Google and OpenAI are in an arms race that's about to change how people use the internet again.
With Gemini moving directly into Chrome and live commerce checkouts coming to ChatGPT, your browser is transforming from a map to the open web to a self-driving car taking you exactly where you need to go without exploring any sites along the way.
Instead of you typing, clicking, and scrolling your way to solutions, your favorite AI agents are ready to fetch the answers, tee up your next steps, and if you allow them, complete tasks entirely. Think, finding the best price for that pair of jeans you've been needing to pick up, or getting tickets to the show for date night next week without any hunting.
We are about to enter a whole new era of browsing experiences.
For years, merchants have fought to win the click. SEO, paid search, faster sites, mobile responsiveness, cleaner UX. (Who remembers Google AMP pages?) All designed to get people onto your website and down the funnel.
That game is still here, but it is about to get a lot harder. In an agentic world, fewer customers will take that journey themselves. Chrome, Claude or ChatGPT will anticipate intent proactively, summarize choices, and sometimes even purchase a product without ever exposing your website to the customer. Or even worse, without ever even surfacing you as an option to be considered.
That sounds like a loss. But it also means something powerful. If your brand becomes a trusted source AI can lean on, you are no longer just another result in a list of ten blue links. You are an expert. You are the answer.
This shift feels a lot like the move to mobile-first a decade ago. The brands that adapted early thrived, while the ones that lagged watched their organic visibility fade. We are looking at a similar inflection point right now, and the clock is already ticking.
What Is Agentic Browsing and Why It Matters
Agentic browsing is exactly what it sounds like. Instead of you browsing, an AI agent inside the browser browses for you. It searches, compares, and sometimes transacts without you opening multiple tabs.
Imagine asking your browser: "I need blackout blinds for a nursery under $300." Instead of sending you to page after page of options, the browser agent pulls in the best matches, summarizes reviews, and serves up a short list. It is like having a personal shopper built into the software you already use every day.
The difference is big.
Traditional Browsing
The user is in control. You type, click, and dig through sites yourself.
Agentic Browsing
The AI is in control. It fetches, summarizes, and presents what it thinks you need.
For merchants, that flips the table.
The New Reality:
Direct traffic will decline. Your content may be read, summarized, and never clicked.
Visibility will be tied to trust. If an AI considers your content shallow or unreliable, it disappears from the conversation.
The customer journey will start and often end inside the browser's AI layer, long before a user sees your site.
" The challenge for brands is clear. Winning the SERP is no longer enough. The new contest is earning a spot in the answers an AI decides to serve up when intent is highest. "
The Coming Drop in Direct Site Traffic
Here's the blunt reality: direct site traffic is going to take a hit. Not because people have lost interest in your products, but because the journey to get to you is being rerouted.
Think about how Google search works today. A customer types "best stainless steel sink for small kitchens," scans the first page of results, and maybe clicks into a couple of guides or product pages. With Gemini in Chrome, that same customer might see a one-paragraph summary drawn from multiple sites with no need to click at all.
That means:
Fewer long-tail visits. Those detailed blog posts you built for SEO may now get read by the AI instead of the user.
More consolidated winners. Big marketplaces and recognized authorities will get the nod more often because they signal trust.
A steeper hill for niche players. Smaller brands that relied on organic clicks for discovery risk being squeezed out.
But it is not all doom and gloom. Niche brands can still win if they play the authority game differently. Instead of chasing sheer volume of content, focus on depth. The AI agent is looking for the most credible, complete, and up-to-date source. If you can be the site that provides that, you have a shot at punching above your weight.
Key Takeaway
Traffic metrics alone will stop being the clean barometer of success. If you measure your digital health only by visits, you are going to misread the impact of this shift.
Building High-Trust, Expert Content for LLM Indexing
If traffic is no longer the scoreboard, then what matters? Authority. And the way you signal authority in an agentic world is through content that machines can trust, not just humans.
That means building what Google calls E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) into everything you publish. It's always been a ranking factor. Now it's a make-or-break factor.
Here's what that looks like in practice:
Authoritative buying guides. Deep, well-researched resources that show real expertise. An AI is much more likely to cite "The Complete Guide to Blackout Blinds" than a thin 400-word blog post.
