Definition
Agentic search is search in which an AI agent works through the steps toward a goal for you, such as comparing options, filling in details or starting a booking, instead of returning a list of links or a single answer. You set the goal and confirm the result; the agent does the searching in between.
What are the two meanings of agentic search?
Agentic search has a developer meaning and a marketing meaning, and pages about it often mix them up. Developers use it for a retrieval method in which a model searches, reads, then searches again until it has enough. Marketers use it for agents that search and act for a person. This page is about the second.
What does agentic search look like today?
Agentic search today looks like assistants that take a goal and carry it most of the way. Google announced agentic features for AI Mode in May 2025, covering event tickets, restaurant reservations and local appointments. Restaurant booking launched in August 2025 for US Google AI Ultra subscribers in a Labs experiment, and it links you to the booking page to finish. OpenAI launched ChatGPT agent in July 2025, which works on its own virtual computer.
Why does agentic search matter for your website?
Agentic search matters because an agent can only act on what it can read. Prices, stock, options and booking steps that only appear after scripts run, or only inside images, are harder for software to use. Some of these visits also come from user-triggered agents, such as ChatGPT-User, which OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply to.
Sources
- Google: AI Mode in Google Search, I/O 2025 update (20 May 2025)
- Google: new agentic and personalised features in AI Mode (21 Aug 2025)
- OpenAI: Introducing ChatGPT agent (17 Jul 2025)
- OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers
Last checked against these sources on 17 September 2026.