In honour of Halloween, let me tell you a scary story. On Thursday 29 October, Alphabet lost nearly $500 billion in market value in a single day. It was the company’s worst day ever, and one of the biggest one-day losses in stock market history.
The short version for B2B marketers: if your buyers get their answer without clicking, part of your paid search budget is chasing something that’s disappearing. The brands that win will be the ones AI already knows, trusts and recommends.
What happened to Alphabet?
Alphabet’s shares fell nearly 13% after its third-quarter results. Search revenue grew 12% to about $63 billion, which came in short of expectations, and the company said part of the shortfall came from lower monetisation within AI Mode. One analyst called it the first quarter where AI is starting to seriously hurt search.
It went a little something like this. Google builds AI Mode, which answers the question before anyone clicks. There’s less to monetise. Search revenue misses, and Wall Street panics.
There was more going on in those results, including huge AI spending. But for marketers, the search story is the one to pay attention to.
Why should a B2B marketer care?
Because your buyers are searching too. SparkToro found that 68% of US Google searches ended without a click in the first four months of 2026.
If your buyers get their answer and their shortlist without ever clicking, your paid search budget is buying a shrinking share of attention. And you probably won’t see it happening in your dashboard until the pipeline looks a bit thin.
So what do you do about it?
Ask one uncomfortable question: where does your brand show up when nobody clicks?
Start by searching for what your buyers ask. Use the long, specific questions they would put to an AI tool, then see who gets recommended. If it’s your competitors, you’ve found your homework.
Then look at your brand equity. Brand is usually the first thing to get squeezed, because paid is easier to measure. AND YET brand is what gets you onto the shortlist before anyone has filled in a form.
Sources: CNBC on Alphabet’s results, 29 October 2026. Search Engine Land on SparkToro’s zero-click study.