How AI Understands User Intent Before They Search: Commercial Decision Loops and the Invisible Funnel
Why pre-intent behavior is becoming more legible and monetizable
early-stage-product-positioning
growth funnel design
retention strategy
Before They Search, They Decide
Search Is Losing Intent
Why Google’s dominance is eroding and what replaces it is not another search engine
For the first time in two decades, users are not starting with Google.
They start with ChatGPT. Perplexity. Claude. Even TikTok.
And they don’t just want links
They want answers
They want synthesis
They want context
Search volume is shrinking because the interface no longer fits the task.
Search assumes you know what you're looking for.
But today, users often don't. They want to figure it out, not just look it up.
This is not just a shift in tools. It is a shift in mental models.
Search used to be the gateway. Now it is a fallback.
What replaced it is not a better search engine.
It is a better interface for ambiguity.
Google still works
For fact recall, site navigation, or shopping
But it is no longer where curiosity begins
It is where it ends
In early-stage discovery, users are increasingly skipping Google.
They turn to LLMs to explore open-ended questions:
"How should I think about hiring a founding marketer?"
"Why is everyone talking about RAG in AI infrastructure?"
"Give me startup ideas that combine AI and healthcare."
This is not a failure of search algorithms.
It is a mismatch of interface and expectation.
Search is built to retrieve.
AI is built to reason.
Search Is Becoming a Post-Intent Activity
Search Is Becoming a Post-Intent Activity
Why the search engine is no longer the starting point of decision-making
Summary
User intent used to be simple. Type a few words into Google and get results. But today, that input no longer marks the beginning, it’s the endpoint. Decision-making starts earlier, across interfaces that are not built for traditional search: AI chat interfaces, product communities, social groups, and private tools.
This shift is not just about where people search. It’s about how people decide.
1. Intent fragmentation
Search no longer starts with Google
Search intent is no longer centralized. People now initiate discovery across tools that were never designed to be search engines:
Asking in a Slack thread
Browsing Reddit for honest opinions
Watching a YouTube video before searching a product
Starting a conversation with ChatGPT
These actions don’t show up as search queries. But they shape user thinking long before anything is typed into a box. What used to be a clear funnel is now a cloud of micro-decisions happening across many contexts.
This isn’t a decline in curiosity. It’s a redistribution of where curiosity lives.
2. Interface evolution
From input-output to task-resolution
The search bar is still there, but the rules have changed.
Search is no longer about asking questions, it’s about triggering actions.
We’ve shifted from keyword matching to semantic understanding, from SEO to SVO: Semantic Value Optimization.
Old search worked on keyword matching. New interfaces are context-aware, dialogue-driven, and focused on resolving entire tasks, not just returning pages.
AI agents don’t wait for you to articulate a query. They guide you through an entire problem space:
“What’s the best tool for X?”
“Help me compare options.”
“Draft the email.”
“Book the flight.”
In this new environment, users aren’t even aware that they’re ‘searching’ anymore. They’re just progressing. And the system fills in the gaps before they’re verbalized.
3. Monetization lag
Search advertising is stable, but stagnant
The AdWords model monetized explicit intent. AI interfaces don’t work that way. There’s no clear click, no auction, no blue links. The system handles user goals more like a product manager than a publisher.
Monetizing these interactions requires new playbooks:
Native integrations
Plugin ecosystems
Brand-level trust embedded into AI responses
Paid access to private data sources
The challenge is not user volume. It’s control over when and how you appear in the decision chain.
4. Why this matters for product builders
Pre-intent behavior is now visible and trackable. And it can be shaped, long before users “decide” to search. That’s a strategic opening.
If you wait for users to type into Google, you’re already late.
Search Is Becoming a Post-Intent Activity
Search Is Becoming a Post-Intent Activity
Intent is not typed. It’s inferred.
Search is no longer something users “do”
It’s something that’s happening to them
The rise of TikTok, Reels, Discord threads, newsletters, and LLMs has shown us one thing:
Users are not looking for answers
They’re looking for conviction
They scroll not because they’re certain of what they want
But because they’re hoping to find a reason to want something
The implication?
