How generative answers are changing the user journey

The traditional marketing funnel is breaking – and your content is losing its place in it.

For years, marketers built strategies around a linear journey: Awareness → Evaluation → Consideration → Purchase → Retention. 

At every stage, content played a pivotal role – fueling discovery, educating buyers, and driving conversion. SEO was the engine that connected it all.

Now, generative answers are dismantling that system.

Recent Pew data shows a stark shift in user behavior:

• Only 8% of searches with AI summaries lead to a click – compared to 15% without them.
• Just 1% of visits result in a click on a summary link.

While Google claims billions of clicks still happen daily, brands and publishers are watching top-of-funnel traffic disappear in real time.

Informational content – once the backbone of awareness – is being replaced by zero-click answers.

Generative AI isn’t just changing search. It’s transforming how, when, and if your content enters the user journey at all.

What the user journey looks like with generative answers

Your top of the funnel, consisting of awareness and evaluation, is disrupted due to zero-click searches. 

Informational searches are eroding, and 27.2% of U.S. searches ended without a click in March 2025 compared to 24.4% the year prior.

Users are clicking through to websites less often than in the past, disrupting the user journey because your informational content is no longer seen first, including your:

• Blogs.
• Guides.
• Resources.

Middle-funnel disruptions are also taking place at the same time. 

I’m not saying that all of the content at the top and middle of your funnel needs replacement. 

Your content can still help drive decisions, but you need to do more than create a basic blog about increasing productivity to promote your app, for example.

Informational queries are solved with generative answers, and instead of funneling leads to your website, your brand needs to show up in AI Overviews and zero-click results.

This means the following content is less valuable:

• How-to guides.
• Infographics.
• Explainer videos.

Dig deeper: Why your best content is invisible to AI search engines (and how to fix it in 30 minutes)

What the top of the funnel results look like

Imagine that your significant other snores, and you want it to stop. 

You type, “how do I stop snoring,” into Google, and here’s what you see:

Sitting at the top of the results is a generative answer that breaks down:

• Lifestyle changes that you can make to stop your significant other from snoring.
• Devices that may be used to help with snoring.
• Other considerations.

If you expand the answer to “Show all,” you’ll also see:

If someone does click on a result, there’s a good chance they’ll click on these articles and videos. 

YouTube videos remain a good way to drive top-of-the-funnel traffic to your brand-owned profile because this same link has its own standout section in the search results:

You’ll also notice a Discussions and forums section, where your brand can stand out:

A lot of opportunities exist to be at the top of the funnel, even in a time of generative answers, but you must think outside of your blog to expand to:

• YouTube.
• Social media.
• Reddit.
• Quora.
• Other forums/discussion platforms.

The top of the funnel is also reachable via other forms of digital marketing outside of SEO, including:

• Online ads.
• Direct email.
• Social media.
• Social media ads.

But for search, the top of the funnel is forever transformed and is shifting toward a narrower middle-of-the-funnel world.

The landscape of search may have changed, but there’s one reason why brands can’t ignore search traffic in favor of other marketing channels completely: brand awareness.

Brand awareness remains a pillar of making sales, and users are now finding your brand – or should be – through generative answers when searching for information. 

Your focus is to switch to intent-driven traffic in the middle of the funnel.

Dig deeper: How to use social and forum data to inform next-level SEO strategies

Why the middle of the funnel is where your focus must shift 

Your middle of the funnel (MOFU) is past the awareness stage of marketing and where users are considering making a purchase.

Intent-driven searches often lead users to the MOFU, and this is where you can provide:

• Case studies that show your solution solves real people’s problems.
• Comparison guides that help users understand their options.
• Expertise that goes beyond the basic top of the funnel content.

Search engines are cutting out the top of the funnel, but if Google is being honest about search being up 10%, the traffic has to be going somewhere.

MOFU hits on the high-intent queries that:

• Builds trust.
• Shows off your expertise.
• Deals with objections.