Transparent knowledge bases. Clearly written FAQ sections, product documentation, and troubleshooting guides that answer questions in plain language.
Problem-solving content. Articles or videos that tackle specific customer pain points. If a user asks their browser, "How do I keep copper sinks from staining?" and your content gives the clearest answer, that is your way in.
It's not just about what you write, but also how you present it.
Technical Requirements:
Freshness matters. Update evergreen content regularly so AI agents know it's still relevant.
Schema markup and structured data. These are not nice-to-haves anymore. Schema tells the machine exactly what your page contains (product specs, reviews, FAQs, etc) and gives it confidence to surface your content.
Clear authorship and sourcing. Put real names, credentials, and citations on content. It's one of the simplest ways to pass the AI trust sniff test.
The brands that win in agentic browsing won't necessarily be the ones with the biggest ad budgets. They'll be the ones that invested in credibility and clarity early, and in formats that both humans and machines can parse.
Best Practices for Merchants in the Agentic Era
So how do you actually prepare for this? The playbook is not about reinventing the wheel. It's about doubling down on the fundamentals that signal trust, clarity, and authority. And doing it in ways AI agents can easily consume.
Action Items:
Invest in authoritative content. Shallow blog posts are going to fade fast. Focus on creating content that shows genuine expertise. Think comprehensive buying guides, long-form tutorials, or detailed product comparisons.
Use structured data and schema. Machines don't want to guess what's on your page. Product schema, review schema, and FAQ markup are table stakes now. This is the connective tissue that lets an AI surface your content in a clean, trusted way.
Anticipate natural language questions. Don't just optimize for "blackout blinds Phoenix." Write for the questions real people ask: "What type of blackout blinds work best for nurseries?" or "Are blackout blinds safe for kids?"
Reinforce across channels. If your brand shows up consistently on YouTube, in product marketplaces, and in trusted directories, the AI agent is more likely to consider you authoritative. It is looking for consensus, not just a single signal.
Build brand trust. This is squishier, but important. Transparent reviews, clear author bios, and even simple trust badges help establish credibility. In an era where an AI might be deciding if your content is "worthy," every trust signal helps.
" This isn't about chasing hacks. It's about doing the things you should have been doing all along, but with a sharper eye on how machines evaluate your digital footprint. "
Data Capture and Attribution in a Mediated World
Here's a pain point most merchants aren't ready for. If the AI agent is doing the browsing, how do you measure what it delivered? Attribution is about to get murkier.
Historically, you could look at Google Analytics and say: "Organic search delivered 5,000 sessions last month." Easy. But if Gemini summarizes your content inside the Chrome experience, you may not see the click. The value you created still influenced the customer's choice, but the data trail never reaches your dashboard.
What to do about it:
Use tagging aggressively. Wherever you can, make sure feeds, catalogs, and links are tagged with UTMs or other identifiers. It won't solve everything, but it helps close gaps.
Broaden the KPI set. Stop treating site sessions as the north star. Start tracking assisted conversions, branded search lift, repeat purchase rates, and customer lifetime value. These are harder to fake and better reflect influence in a mediated world.
Watch the qualitative signals. If customers start referencing "I saw you recommended in Chrome" or if branded search spikes, that's your clue the AI agent is working for you.
Attribution will get fuzzier, but fuzzier doesn't mean impossible. It means merchants have to accept a less linear funnel and measure trust and influence as seriously as they measure clicks.
First-Party Data and Customer Relationships as a Moat
When discovery is mediated by AI, owning the customer relationship becomes the ultimate safety net. If the browser agent can summarize your content but can't touch your email list or loyalty program, you still control the channel.
That means:
Email and SMS matter more. They are the clearest ways to reach customers without an AI filter.
Loyalty programs create stickiness. If your customer earns rewards or perks by buying directly from you, they are less likely to transact elsewhere just because the AI agent suggested it.
Value exchange drives sign-ups. Don't just ask for emails. Offer early access, exclusive content, or a helpful guide in return. Customers are far more willing to give you data if they get something tangible back.
