Sign in with Google In May, Google brought together the best of AI and Search to create a new intelligent search box. That upgrade, the biggest in 25 years, extends Search’s profound evolution to support modern customers’ fundamentally changed journeys.
Back when search results were a static list of blue links, marketers treated customer journeys like linear assembly lines: discovery, consideration, purchase. Today, that funnel is gone.
Consumers are simultaneously streaming, scrolling, searching, and shopping. Across their fluid behavioural loops, they don’t “go” shopping anymore, they’re always shopping.
To truly connect with them, brands need to go beyond platforms built for passive scrolling. That’s what makes Search’s transformation so timely. It’s now an interactive engine that drives brand discovery and confident decisions across shoppers’ entire journeys.
Here, we unpack the three ways AI Search is opening up unmissable opportunities for brands to capture high-intent demand at the exact moment of inspiration. And our three-step playbook can help you use Google AI in marketing to unlock profitable growth, as brands like Lenovo India, Ajio, Paylocity, Royal Enfield, and Zepto are already doing.
The new intelligent search box: Multimodal, conversational, agentic
Shoppers’ curiosity doesn’t fit into rigid keywords. That’s why Search’s AI Mode and AI Overviews features are designed to deeply understand and anticipate nuanced human intent.
Using multi-stage reasoning powered by Gemini’s latest models, Search satisfies users with personalised answers to their complex questions. That’s reshaping Search experiences across three core dimensions, providing marketers with a trio of new levers for shaping intent:
1. Multimodal expression: AI Search has broken free from the text box. It now dynamically expands to let users describe their needs through text, voice, video, gestures, and more.
More than 1 in 6 AI Mode queries are now entirely non-text, and image searches are growing over 40% month-over-month.
Source: Google, “How people are using AI Mode in the U.S.,” May 2026.
Those multimodal questions are not only pushing Search queries to an all-time high, they offer valuable leads for brands. That massive opportunity is seen in the numbers: Google Lens powers over 25 billion visual searches per month,1 with 1 in 5 queries showing commercial intent.2 And Circle to Search drives more than 10% of queries for younger consumers.3
That means brands must be ready for moments of inspiration on Search when “I see it” flips to “I want it.”
2. Conversational depth: Since AI Search now parses natural phrasing, the average AI Mode query is triple the length of a traditional query.
For example, India users routinely chat with Search like a knowledgeable shopping companion, mixing English and Hindi to specify needs like: “Dry skin ke liye (for) best sunscreen with SPF 50 under 500 rupees.” And those high-intent conversations are where advertisers need to be.
3. Agentic Intelligence: Search now acts as personal assistant for every user. By synthesising information to provide tailored guidance, it helps consumers move seamlessly from broad curiosity (“What am I looking for?”) to confident decisions (“Here’s exactly what fits my needs”).
Globally, brands like Nike are journeying towards agentic commerce. By integrating Google’s AI commerce capability, Nike is enabling customers to easily discover products and purchase directly within the Gemini app and AI Mode.
AI Search agents provide users with synthesised brand updates that meet their needs, positioning brands to capture that intent even before a new product or offer lands.
The profitable growth opportunity: From passive discovery to confident clicks
For brands in India, the shift to multimodal, conversational, and intelligent AI Search offers massive opportunities to win high-intent customers. In fact, shoppers say Search’s swift, personalised answers help them move from passive browsing to faster, more confident decisions.
In the high-confidence environment on Search, advertisers are primed to acquire customers, especially since 86% of Indian shoppers on Search are open to trying new brands or products.4
Winning that new demand requires a marketing pivot: Instead of passively waiting to be discovered in siloed funnels, brands must seek out “confident clicks” across customer journeys using AI-powered Search campaigns.
For Lenovo India, proactively expanding its reach into incremental, longtail queries proved a huge success. It used AI Max for Search to efficiently capture new user intent across nuanced queries from laptop accessories to “Spin the Wheel” promotions, unlocking a 73% lift in purchases and 51% surge in return on ad spend (ROAS).
The ROI engine: A 3-step playbook for converting intent into results
To capture new intent, marketers need to move beyond static planning to dynamic, AI-driven ecosystems that maximises ROI. Here’s a playbook for shifting from manual bidding and keyword silos to an agile, AI-powered framework:
Step 1: Replace siloed data with a strong data foundation that fuels AI-powered bidding
Your Search campaigns’ performance depends entirely on the data quality you feed it with. So build your data strength by using Google Ads Data Manager to seamlessly connect your Customer Relationship Management pipelines and offline data.
That provides deeper visibility into where valuable conversions are across customer journeys, and steers your Value-based Bidding to prioritise the most profitable customers.
Paylocity did just that, and grew conversion value by 62%. By using integrated data to fuel enhanced conversions for leads, it lifted conversion rates of marketing-qualified leads to sales-qualified leads by 61%, and first-time appointments by 19%.
Step 2: Scale real-time intent using AI Max for Search and Smart Bidding
To grow market reach, your campaigns must be dynamic enough to keep pace with consumers’ fast-evolving search and buying behaviours, like asking longer, more granular questions.
To harness real-time intent prediction, pair Smart Bidding, which analyses millions of real-time signals to optimise ad bids, with AI Max for Search. The latter extends your reach into new queries using keywordless technology, and dynamically tailors ad assets to match complex queries.
Advertisers that activate AI Max in Search will typically see 27% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA/ROAS for campaigns that are still mostly using exact and phrase keywords.5
For Ajio, using AI Max for Search to capture broad, multi-layered intent scored even stronger results: The fashion e-tailer’s revenues jumped 38% and ROAS surged 31%.
Step 3: Optimise Performance Max campaigns for ROI with rich creative and lifecycle signals
To capture demand across every touchpoint, deploy Performance Max. It unifies Google’s AI-powered capabilities across Search, YouTube, Maps, and Discover into a single, high-performing ROI engine, especially when you feed it with two key inputs:
- Diverse high-quality creatives. That includes vertical videos for YouTube Shorts, localised language copy, and authentic creator-led content.
- High-intent audience signals. By applying top-performing search terms, customer match lists and strategic exclusions, you’ll ensure the algorithm pursues net-new profitable growth, instead of wasting ad spend on unqualified leads or existing users.
Deploying Performance Max helped quick commerce platform Zepto scale user acquisitions by 31% at a 47% lower cost per action. And for motorbike rental platform Royal Enfield, pairing Performance Max and AI Max for Search campaigns increased monthly bookings by 3.3X at 70% lower cost-per-booking.
Search has evolved into an intelligent engine that continuously drives confident purchases for shoppers and profitable growth for brands. To stay ahead in the age of AI Search, use our strategic roadmap to help your brand convert real-time intent into measurable ROI.
Contributors: Prashant Gutch, Senior Marketing Manager, Ads Marketing; Ayush Bohra, Product Marketing Manager, Ads Marketing; Archit Goyal, Search & PMax Performance Solutions Specialist
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