The link, the click, the visit — for two decades that was the only path from a search query to a brand. In 2026 it's increasingly an optional one. MIT Sloan Management Review reports that AI-driven search now resolves the majority of informational queries inside the answer surface itself, before a user ever reaches a website.
What changes for marketers
- Traditional SEO measures — rankings, organic traffic — start drifting away from revenue.
- Brands need to be cited inside AI answers, not just discoverable in a list of blue links.
- Schema, source authority and clean fact-extractable copy outperform keyword-stuffed content.
The Information Search Marketing framework
MIT's framework reframes "search marketing" as the practice of being the source AI engines pull from. That means producing content with crisp, factual structure (so it can be quoted), publishing on domains the answer engines treat as authoritative, and instrumenting brand mentions inside AI answers as a first-class metric.
The VietMarkAI take: in Vietnam this shift is still early — but the leaders in your category are likely already optimizing for ChatGPT and Gemini. A six-month head start on AEO content is cheap to buy now and very expensive to recover later.