Bottom Line
Agentic browsing makes the top of the funnel harder to own, but the bottom of the funnel is still yours to protect. First-party data is how you keep customers in your orbit once they find you, no matter who did the "finding."
Technical Infrastructure Readiness
Agentic browsing isn't just about content. It's about whether the machines can read your business cleanly in the first place. If your product data is messy or your feeds are broken, you're not even in the running.
Here's what matters most:
Robust product feeds. Make sure your Google Merchant Center, Shopify, and marketplace feeds are complete and accurate. Missing product specs or out-of-date inventory will push an AI agent toward a competitor with cleaner data.
APIs and integrations. If your ecommerce platform supports APIs that surface product, pricing, and availability data, keep them reliable. AI agents prefer structured, machine-readable data over scraping your storefront.
Site performance and crawlability. Just because the AI may summarize content doesn't mean crawlers stop visiting. Fast, mobile-friendly, crawlable sites remain table stakes.
Consistency across channels. If your product description says one thing on your site and another in your Amazon listing, that inconsistency chips away at trust. The agent is looking for consensus and accuracy across sources.
" Think of this like staging your warehouse for an inspection. If everything is labeled, organized, and up to date, you look like a business worth recommending. If it's messy, the inspector moves on. "
Strategies to Capture Value from Agentic Browsing
If direct clicks decline, how do you still grow? The trick is reframing agentic browsing as a distribution channel, not a threat.
Strategic Approaches:
Rethink the funnel. Your role may shift from "capturing every click" to "being the source that feeds the agent." That still drives conversions, just with fewer visible sessions.
Optimize for answer surfaces. Build content and feeds that position you as the best possible citation in an AI summary. Think "clear, complete, credible."
Be the trusted source. Agents will lean on the content they see as most reliable. Authority compounds here: the more you're cited, the more you'll be surfaced.
Monitor emerging AI integrations. Plugins, extensions, and structured feeds are starting to shape how AI connects to merchants. You don't need to jump into every pilot program, but you should track the space so you're ready to move.
This is not unlike the early days of mobile commerce. The merchants who treated mobile as "just another screen" fell behind. The ones who designed for it directly gained a head start. Agentic browsing is another one of those turning points. A chance to treat AI as a new channel in the mix, not a side note.
Measuring Success in the Agentic Era
If fewer people click through to your site, how do you know your digital efforts are working? The answer is to stop treating traffic as the only scoreboard.
Here's what to measure instead:
Authority signals. Are you being cited, mentioned, or referenced more often? Tools for measuring AI visibility are still young, but branded search volume, social mentions, and third-party citations are real indicators of trust.
Assisted conversions. A customer might not click your blog post anymore, but if they buy your product after seeing your expertise summarized in Chrome, that still counts. Map attribution models to capture these indirect influences.
Customer lifetime value. If your first-party channels are strong, you'll see lift in repeat purchases and subscription stickiness even as top-of-funnel traffic softens.
Engagement quality. Instead of chasing raw session volume, look at metrics like time on site, conversion rate, and depth of visit. If the AI agent is filtering out low-intent noise, the traffic you do get may be more valuable.
The bottom line: merchants will need to get comfortable with fuzzier attribution and learn to measure trust and influence with the same seriousness as they measure conversions.
The Bigger Picture: Why This Is a Sea Change
We've been here before. Mobile-first browsing reshaped site design. Voice search changed how we thought about keywords. Core Web Vitals forced everyone to care about site speed. Each shift felt uncomfortable at first, but the merchants who adapted early built a compounding advantage.
Agentic browsing is the next leap. It will change discovery, customer journeys, and attribution models. It will punish shallow content and reward authority and trust. And it will make first-party relationships more valuable than ever.
For brands, this is not the moment to wait and see. It is the moment to get your content, data, and infrastructure in shape so that when Chrome's AI becomes the first stop for millions of customers, your brand is the one it trusts to recommend.
Ready to prepare for the era of agentic browsing?
At Fraction Studio, we help merchants get future-ready by building digital ecosystems that work with the way people actually shop today, and the way they will shop tomorrow.
If you're ready to prepare for the era of agentic browsing, now is the time to act.