Remember the date. 31 July 2025. The day the world of search took a giant leap. 'A giant leap where?', you may well ask. The honest answer, in spite of all the noise, is 'Only time will tell'. And the main thing only time will tell is just how many web searches, and of what kind, will be conducted using AI going forwards (at this point we should apologise to the tech-sophisticated minority - we're going to focus on Google here, since it is currently 93 percent of the UK search market and that dominance currently shows no sign of waning).
What has changed?
Have you seen this yet?
Or this?
We know you are keen to see what happens next, so let's look at the search above in 'conventional' Google search...
What you - and therefore your potential customers - will note, pretty well straight away, is that the second - the AI search - contains far more qualitative information: Winkworth heads the first search by dint of excellent web design and SEO, plus the schema pulling through its own reviews. For the AI search, Google Gemini has scraped information from over 80 different sites (if you conduct a similar search, you will see the ticker counting as it searches) and is providing the searcher with far more information and a proper response to the 'best' query.
What should concern any business that hasn't got its review management house in order is that the AI search doesn't stop there...
...making the 'best' look even better.
Here's a specific search for a medical practitioner...
And here's another search, which anyone considering such treatment might be expected to make...
This is the result of over 120 separate searches by Google Gemini - almost certainly including the clinic's Google reviews and the reviews hosted on its own website and on HelpHound servers.
Conclusion
All the while Google allows people to opt in/out of Gemini, there will be some that stay with conventional 'ten blue link' search (although that is also headed by AI results), but then we remember people saying that Ask Jeeves was here to stay. There is no doubt that 'long string searches' for high-value services will gravitate towards AI; the only question is 'How long will it take?'
Last of all - but very important
Regular readers will know we never relent when it comes to compliance with the CMA regulations. But we also know that many reading this article will be content to continue to flout those regulations (which have the force of law), the key rules being those prohibiting cherry-picking (businesses must allow all of their customers, clients or patients to write a review if they invite any to do so) and gating (pre-qualifying customer opinions before inviting selected customers to write a review.
Until now, we would probably have agreed that the risk of sanction was pretty low - even despite this conversation with the CMA - but no longer. The CMA is introducing AI, with special reference to online reviews...
...AI will identify, in seconds, businesses that flout the CMA regulations by looking for patterns of review writing and the content of the reviews themselves. To take one obvious example: a business looks great on a review site but far less good on Google. Another: the ratio of reviews to customers - the business conducts dozens of transactions but gets few reviews.
The key is to look at the opportunity cost of compliance: a compliant business - and all HelpHound client businesses are compliant by definition of having the 'Write a review' button on their websites - can relax in the knowledge that their reviews are bullet-proof: from criticism by competitors ('they only have great reviews because they cherry-pick') and the CMA. Our clients don't pay for our review management because they have cash to spare, they do so because they know that our professional review management feeds straight through to the bottom line - guaranteed.