The path from “I need a [plumber, realtor, med spa, florist]” to “I’m calling this one” has quietly split into half a dozen directions at once. Some people still Google. Some scroll Facebook. Some read reviews on three different sites. And a fast-growing number just ask an AI.

For twenty years, getting found meant ranking in a list of blue links and letting people do the comparing. That's shifting. More and more, people ask a question and get a direct answer — from Google's AI summaries or assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity — without ever clicking through to a website