Singapore – As GenAI gains deeper traction across industries, Forrester’s latest report revealed its significant impact on the search landscape, transforming it into something more conversational, assistive, and agentic.
As per the report, it was noted that search engines such as Google, Bing, and ChatGPT evolve into personal assistant-style tools, indicating their influence across various domains, including B2C and B2B marketing, commerce, and cognitive search. This shift implies businesses must offer smooth, engaging, and proactive search experiences.
Key findings of the report showed a major shift in conversational search, with search engines now enabling more dynamic, back-and-forth interaction and over one-third of consumers already using these features.
It was also found that generative AI-powered search engines are minimising user effort by taking action on their behalf. These AI language models handle complex cognitive tasks, offering faster and more precise results.
Another key finding is that generative AI is transforming more than just how users interact with search engines, reshaping how they search vendor websites, retailer apps, and corporate intranets. With this, users now expect back-and-forth interactions with agents that act like personal assistants across B2B, commerce, and cognitive search, driving convergence and shared innovation in search experiences.
Interestingly, GenAI transforms search marketing (B2C & B2B), commerce search, and enterprise knowledge strategies by making experiences more dynamic, relevant, and personalised.
But to stay competitive, the company also noted businesses must strengthen their technical capabilities and prioritise AI governance. Buyers also need to be selective as the cognitive search market grows more crowded.
Commenting about the report, Nikhil Lai, senior analyst at Forrester, stated, “Generative AI makes search more conversational, assistive, and agentic. Search engines lead this transformation, but it impacts all search experiences. Whether they are searching Perplexity, Amazon’s app, or PDFs, users expect back-and-forth interactions with agents that act like personal assistants and, increasingly, act on users’ behalf.”
“As a result, all search disciplines, including B2C and B2B search marketing, commerce search, and cognitive search, must adapt to AI-integrated search,” he further said.
