Google’s World Cup brand counterattack highlights shifting search behavior

According to Rebecca Michael, vp of marketing for Google Search and Maps, it’s intended to remind users that, after the integration of LLM Gemini into features like AI Mode and Overviews, users can use Google for more than merely search.

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“Over the last couple of years, Google Search has completely transformed… but people have many years of asking questions in a specific way. This is about shifting their perceptions and expanding their view,” Michael said. “We want people to understand that they can truly ask anything in Google search, whole paragraphs, complex questions, streams of consciousness.”

The turn to TV and social is a well-thumbed playbook for tech giants looking to boost their public image. When it’s time to build a brand, the typical tech disruptors’ disdain for broadcast and print tends to be set aside. OpenAI and Anthropic attempted to harness the Super Bowl’s enormous reach earlier this year, for example, as they attempted to position themselves as the consumer AI product of choice.

That Google feels the need to turn to such a strategy, however, highlights just how much the search world has changed since those companies arrived on the scene. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude are used by an increasingly large chunk of web users, while publishers are openly preparing for a future without Google search traffic. Meanwhile, younger consumers increasingly turn to social platforms as their first port of call for everyday research tasks.

“34-year-olds are more likely to research products on social media rather than search engines,” said Chris Beer, senior data analyst at research firm GWI.

Per GWI data, the addition of AI features to search engines has landed reasonably with users; 27% use search engines with AI overviews daily, while 43% say there’s been no loss of trust in the quality of search results, despite the inherent risks of AI hallucination. But the fact remains that they enjoy a greater degree of choice than prior to 2022. 

As a result, Google’s share of search engine usage has hovered back and forth over the 90% mark since the end of 2024, when it dipped to 89% for the first time in a decade, according to Statcounter estimates.

Google is aware of the threat. “There are lots of options and tools that you can bring your questions to, and we want people to know that they can do that on Google Search as well,” said Michael. Though she declined to provide specific budgetary details, she said that shifting user perceptions on Google Search was a key objective for all of 2026, not just this summer.

“We want to teach people what’s possible,” she explained.

This isn’t Google’s first foray into soccer, of course. The company’s Pixel brand is a sponsor of the NSWL in the U.S. and the WSL in the U.K; Google also sponsors the U.S. Soccer Federation. “Google recognizes that the World Cup has massive appeal; wanting not only to boost awareness around the new search experience but establish a more positive perception around it,” said Brian Pappas, Moroch’s director of integrated search.

This latest campaign borrows a trick first developed for NBC’s NBA coverage. Fox match commentators will use Google’s AI search features to provide viewers with additional context. It’s an approach Michael hopes will appeal to World Cup audiences in the U.S., and casual fans beyond, who might lack the ingrained knowledge of the game enjoyed by regular viewers in Europe or South America. In turn, it’s a means of proving the practical uses of Google’s expanded AI repertoire.

“The idea is that you might have questions about what’s going on in the game, and Google Search can give you more context,” she said.

Pappas suggested Google’s counter-attack won’t be the last campaign it mounts in defence of its market-leading position. 

“Whether these brand campaigns will be effective in convincing the public that these are positive updates remains to be seen,” he said. “We anticipate more of these kinds of partnerships and more aggressive messaging in an attempt to do so.”