We thought search intent came from typed queries
But that’s a measurable artifact, not the origin
Today’s search systems work backwards
Not from keywords, but from patterns across fragmented, pre-search signals:
Where you lingered longer than usual
Which video timestamp you rewatched
What you typed in Slack but didn’t send
Which autocomplete you hovered but ignored
None of these are inputs in the traditional sense
But they are more truthful than a keyword ever was
The Invisible Funnel
What looks like discovery is often just the tail end of a decision
Most users “search” after they’ve already made up their minds
Or at least after a full commercial loop:
Seeing, comparing, liking, skipping, saving
By the time they type something into a box
They’ve already passed through a noisy, invisible funnel made of:
Viral UGC on TikTok
A friend’s shared IG story
A Reddit comment chain
An email headline that stuck for no reason
A mid-sentence mention in a podcast they half-listened to
The mistake?
Treating search as top-of-funnel
When it’s often post-purchase echo
Search is not discovery
It’s verification
What This Means for Product and Growth
This is where most marketing playbooks get it wrong
They over-index on content SEO and top-of-funnel ads
And underbuild for pre-intent ecosystems
The better question is:
What does your product look like in a Reddit thread?
Would someone bring it up in a WhatsApp group chat?
If it shows up in a video, is it skippable or screenshot-worthy?
Can your brand be stumbled upon in someone’s daily routine, without even trying?
Today, it’s not about being searchable
It’s about being ambiently inevitable
Pre-Intent is the New Funnel
The real conversion engine sits upstream of the query.
We’ve spent decades optimizing the search results page. But we’ve missed something upstream: what triggered the user to search in the first place?
Real decisions happen before the search box.
This reshapes how we think about marketing. SEO and SEM aren’t the top of the funnel anymore, they’re the bottom. The real top is the moment a user realizes they have a problem they can’t ignore.
As AI begins to predict intent from pre-search behavior, a more urgent question emerges:
Can we design environments where the AI believes a user is about to form a specific intent?
This isn’t manipulation. It’s the new definition of “relevance.”
Commercial Loops Before Conversion
User behavior is no longer linear. It's loop-based.
From ecommerce to content platforms, every part of the journey reinforces behavior through repetition.
Decisions aren’t “made” as much as they are narrowed down, by gradually eliminating less viable options.
The real funnel is a series of commercial loops, not a straight line.
What AI Actually Extracts When You Don’t Search
Before you type a word, AI is already reading signals:
Time spent on certain content
Cross-device behavior and session timing
Who you share with and in what context (group chat vs. private)
Whether you’re refining or redefining your query
Together, these form an intent vector, often more powerful than keywords.
Search is No Longer the Entry Point
For AI systems, your search is a result, not a starting point.
By the time most users search, 80% of their decision-making is already done.
Brands shouldn’t just aim to win the outcome. They need to influence the process.
The Commercial Loop is Not a Loop
It’s a compression of pre-decision behaviors.
We often describe the purchase decision as a loop: content triggers → motivation → search → comparison → purchase → review → re-trigger.
But that sequence no longer holds. Today, these steps are compressed into a smaller, less visible window, often collapsed into a few seconds of unconscious scrolling.
That change isn't cosmetic. It's structural.
Designing for the Pre-Search Loop
Search is not where decisions are made. It’s where they are finalized.
The real opportunity lies upstream, before the query ever forms.
Instead of optimizing for search engine results, brands need to embed themselves into browsing flows, recommendation loops, and saved-for-later folders.
The new benchmark is not visibility, but inevitability:
Becoming the brand users return to before they even know they’re making a decision.
Search is an exit.
The competition is happening in the feed, the swipe, the click that wasn't meant to lead anywhere.
From Action to Intention Compression
AI is not finding the best path through the loop.
It’s predicting how the loop will collapse before it starts.
Which means:
Users no longer need a series of actions to express intent
A single behavior can now encode the entire map of intention
Businesses no longer optimize for what users do
They optimize for what the system believes they will do next
This rewires everything from attribution to monetization.
Brands that used to chase demand must now forecast pre-intent.
Not how users search, but how they might have searched before intent was outsourced to AI.
✅ From Search-Oriented to Intent-Oriented Language Structures
Every line of copy, video narrative, or headline is no longer written for human readers — it’s designed for AI logic.
