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# Gabriel Bonciu (Bizdev Director, 2Performant): High-intent search traffic is becoming relatively stronger again
- URL: https://blog.businessleague.com/gabriel-bonciu-bizdev-director-2performant-high-intent-search-traffic-is-becoming-relatively-stronger-again/
- Published: 2026-05-14T09:25:49.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-16T10:42:39.000Z
- Author: BusinessLeague
- Tags: interviews, en

One trend I’ve been noticing in [BusinessLeague](https://www.linkedin.com/company/businessleague-by-2performant/?ref=blog.businessleague.com).com over the last \~8 months: CSS / Google Search / PPC affiliates seem to be converting better.   
  
At first, I thought it might be isolated. But the more data I looked at, the more it felt like something broader might be happening. Not necessarily “Google is back”. But perhaps: high-intent Search traffic is becoming relatively stronger again.   
  
What makes this interesting for us is that we can see this across hundreds of stores inside [BusinessLeague ](https://www.linkedin.com/company/businessleague-by-2performant/?ref=blog.businessleague.com). In the first 4 months of this year:  
  
📈 739 stores generated 743,990 orders through [BusinessLeague.com](http://businessleague.com/?ref=blog.businessleague.com);  
📈 Orders grew +9.5% YoY;  
📉 Click volume remained almost flat at 20.4M (-1.8% YoY) but with a slight increase from CSS and PPC affiliates, in general;  
📈 Average conversion rate reached 3.64%, up +11.5% YoY  
  
In other words: more sales from roughly the same amount of traffic. That usually points to one thing: Better traffic efficiency. And I don’t think this is driven by a single factor. My impression is that several things are converging at the same time:  
  
• CSS partners and PPC affiliates are becoming much more sophisticated;  
• optimisation across multiple product feeds creates stronger signals;  
• machine learning improves bidding and product selection;  
• PPC/CSS affiliates optimise differently compared to agencies because they operate with their own capital at risk;  
• affiliates managing Shopping traffic see demand patterns across many merchants, categories and markets, before any store sees in its own data;  
• Google keeps pushing AI-driven optimisation deeper into Shopping and Search.  
  
And maybe equally important: while a lot of digital traffic became more fragmented and discovery-oriented over the last years…   
  
Google still captures one of the strongest commercial intents on the internet, even in the AI era.People searching for:  
  
→ products  
→ prices  
→ alternatives  
→ reviewsare often much closer to conversion.  
  
Of course, this doesn’t mean:  
\- Search works better for every store  
\- CSS is a magic solution  
\- fundamentals no longer matter.   
  
Stores still need:  
✔ competitive pricing  
✔ strong product feeds  
✔ good UX✔ reliable operations  
✔ solid conversion rates  
  
But it increasingly feels like strong Search intent + better optimisation layers + AI-assisted campaign management is becoming a very powerful combination.