Decisions still require research (for now), and people tend to want to perform their own due diligence before buying products. 

Traffic volumes may be falling, but businesses that focus on MOFU can still drive leads and revenue with content.

Content in this stage should focus on insights and examples that no one else can offer but you. 

Product mentions, in the right place at the right time, will further help you build trust with answer engines and customers.

So, where do you start?

7 steps to take to revamp your user journey

1. Restructure your content

Streamline your content creation by adding guidelines for:

• Formatting overhauls with clear subheadings.
• Data points that are concise and unique to your brand.
• Quotes from experts in your field.

Remain insightful while showcasing data from your own internal data and case studies.

Instead of adding to the conversation, you need to spark new ones with the content that you create.

Your top-of-the-funnel content that does show up in generative answers is always a bonus. 

Searchers are looking for concise responses to their questions, and your content needs to have clear sections for each main point you answer.

2. Refresh past-performing content

You have a lot of content already that you can advance by following the restructuring plan above. 

Go through your analytics to update past performing pages with:

• New insights.
• Examples.
• Product mentions.

Dig deeper: Refreshing content: How to update old content to drive new traffic

3. Start thinking differently

You know that the MOFU is a potential traffic and lead generator. But how do you target it? 

Transform your content creation from information queries to:

• Commercial queries
  • Your commercial queries remain more important than ever before.
  •  Users are searching for things such as “best snoring aids” or “X vs Y” content, which are all still performing well in search.
• Transactional queries
  • The bottom-of-the-funnel stages still provide superior results compared to the top of the funnel, and the zero-click rate is much smaller than that of both the top and middle funnels.
  • Focus on transaction and navigational searches, such as:
    • Buy X snoring aid
    • Branded site name
  • Add schema markup to make content easier to interpret, build quality backlinks, and adjust your funnel-driven content.

4. Establish topical authority

If you still need to address topics to add to your overall topical authority, you’re back to the top of the funnel. 

You can fill in content gaps here with:

• Clear definitions.
• Lists and tables.
• Clear headings and structure.
• FAQ schema embeds.

Although traffic for this type of content may not be as high as it once was, you can still derive value from it.

5. Interlink your top-of-funnel, informative content

Just because your top of the funnel no longer guarantees traffic, you can still:

• Label all of your informational content.
• Decide whether to optimize it.
• Interlink the content to create topic clusters.

When it’s no longer profitable to optimize this top-of-funnel content, refocus your efforts on your MOFU and BOFU.

Dig deeper: How to become an industry thought leader by building content pillars

6. Allocate your budget to what’s working today

If there’s one thing that everyone should take away from generative answers, it’s that what works today will change. Reallocate your budget to your:

• Demo pages.
• Product comparisons.
• Case studies.
• MOFU content.

You’ll drive less traffic than in the past, but conversion rates will rise.

7. Create a well-rounded marketing strategy

Focus on your owned properties (i.e., your websites), but also expand into:

• Search.
• Forums and discussion sites.
• YouTube and TikTok.

Generative answers are surfacing answers from every site online, but there is a heavy favoritism toward sites like Reddit and Quora. 

Don’t spam these sites, but when you can meaningfully increase conversion, do it.

User journeys shift as disruptive channels are introduced. 

Businesses were once found in the Yellow Pages and through local ads only, but these are legacy options that are far less effective in the digital age.

From awareness to action: Redefining content’s role

Generative answers are reshaping the user journey, but many of the same principles that existed before AI Overviews, Perplexity, and ChatGPT still hold true.

Even Google’s Gary Illyes confirms that AI search optimization requires only normal SEO.

Shift your focus to the MOFU and BOFU and away from just the top of the funnel content that Google now provides through AI Overviews. 

You need a complete content ecosystem that touches on all stages of the user journey, with less focus on the answers Google provides.

Dig deeper: Want to beat AI Overviews? Produce unmistakably human content