Your goal isn’t to be found by the system. Your goal is to be selected by it.
✅ User Expectation → Prompt Alignment → Action Design
We prioritize shaping prompts over mapping keywords.
The content we create is designed to become material the AI pulls from, not something it replaces.
✅ Leaning Into the Power of Pre-Search
Be the name users recall before they ever search.
Don’t rely on search to be discovered. Instead, embed yourself into the decision cycle through cross-channel memory cues, what we call Cross-Channel Embedding.
What This Means for Strategy
Your job is no longer to rank. It’s to provoke.
If decisions are made before a search even happens, then the role of your product or brand isn’t to be more discoverable. It’s to be more impossible to ignore.
Your content isn’t meant to explain things to AI. It’s material designed to help AI infer intent.
This breaks the rhythm of SEO, content marketing, and CRM as we knew it. They’re no longer communicating with a human audience but engaging in a one-sided negotiation with a predictive model, a model that doesn’t care what you say, only whether it matches the expected trajectory of a decision.
Marketing’s job isn’t to convince people anymore. It’s to convince the system:
"This person looks like they’re heading our way."
Conclusion
AI isn’t the future. It’s already in control of the present tense of decision-making.
Being searchable no longer means being wanted.
What matters is being paused on, shared, saved, replayed. That’s the real signal of intent.
The battleground has shifted from visibility to presence inside the loop
Not just getting seen, but getting embedded in the user’s pre-search decision cycle.
Anchor Articles and Updates
Inspired by Lenny’s Growth Inflections: AI and Personal Brands Rewiring Startup Growth — AI automation and personal brands are redefining startup growth inspired by Lenny Rachitsky’s Growth Inflections.
Why Growth Marketing Is Not Digital Marketing and Why This Distinction Matters — It’s not that your marketing strategy is flawed. You might just be addressing the wrong problem.
When AI Products Can’t Find PMF, Build a Landing Client Instead — PMF isn’t always found in the product, Sometimes, it starts with one strategic client
Content as a Revenue Tool: Shortening Time-to-Close in Startup Sales — Content that shortens sales cycles, Not just builds traffic
Building Revenue Systems When Scale Isn’t an Option — Profitability First: How Startup Teams Can Drive Revenue in Constrained Markets
Case Studies
Mountain Gentleman — They knew they needed to go digital but had no idea how to start.So we saw things through the rider’s eyes.It wasn’t just about buying gear because it felt like building out your dream GTR.Every part of the journey was designed to match that thrill.
CoinRank — CoinRank needed a fresh way to stand out in crypto. We created a short video strategy that turns complex info into quick, engaging clips that grab attention fast.
Latest Updates
(GQ® — 02)
©2025
Latest Updates
(GQ® — 02)
©2025
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What does a project look like?
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How is the pricing structure?
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Are all projects fixed scope?
04
Can I adjust the project scope after we start?
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How do we measure success?
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Do you offer ongoing support after project completion?
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How long does a typical project last?
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Is there a minimum commitment?
How AI Understands User Intent Before They Search: Commercial Decision Loops and the Invisible Funnel
Why pre-intent behavior is becoming more legible and monetizable
early-stage-product-positioning
growth funnel design
retention strategy
Before They Search, They Decide
Search Is Losing Intent
Why Google’s dominance is eroding and what replaces it is not another search engine
For the first time in two decades, users are not starting with Google.
They start with ChatGPT. Perplexity. Claude. Even TikTok.
And they don’t just want links
They want answers
They want synthesis
They want context
Search volume is shrinking because the interface no longer fits the task.
Search assumes you know what you're looking for.
But today, users often don't. They want to figure it out, not just look it up.
This is not just a shift in tools. It is a shift in mental models.
Search used to be the gateway. Now it is a fallback.
What replaced it is not a better search engine.
It is a better interface for ambiguity.
Google still works
For fact recall, site navigation, or shopping
But it is no longer where curiosity begins
It is where it ends
In early-stage discovery, users are increasingly skipping Google.
They turn to LLMs to explore open-ended questions:
"How should I think about hiring a founding marketer?"
"Why is everyone talking about RAG in AI infrastructure?"
"Give me startup ideas that combine AI and healthcare."
