Generative AI is quietly rewriting the rules of consumer search, and the Florida Department of Citrus (FDOC) is already adapting its playbook to stay visible. At the Florida Citrus Industry Annual Conference, Rosalie Morton of the agency Padilla outlined how AI-driven search platforms are reshaping the way people find information about products like orange juice - and what marketers must do to remain the source those platforms cite.
AI is changing how people ask questions
Morton said consumer search behavior shifted dramatically in the past year. Instead of clicking through multiple websites, people now ask platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Grok direct questions. These large language models generate conversational, detailed answers by pulling from multiple sources at once, a method known as generative AI search, or GenAI.
"Now, you don't really have to click to another website, because all the information is right there," Morton said.
The numbers point to a quick transition. Morton said 60% of searches now end without a user progressing to another site, and she expects a 50% drop in organic search traffic by 2028. That trend directly affects FDOC and its consumer platform.
Making the citation shortlist
For marketers, the essential focus is the citations that accompany GenAI responses. These citations link back to the sites a model drew from. Some users will click through; many will not. The key to preserving visibility is being one of the sources GenAI chooses to cite - which means feeding it a reason to trust the content.
"We have to think about how we are strategically working on our website and creating content to influence these GenAI answers," Morton said. "So, what does that mean? This means creating structured, machine-readable content online. We want to make it easy for these engines to come to our websites and crawl our information, so it thinks about using our information first when it is creating those summaries."
For agencies, this shifts the focus from chasing clicks to building authority through content that is technically legible to AI crawlers: clean structure, accurate detail and consistent presence across the topics customers actually search.
Finance and Facts for the Digital Shelf
The status of a product usually measures by its traffic, but in a GenAI world that metric loses its meaning. As FDOC sees it, the new currency is citation frequency - being the answer to a question, not just the page at the end of a click.
Marketers in any category should treat that data as the leading indicator. If a product no longer appears in a GenAI summary, it is invisible to a growing share of buyers - especially younger ones who trust AI as a personal assistant. Understanding that the review process starts in the conversation itself changes that plan.
Why this matters for marketers
For each marketing team, the shift affects more than a website redesign. It drives the investment in content management, technical SEO and the consistency of claims. Want the platform to answer with your product, your brand has to be in the answer before your competitor.
Where a brand stands today, it follows a rule from that model: the page is the content - the platform is the shelf. If you are not a cited source, you are not present for the 60% of searches that never continue to a website. That same principle that applies across markets. For FDOC and any marketer, the next few years will be won by the ones who make themselves easy, oral…
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