Trust in AI search is declining, consumers are validating information across more platforms, and AI visibility is increasingly tied to brand authority rather than traditional SEO metrics.
Those are among the key findings from new research by Fractl and Search Engine Land, presented by Fractl cofounder Kelsey Libert at SMX Advanced. The study offers a detailed look at how consumers evaluate AI-generated answers, which signals influence AI recommendations, and where brands are falling short on governance and disclosure.
After the conference, I spoke with Libert to dig deeper into the data. Our conversation covered the growing trust gap in AI search, the role of earned media and entity authority in AI visibility, and why many organizations are still unprepared for the operational challenges AI introduces.
The honeymoon is over
The headline finding from Libert’s research is hard to ignore. In 2025, 82% of consumers found AI search more helpful than traditional search results. By 2026, that figure had dropped to 54%, a decline of 28 percentage points in a single year. The skeptic camp grew sixfold over the same period.
I asked Libert what she thinks is driving that erosion.
- “Hallucinations. Initially, AI was a frictionless instant-answer machine that felt superior to Google’s crowded SERPs. As people lost trust in AI answers and had to put in more effort to validate them, that instant gratification disappeared, and the helpfulness score dropped dramatically,” Libert said.
She isn’t entirely pessimistic about where things are headed, though.
- “AI is on an exponential improvement scale, so I expect this number to restabilize over the next year as people learn how to refine their prompts and engineers improve the technology,” Libert said.
That restabilization may come sooner than expected. Libert pointed to a June 5 CNN report covering Anthropic’s warnings that AI may soon be capable of improving itself without human intervention. Whether that accelerates the recovery of consumer trust or deepens concern about AI reliability remains to be seen.
In the meantime, consumers are hedging. The research found that buyers now check an average of 2.4 platforms before validating a purchase, a pattern consistent across Gen Z, millennials, and boomers.
Google still leads AI tools three to one for trusted product recommendations, commanding 39% of consumer trust versus 14% for AI tools. Reddit, at 15%, sits between them.
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Organic visibility is diversifying
For SEOs worried about the erosion of organic traffic, Libert’s framing offers a more nuanced picture than the typical doom narrative. About 50% of marketers report traffic declines…
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