This is not a failure of search algorithms.
It is a mismatch of interface and expectation.
Search is built to retrieve.
AI is built to reason.
Search Is Becoming a Post-Intent Activity
Why the search engine is no longer the starting point of decision-making
Summary
User intent used to be simple. Type a few words into Google and get results. But today, that input no longer marks the beginning, it’s the endpoint. Decision-making starts earlier, across interfaces that are not built for traditional search: AI chat interfaces, product communities, social groups, and private tools.
This shift is not just about where people search. It’s about how people decide.
1. Intent fragmentation
Search no longer starts with Google
Search intent is no longer centralized. People now initiate discovery across tools that were never designed to be search engines:
Asking in a Slack thread
Browsing Reddit for honest opinions
Watching a YouTube video before searching a product
Starting a conversation with ChatGPT
These actions don’t show up as search queries. But they shape user thinking long before anything is typed into a box. What used to be a clear funnel is now a cloud of micro-decisions happening across many contexts.
This isn’t a decline in curiosity. It’s a redistribution of where curiosity lives.
2. Interface evolution
From input-output to task-resolution
The search bar is still there, but the rules have changed.
Search is no longer about asking questions, it’s about triggering actions.
We’ve shifted from keyword matching to semantic understanding, from SEO to SVO: Semantic Value Optimization.
Old search worked on keyword matching. New interfaces are context-aware, dialogue-driven, and focused on resolving entire tasks, not just returning pages.
AI agents don’t wait for you to articulate a query. They guide you through an entire problem space:
“What’s the best tool for X?”
“Help me compare options.”
“Draft the email.”
“Book the flight.”
In this new environment, users aren’t even aware that they’re ‘searching’ anymore. They’re just progressing. And the system fills in the gaps before they’re verbalized.
3. Monetization lag
Search advertising is stable, but stagnant
The AdWords model monetized explicit intent. AI interfaces don’t work that way. There’s no clear click, no auction, no blue links. The system handles user goals more like a product manager than a publisher.
Monetizing these interactions requires new playbooks:
Native integrations
Plugin ecosystems
Brand-level trust embedded into AI responses
Paid access to private data sources
The challenge is not user volume. It’s control over when and how you appear in the decision chain.
4. Why this matters for product builders
Pre-intent behavior is now visible and trackable. And it can be shaped, long before users “decide” to search. That’s a strategic opening.
If you wait for users to type into Google, you’re already late.
Search Is Becoming a Post-Intent Activity
Intent is not typed. It’s inferred.
Search is no longer something users “do”
It’s something that’s happening to them
The rise of TikTok, Reels, Discord threads, newsletters, and LLMs has shown us one thing:
Users are not looking for answers
They’re looking for conviction
They scroll not because they’re certain of what they want
But because they’re hoping to find a reason to want something
The implication?
We thought search intent came from typed queries
But that’s a measurable artifact, not the origin
Today’s search systems work backwards
Not from keywords, but from patterns across fragmented, pre-search signals:
Where you lingered longer than usual
Which video timestamp you rewatched
What you typed in Slack but didn’t send
Which autocomplete you hovered but ignored
None of these are inputs in the traditional sense
But they are more truthful than a keyword ever was
The Invisible Funnel
What looks like discovery is often just the tail end of a decision
Most users “search” after they’ve already made up their minds
Or at least after a full commercial loop:
Seeing, comparing, liking, skipping, saving
By the time they type something into a box
They’ve already passed through a noisy, invisible funnel made of:
Viral UGC on TikTok
A friend’s shared IG story
A Reddit comment chain
An email headline that stuck for no reason
A mid-sentence mention in a podcast they half-listened to
The mistake?
Treating search as top-of-funnel
When it’s often post-purchase echo
Search is not discovery
It’s verification
What This Means for Product and Growth
This is where most marketing playbooks get it wrong
They over-index on content SEO and top-of-funnel ads
And underbuild for pre-intent ecosystems
The better question is:
What does your product look like in a Reddit thread?
Would someone bring it up in a WhatsApp group chat?
If it shows up in a video, is it skippable or screenshot-worthy?
Can your brand be stumbled upon in someone’s daily routine, without even trying?
