Is Google's Discovery Role Weakening in a No-Click World? (www.aivojournal.org)

AIVO Journal’s evidence-based probe finds that Google isn’t collapsing, but its discovery power is quietly being hollowed out as AI assistants pre‑allocate answers. In controlled tests (20 pre-registered prompts per sector, US & EU English, signed‑out, Oct 3, 2025) across ChatGPT 4o, Gemini 1.5 and Claude 3.5, assistants regularly substituted competitors into answer slots even when Google rankings and clicks looked stable. Concrete findings: Google still shows 3–4 above‑the‑fold links on average, while assistants return fewer than one clickable path per query; in EV prompts Tesla appeared in 7/10 assistant answers while BMW dropped to 4/10; in banking, over half of assistant answers relied on pages that originally surfaced on Google despite no click. For the AI/ML community and product/marketing teams this matters because model outputs—not search links—are becoming the decision layer. Assistants currently sit between two curves: they substitute brands inside answers yet still often depend on Google‑discovered content. AIVO proposes measurable KPIs boards should track—assistant answer share, click potential, discovery dependency—and sets collapse/chimera thresholds (e.g., collapse = assistants answer 70%+ commercial queries with near‑zero click exposure). Reproducibility packs roll out starting Oct 17; teams should instrument assistant exposure alongside traditional SEO to avoid governance blind spots.