The Death of Blue Links? Google's Shift from Search to Query

Search vs Ask

The blue link, the foundation of web navigation since 1997, may be nearing extinction. Google is shifting from telling you where to find information to simply providing it.

We used to search for web destinations, such as companies, products, and websites. Now we don't search as much as ask: entering queries to get direct answers rather than sites to visit. This shift from destination-seeking to answer-seeking is accelerating with AI overviews, pushing search further away from the era of blue links and deeper into a query-driven model where "responses" matter more than "results."

The shift is already measurable. According to Semrush’s analysis of more than 10 million keywords, AI-generated summaries appeared in 13.14% of U.S. queries by March 2025. That's more than double January’s 6.49% share, in just two months.

Since 2022, Business Insider has seen search traffic drop 55% while HuffPost reported a 50% decline, according to Similarweb data. With losses like these, the industry has become hypersensitive to Google's AI strategy. So when Google's AI Studio product lead, Logan Kilpatrick, casually suggested AI Mode would "soon" become default, the SEO community panicked.