Today, it’s not about being searchable
It’s about being ambiently inevitable
Pre-Intent is the New Funnel
The real conversion engine sits upstream of the query.
We’ve spent decades optimizing the search results page. But we’ve missed something upstream: what triggered the user to search in the first place?
Real decisions happen before the search box.
This reshapes how we think about marketing. SEO and SEM aren’t the top of the funnel anymore, they’re the bottom. The real top is the moment a user realizes they have a problem they can’t ignore.
As AI begins to predict intent from pre-search behavior, a more urgent question emerges:
Can we design environments where the AI believes a user is about to form a specific intent?
This isn’t manipulation. It’s the new definition of “relevance.”
Commercial Loops Before Conversion
User behavior is no longer linear. It's loop-based.
From ecommerce to content platforms, every part of the journey reinforces behavior through repetition.
Decisions aren’t “made” as much as they are narrowed down, by gradually eliminating less viable options.
The real funnel is a series of commercial loops, not a straight line.
What AI Actually Extracts When You Don’t Search
Before you type a word, AI is already reading signals:
Time spent on certain content
Cross-device behavior and session timing
Who you share with and in what context (group chat vs. private)
Whether you’re refining or redefining your query
Together, these form an intent vector, often more powerful than keywords.
Search is No Longer the Entry Point
For AI systems, your search is a result, not a starting point.
By the time most users search, 80% of their decision-making is already done.
Brands shouldn’t just aim to win the outcome. They need to influence the process.
The Commercial Loop is Not a Loop
It’s a compression of pre-decision behaviors.
We often describe the purchase decision as a loop: content triggers → motivation → search → comparison → purchase → review → re-trigger.
But that sequence no longer holds. Today, these steps are compressed into a smaller, less visible window, often collapsed into a few seconds of unconscious scrolling.
That change isn't cosmetic. It's structural.
Designing for the Pre-Search Loop
Search is not where decisions are made. It’s where they are finalized.
The real opportunity lies upstream, before the query ever forms.
Instead of optimizing for search engine results, brands need to embed themselves into browsing flows, recommendation loops, and saved-for-later folders.
The new benchmark is not visibility, but inevitability:
Becoming the brand users return to before they even know they’re making a decision.
Search is an exit.
The competition is happening in the feed, the swipe, the click that wasn't meant to lead anywhere.
From Action to Intention Compression
AI is not finding the best path through the loop.
It’s predicting how the loop will collapse before it starts.
Which means:
Users no longer need a series of actions to express intent
A single behavior can now encode the entire map of intention
Businesses no longer optimize for what users do
They optimize for what the system believes they will do next
This rewires everything from attribution to monetization.
Brands that used to chase demand must now forecast pre-intent.
Not how users search, but how they might have searched before intent was outsourced to AI.
✅ From Search-Oriented to Intent-Oriented Language Structures
Every line of copy, video narrative, or headline is no longer written for human readers — it’s designed for AI logic.
Your goal isn’t to be found by the system. Your goal is to be selected by it.
✅ User Expectation → Prompt Alignment → Action Design
We prioritize shaping prompts over mapping keywords.
The content we create is designed to become material the AI pulls from, not something it replaces.
✅ Leaning Into the Power of Pre-Search
Be the name users recall before they ever search.
Don’t rely on search to be discovered. Instead, embed yourself into the decision cycle through cross-channel memory cues, what we call Cross-Channel Embedding.
What This Means for Strategy
Your job is no longer to rank. It’s to provoke.
If decisions are made before a search even happens, then the role of your product or brand isn’t to be more discoverable. It’s to be more impossible to ignore.
Your content isn’t meant to explain things to AI. It’s material designed to help AI infer intent.
This breaks the rhythm of SEO, content marketing, and CRM as we knew it. They’re no longer communicating with a human audience but engaging in a one-sided negotiation with a predictive model, a model that doesn’t care what you say, only whether it matches the expected trajectory of a decision.
Marketing’s job isn’t to convince people anymore. It’s to convince the system:
"This person looks like they’re heading our way."
Conclusion
AI isn’t the future. It’s already in control of the present tense of decision-making.
Being searchable no longer means being wanted.
