Agentic search
Agentic search is when an AI agent does the research for a person, running many searches, reading pages and comparing options on its own.
Agentic search is when an AI agent does the searching for a person. Someone hands over a question or a task, and the agent runs searches, opens pages, compares what it finds, and comes back with a recommendation. Sometimes it goes on to book or buy.
It's the next step from the AI search most people use today. A chat assistant answers one question with one reply. An agent keeps going until the job is done, which can mean dozens of searches and pages along the way.
How it plays out
For example, someone asks an agent to find a coffee subscription for an office of 15 people, under £80 a month, with oat milk included. The agent searches for office coffee subscriptions, reads five or six suppliers' pricing pages, checks reviews, rules out two that don't mention oat milk, and suggests Fernhill Coffee.
The person reads one short answer. Behind it, the agent read far more pages than the person ever would have.
Why it matters
Agents read more and judge more literally. That changes what helps you get picked:
- Your facts need to be on your pages in plain text, because the agent checks them
- What other sites say about you counts, since the agent reads reviews and comparisons too
- Gaps hurt you more, because an agent that can't confirm something tends to move on to a brand where it can
What we can see
Agents acting privately for one person don't show their work to anyone else, so no tool can track those sessions, us included. What we can track is the answers the platforms give when we ask your questions every day, and the background searches they run before answering. You'll find those searches in Answers and in the Searches tab of Sources.