There’s a question that’s been bugging finance marketers for a while now: if people can just open ChatGPT and ask about credit cards or home loans, does that mean search marketing is losing its grip?
Google actually looked into it. They studied how Australians go about researching financial products and matched that against real search data across the country. What they found wasn’t really what people expected.
Two things came out of it. First, Aussies who use an AI chatbot at some point in their financial research are just as likely to also use Google Search as people who don’t touch a chatbot at all. Second, search interest in finance, credit cards, insurance, loans, savings accounts, the whole category, keeps going up year after year.
So the story isn’t really “AI chatbots are stealing traffic from search.” It’s more that chatbots and search have started working alongside each other.
Chatbots seem to add a step, not remove one
Kantar ran the research, and they found that only a small chunk of Australians are currently using AI chatbots to work out what they need financially or to shortlist a few options. But the people who do this end up doing more, not less. More touchpoints. More brands considered before they land on something.
And once the chatbot answers them, a lot of them go check it. That’s when Search comes back into the picture.
Google is still the platform Australians say they go to most when they want to confirm something they saw elsewhere, and it’s not close, something like five times more than whatever’s in second place. When money’s involved, people don’t usually settle for one answer. They want a second opinion, and that’s part of why customer engagement built around search still matters so much in finance marketing right now.
If your marketing automation is set up to treat chatbot users and search users as two different groups, it might be worth rethinking that. A lot of the time it’s the same person, just taking a longer road to get there.
Search demand for finance keeps climbing
Google also pulled straight search trend numbers, separate from the survey. Interest in finance categories on Search, credit cards, insurance, home loans, savings accounts, was up 7% compared to the year before.
That fits with something Google has said before about AI Overviews too, that once people start seeing AI summaries at the top of their results, they tend to search more, not less, and end up clicking into a wider variety of sites when the question isn’t a simple one.
So AI automation showing up inside search results isn’t shrinking Search’s role. It’s giving Search more chances to show up in someone’s decision-making.
What this means if you’re chasing leads
For anyone working on lead generation in finance, this is the useful part.
AI-powered Search is getting better at reading what someone’s actually trying to figure out, not just matching whatever words they typed. That means it can catch someone earlier and stick with them longer. Take a search like “how to avoid foreign transaction fees on credit cards.” That’s not just a definition lookup anymore. AI-powered Search can hand back practical advice on choosing a card, and at the same time show ads for travel-friendly cards or cheaper international banking right next to it.
That changes how SEO and paid search need to work together. Ranking for a keyword used to be the whole game. Now showing up at the right moment matters just as much, even when what someone typed doesn’t fully give away what they’re after.
Google’s AI Max for Search campaigns is built around exactly this. It’s one of the newer AI integrations aimed at reaching queries you weren’t showing up for before, and it adjusts your ad content on the fly to match what someone’s actually trying to do. Google says advertisers who switch it on typically see around 14% more conversions or conversion value at a similar cost. For campaigns still leaning heavily on exact and phrase match keywords, that jump is bigger, closer to 27%.
Bottom line
AI chatbots aren’t taking the finance customer journey away from search marketing. They’re adding one more stop along the way, and Search is still where most people land to double check what the chatbot told them.
If you’re the one running marketing for a financial brand, don’t treat this as AI versus SEO. Get them working together, because that’s basically already what your customers are doing.