What matters is being paused on, shared, saved, replayed. That’s the real signal of intent.
The battleground has shifted from visibility to presence inside the loop
Not just getting seen, but getting embedded in the user’s pre-search decision cycle.
Anchor Articles and Updates
Inspired by Lenny’s Growth Inflections: AI and Personal Brands Rewiring Startup Growth — AI automation and personal brands are redefining startup growth inspired by Lenny Rachitsky’s Growth Inflections.
Why Growth Marketing Is Not Digital Marketing and Why This Distinction Matters — It’s not that your marketing strategy is flawed. You might just be addressing the wrong problem.
When AI Products Can’t Find PMF, Build a Landing Client Instead — PMF isn’t always found in the product, Sometimes, it starts with one strategic client
Content as a Revenue Tool: Shortening Time-to-Close in Startup Sales — Content that shortens sales cycles, Not just builds traffic
Building Revenue Systems When Scale Isn’t an Option — Profitability First: How Startup Teams Can Drive Revenue in Constrained Markets
Case Studies
Mountain Gentleman — They knew they needed to go digital but had no idea how to start.So we saw things through the rider’s eyes.It wasn’t just about buying gear because it felt like building out your dream GTR.Every part of the journey was designed to match that thrill.
CoinRank — CoinRank needed a fresh way to stand out in crypto. We created a short video strategy that turns complex info into quick, engaging clips that grab attention fast.
FAQ
01
What does a project look like?
02
How is the pricing structure?
03
Are all projects fixed scope?
04
Can I adjust the project scope after we start?
05
How do we measure success?
06
Do you offer ongoing support after project completion?
07
How long does a typical project last?
08
Is there a minimum commitment?
How AI Understands User Intent Before They Search: Commercial Decision Loops and the Invisible Funnel
Why pre-intent behavior is becoming more legible and monetizable
early-stage-product-positioning
growth funnel design
retention strategy
Before They Search, They Decide
Search Is Losing Intent
Why Google’s dominance is eroding and what replaces it is not another search engine
For the first time in two decades, users are not starting with Google.
They start with ChatGPT. Perplexity. Claude. Even TikTok.
And they don’t just want links
They want answers
They want synthesis
They want context
Search volume is shrinking because the interface no longer fits the task.
Search assumes you know what you're looking for.
But today, users often don't. They want to figure it out, not just look it up.
This is not just a shift in tools. It is a shift in mental models.
Search used to be the gateway. Now it is a fallback.
What replaced it is not a better search engine.
It is a better interface for ambiguity.
Google still works
For fact recall, site navigation, or shopping
But it is no longer where curiosity begins
It is where it ends
In early-stage discovery, users are increasingly skipping Google.
They turn to LLMs to explore open-ended questions:
"How should I think about hiring a founding marketer?"
"Why is everyone talking about RAG in AI infrastructure?"
"Give me startup ideas that combine AI and healthcare."
This is not a failure of search algorithms.
It is a mismatch of interface and expectation.
Search is built to retrieve.
AI is built to reason.
Search Is Becoming a Post-Intent Activity
Why the search engine is no longer the starting point of decision-making
Summary
User intent used to be simple. Type a few words into Google and get results. But today, that input no longer marks the beginning, it’s the endpoint. Decision-making starts earlier, across interfaces that are not built for traditional search: AI chat interfaces, product communities, social groups, and private tools.
This shift is not just about where people search. It’s about how people decide.
1. Intent fragmentation
Search no longer starts with Google
Search intent is no longer centralized. People now initiate discovery across tools that were never designed to be search engines:
Asking in a Slack thread
Browsing Reddit for honest opinions
Watching a YouTube video before searching a product
Starting a conversation with ChatGPT
These actions don’t show up as search queries. But they shape user thinking long before anything is typed into a box. What used to be a clear funnel is now a cloud of micro-decisions happening across many contexts.
This isn’t a decline in curiosity. It’s a redistribution of where curiosity lives.
2. Interface evolution
From input-output to task-resolution
The search bar is still there, but the rules have changed.
Search is no longer about asking questions, it’s about triggering actions.
We’ve shifted from keyword matching to semantic understanding, from SEO to SVO: Semantic Value Optimization.
