Apple is quietly preparing one of the most significant upgrades to its software ecosystem in years: a new artificial-intelligence-powered web search tool designed to supercharge Siri and reshape the way users interact with information. According to Bloomberg reports, the project-codenamed World Knowledge Answers-is slated for a potential 2026 rollout. More than just a technological step forward, this move signals Apple's intent to carve out a distinct position in the rapidly shifting AI landscape, one currently dominated by OpenAI, Google, and emerging players like Perplexity.
The internet is undergoing its most fundamental transformation since the birth of the web browser. While millions of dollars continue to be poured into homepage redesigns, a seismic shift in behavior is rendering these efforts obsolete. The numbers don't lie: we've entered the age of the question, not the click. The great click recession In 2024, nearly 60% of Google searches ended without a single click, compared to just 26% in 2022. This isn't a gradual decline. It's a behavioral revolution. Users are no longer browsing; they're asking.
For brands, that's a double-edged sword. The good news is the potential for additional exposure. The challenge is replacing organic search traffic ( see the Semrush study) and surfacing the company and its products in those AI-generated answers. A growing set of generative engine optimization ( GEO) tools promises to fix this problem by measuring and improving how products and brands appear in the responses.
In some cases, that's because the person doing the searching has added "reddit" to their query, deliberately pushing material from the internet's biggest, most indispensable hub of conversations to the top of Google results. But even if you haven't expressed an explicit preference for Reddit links, Google often emphasizes them. They can feel like islands of quality information floating in a river of links to sites that are spammy or just not very good.
