Report No. 1: what we measure and how
Search Shift Report tracks how people find things now. This first report sets out the method.
By Search Shift Report staff1 min read
People still search. They search in fewer places that look like a search engine and more places that look like a conversation, a feed or a video app. Google answers more queries itself. ChatGPT and Perplexity answer with footnotes. TikTok and Reddit are where a generation checks a restaurant or a product. Search Shift Report tracks this move and measures what can be measured.
Our method, stated once
Each report says where its numbers came from and when. Public data from the platforms and from research firms is cited by name and date. Our own measurements, where we run a set of queries against the engines and record what came back, say how many queries, which engines, which day, and we keep the raw results. One answer from one engine is a sample, and we call it a sample.
We do not take a vendor's study as fact. We report it as the vendor's study, note who paid for it, and look for a second source.
What we cover
Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, and what they do to the links below them. ChatGPT search, Perplexity and the other assistants that answer with citations. Social search on TikTok, Reddit and YouTube. And the measurement question itself: what a site can and cannot see about any of this in its own analytics.
Who publishes this
Search Shift Report is published by Good Standing Media. A report that concerns a company the publisher has a stake in says so at the top.
Corrections
hello@searchshiftreport.com. A corrected report keeps its number and gains a dated note.