Old search worked on keyword matching. New interfaces are context-aware, dialogue-driven, and focused on resolving entire tasks, not just returning pages.
AI agents don’t wait for you to articulate a query. They guide you through an entire problem space:
“What’s the best tool for X?”
“Help me compare options.”
“Draft the email.”
“Book the flight.”
In this new environment, users aren’t even aware that they’re ‘searching’ anymore. They’re just progressing. And the system fills in the gaps before they’re verbalized.
3. Monetization lag
Search advertising is stable, but stagnant
The AdWords model monetized explicit intent. AI interfaces don’t work that way. There’s no clear click, no auction, no blue links. The system handles user goals more like a product manager than a publisher.
Monetizing these interactions requires new playbooks:
Native integrations
Plugin ecosystems
Brand-level trust embedded into AI responses
Paid access to private data sources
The challenge is not user volume. It’s control over when and how you appear in the decision chain.
4. Why this matters for product builders
Pre-intent behavior is now visible and trackable. And it can be shaped, long before users “decide” to search. That’s a strategic opening.
If you wait for users to type into Google, you’re already late.
Search Is Becoming a Post-Intent Activity
Intent is not typed. It’s inferred.
Search is no longer something users “do”
It’s something that’s happening to them
The rise of TikTok, Reels, Discord threads, newsletters, and LLMs has shown us one thing:
Users are not looking for answers
They’re looking for conviction
They scroll not because they’re certain of what they want
But because they’re hoping to find a reason to want something
The implication?
We thought search intent came from typed queries
But that’s a measurable artifact, not the origin
Today’s search systems work backwards
Not from keywords, but from patterns across fragmented, pre-search signals:
Where you lingered longer than usual
Which video timestamp you rewatched
What you typed in Slack but didn’t send
Which autocomplete you hovered but ignored
None of these are inputs in the traditional sense
But they are more truthful than a keyword ever was
The Invisible Funnel
What looks like discovery is often just the tail end of a decision
Most users “search” after they’ve already made up their minds
Or at least after a full commercial loop:
Seeing, comparing, liking, skipping, saving
By the time they type something into a box
They’ve already passed through a noisy, invisible funnel made of:
Viral UGC on TikTok
A friend’s shared IG story
A Reddit comment chain
An email headline that stuck for no reason
A mid-sentence mention in a podcast they half-listened to
The mistake?
Treating search as top-of-funnel
When it’s often post-purchase echo
Search is not discovery
It’s verification
What This Means for Product and Growth
This is where most marketing playbooks get it wrong
They over-index on content SEO and top-of-funnel ads
And underbuild for pre-intent ecosystems
The better question is:
What does your product look like in a Reddit thread?
Would someone bring it up in a WhatsApp group chat?
If it shows up in a video, is it skippable or screenshot-worthy?
Can your brand be stumbled upon in someone’s daily routine, without even trying?
Today, it’s not about being searchable
It’s about being ambiently inevitable
Pre-Intent is the New Funnel
The real conversion engine sits upstream of the query.
We’ve spent decades optimizing the search results page. But we’ve missed something upstream: what triggered the user to search in the first place?
Real decisions happen before the search box.
This reshapes how we think about marketing. SEO and SEM aren’t the top of the funnel anymore, they’re the bottom. The real top is the moment a user realizes they have a problem they can’t ignore.
As AI begins to predict intent from pre-search behavior, a more urgent question emerges:
Can we design environments where the AI believes a user is about to form a specific intent?
This isn’t manipulation. It’s the new definition of “relevance.”
Commercial Loops Before Conversion
User behavior is no longer linear. It's loop-based.
From ecommerce to content platforms, every part of the journey reinforces behavior through repetition.
Decisions aren’t “made” as much as they are narrowed down, by gradually eliminating less viable options.
The real funnel is a series of commercial loops, not a straight line.
What AI Actually Extracts When You Don’t Search
Before you type a word, AI is already reading signals:
Time spent on certain content
Cross-device behavior and session timing
Who you share with and in what context (group chat vs. private)
Whether you’re refining or redefining your query
Together, these form an intent vector, often more powerful than keywords.
Search is No Longer the Entry Point
For AI systems, your search is a result, not a starting point.
