Every few months somebody tells me SEO is finished. AI chatbots have taken over, apparently, and nobody uses Google any more. Then a piece of data lands that makes the whole argument fall apart in about four seconds.
This week, Google’s own Senior Vice President of Knowledge & Information, Nick Fox, confirmed that Search hit its highest usage in history, breaking every previous record, in the moments right after Argentina scored their winning goal in a World Cup match. Not during a slow news week. Not off the back of a product launch. Off the back of millions of people, all at once, doing the most natural thing in the world when something big happens: reaching for Google.
I do not think that is a coincidence, and I do not think it is a one-off either.
The numbers behind the headline
Usage spikes are one thing, but they only tell half the story. What is more telling is what has been happening to Google’s market share over the past year. According to Statcounter, Google’s overall search market share has grown from around 89.5% a year ago to over 91% now. On mobile, where most search activity actually happens, Google has climbed from roughly 93.7% to above 96% worldwide.
Read that again. Google is not losing ground. It is gaining it, at a point when everyone insists people have moved on to AI tools instead.
So why does the “SEO is dead” narrative keep coming back?
Because it is an easy headline, and because AI search experiences genuinely have changed some user behaviour, particularly for quick factual questions. I am not going to pretend nothing has shifted. But there is a big difference between “the way people search is evolving” and “nobody searches anymore.” One of those is true. The other one gets clicks on LinkedIn.
What this data actually shows is that when something matters to people, in real time, their instinct is still to open Google. That instinct is exactly what businesses are trying to be visible for when I build out an SEO strategy: being there, ranking well, and being trusted, at the exact moment someone goes looking.
What this means for your business
If you run a business and you have been wondering whether it is still worth investing time and budget into organic search, I would say this data answers that question fairly clearly. Google is not shrinking. It is more dominant now than it was twelve months ago, on desktop and especially on mobile, where most of your customers are likely to find you first.
That does not mean the game has not changed. AI Overviews, richer search features, and shifting click behaviour all mean the old playbook of stuffing keywords onto a page and hoping for the best has been dead for years, if not decades. What works now is genuine relevance, strong technical foundations, and content built around what your customers are actually asking. That is a very different job to the one SEO was ten years ago, but it is not a job that has gone away. If anything, with this much traffic still flowing through Google, it matters more, not less.
If you want an honest look at where your website currently stands, and whether you are capturing your fair share of that traffic, get in touch and I will talk you through it.
Graig Upton
Graig Upton is a UK SEO and Google Ads consultant with 23 years of hands-on digital marketing experience. Google certified in Ads, Analytics and Conversions, he has helped businesses ranging from local providers to national brands — including Nando's and Investors Chronicle — dominate search and scale their leads. Based in Preston, working with clients across the UK.