isn’t passed through. Other AI visits can be recognised separately, while clicks from Google’s own AI search features are generally included within organic search reporting.
There’s another important consideration. People can now get answers directly from AI tools or Google’s search features without visiting a website at all. This means your business could be discovered or considered without that interaction appearing in your website visitor figures.
What this means for your business
Organic visits remain an important measure of search performance, but looking at them in isolation no longer tells the whole story.
We know that visits originating from AI platforms can be recorded as Direct when Google Analytics cannot identify their source. This means AI may be contributing more website visitors than current reporting clearly identifies, making Direct traffic an increasingly important part of understanding how customers find your business.
It’s also important to understand where changes are occurring. Fewer visits to an advice article, for example, can have a very different commercial impact from a decline affecting an important service or product page.
At Artemis, we’re looking beyond individual traffic figures to understand how customers are discovering businesses and whether that visibility is translating into enquiries, bookings and sales.
What we are doing to support this
We’re reviewing organic search, identifiable AI visits and Direct traffic alongside enquiries, bookings, orders and revenue to build a clearer picture of website performance.
Where appropriate, we’re also introducing Core Traffic, which combines Organic Search and Direct traffic into one figure. This can help us understand wider traffic trends as customer journeys change, while still reviewing each source individually to identify what’s driving performance.
This won’t be necessary for every business. Our reporting approach will reflect each client’s circumstances, focusing on the measures that provide the most useful insight into their performance.
Importantly, this isn’t about explaining away a decline in organic traffic. It’s about understanding why it’s happening, whether it’s affecting business performance and what action, if any, is needed.
Final Thoughts
October’s developments highlight why understanding website performance increasingly requires more than looking at individual rankings or visitor numbers. AI is influencing how people discover businesses, how websites are accessed and how search performance is measured, but the underlying objective of digital marketing hasn’t changed.
At Artemis, we’re continuing to strengthen the SEO foundations that support visibility in both Google and AI Search, while adapting our approach as the way people discover businesses evolves. By combining reliable information from different sources with our specialist expertise and understanding of your business, we can identify and prioritise the changes most likely to make a meaningful difference.
Our focus remains on helping the right customers find your business, whether through traditional search or AI, and turning that visibility into enquiries, sales and sustainable growth.
As always, if you’d like to discuss how these developments could affect your business, your Artemis Account Manager will be happy to help.