By the time most users search, 80% of their decision-making is already done.
Brands shouldn’t just aim to win the outcome. They need to influence the process.
The Commercial Loop is Not a Loop
It’s a compression of pre-decision behaviors.
We often describe the purchase decision as a loop: content triggers → motivation → search → comparison → purchase → review → re-trigger.
But that sequence no longer holds. Today, these steps are compressed into a smaller, less visible window, often collapsed into a few seconds of unconscious scrolling.
That change isn't cosmetic. It's structural.
Designing for the Pre-Search Loop
Search is not where decisions are made. It’s where they are finalized.
The real opportunity lies upstream, before the query ever forms.
Instead of optimizing for search engine results, brands need to embed themselves into browsing flows, recommendation loops, and saved-for-later folders.
The new benchmark is not visibility, but inevitability:
Becoming the brand users return to before they even know they’re making a decision.
Search is an exit.
The competition is happening in the feed, the swipe, the click that wasn't meant to lead anywhere.
From Action to Intention Compression
AI is not finding the best path through the loop.
It’s predicting how the loop will collapse before it starts.
Which means:
Users no longer need a series of actions to express intent
A single behavior can now encode the entire map of intention
Businesses no longer optimize for what users do
They optimize for what the system believes they will do next
This rewires everything from attribution to monetization.
Brands that used to chase demand must now forecast pre-intent.
Not how users search, but how they might have searched before intent was outsourced to AI.
✅ From Search-Oriented to Intent-Oriented Language Structures
Every line of copy, video narrative, or headline is no longer written for human readers — it’s designed for AI logic.
Your goal isn’t to be found by the system. Your goal is to be selected by it.
✅ User Expectation → Prompt Alignment → Action Design
We prioritize shaping prompts over mapping keywords.
The content we create is designed to become material the AI pulls from, not something it replaces.
✅ Leaning Into the Power of Pre-Search
Be the name users recall before they ever search.
Don’t rely on search to be discovered. Instead, embed yourself into the decision cycle through cross-channel memory cues, what we call Cross-Channel Embedding.
What This Means for Strategy
Your job is no longer to rank. It’s to provoke.
If decisions are made before a search even happens, then the role of your product or brand isn’t to be more discoverable. It’s to be more impossible to ignore.
Your content isn’t meant to explain things to AI. It’s material designed to help AI infer intent.
This breaks the rhythm of SEO, content marketing, and CRM as we knew it. They’re no longer communicating with a human audience but engaging in a one-sided negotiation with a predictive model, a model that doesn’t care what you say, only whether it matches the expected trajectory of a decision.
Marketing’s job isn’t to convince people anymore. It’s to convince the system:
"This person looks like they’re heading our way."
Conclusion
AI isn’t the future. It’s already in control of the present tense of decision-making.
Being searchable no longer means being wanted.
What matters is being paused on, shared, saved, replayed. That’s the real signal of intent.
The battleground has shifted from visibility to presence inside the loop
Not just getting seen, but getting embedded in the user’s pre-search decision cycle.
Anchor Articles and Updates
Inspired by Lenny’s Growth Inflections: AI and Personal Brands Rewiring Startup Growth — AI automation and personal brands are redefining startup growth inspired by Lenny Rachitsky’s Growth Inflections.
Why Growth Marketing Is Not Digital Marketing and Why This Distinction Matters — It’s not that your marketing strategy is flawed. You might just be addressing the wrong problem.
When AI Products Can’t Find PMF, Build a Landing Client Instead — PMF isn’t always found in the product, Sometimes, it starts with one strategic client
Content as a Revenue Tool: Shortening Time-to-Close in Startup Sales — Content that shortens sales cycles, Not just builds traffic
Building Revenue Systems When Scale Isn’t an Option — Profitability First: How Startup Teams Can Drive Revenue in Constrained Markets
Case Studies
Mountain Gentleman — They knew they needed to go digital but had no idea how to start.So we saw things through the rider’s eyes.It wasn’t just about buying gear because it felt like building out your dream GTR.Every part of the journey was designed to match that thrill.
CoinRank — CoinRank needed a fresh way to stand out in crypto. We created a short video strategy that turns complex info into quick, engaging clips that grab attention fast.
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