As Google drops new features, search is fragmenting, behaviour is changing and the role our websites, measurement and SEO agencies needs to evolve.
Google just shook things up again!
At their annual I/O event (I think they'll be call it AI/O next year) they play their hand at the ever-intensifying AI arms race. Here's a summary of the biggest hits with key takeaways you need to think about and consider:
#1 Gemini is exploding in usage across developers and users
Google are on top with Gemini 2.5 Pro & Flash take the top 2 positions on LMArena.
Takeaway: Are you using Gemini Flash or Pro? Why not? Play where your consumers play and emulate their behaviour so you can see what they do and how you show up as a brand.
#2 Launch of AI Mode
After operating is SearchLabs for Google One AI subscribers, it's out in the wild. What's incredible is that Google's ability to generate personalised, high-quality search results at scale, fast! This lights a fire under much of the SEO rank tracking tools. Now, we don't expect to see this impact the "money terms" anytime soon - Google want to protect its ad revenue and keep investors stable. What this will do however is boost the number of search and impressions, that have begun to decline, as Google break complex queries into multiple searches, and they can pull info from all over the web, like Product surfaces from the Shopping Graph and drop them in relevant gen search results.
Takeaway: Merchant centre is more than your shopping ads. Connect it with Google Search Console and dig into the data. Invest in good quality feed optimisation, in rich imagery and descriptions, and use all the structured data you can to get into Product Grids.
Takeaway 2: Make your content accessible, renderable and snackable so fragments can show up in multi-modal experiences and explore ways to measure and detect where you're showing up in AI Mode and how you can optimise.
AI Overviews are expanding rapidly.
Driven by good engagement signals Google are seeing as we all play with this new search feature. As is illustrated by the 1.5 Billion+ users viewing them each month.
The trajectory of this graph is the near-term future clincher and it's one that's likely worrying a lot of people. When we cross-reference this with client AIO citations, we see big peaks from March onward in line with that graph. We see it mainly in upper funnel content - the useful explainer content that was bringing people in early in the journey and onto your site to explore your services and experience your brand. Regrettably, clicks from this content is likely to diminish, amalgamated with your competitors and answered in brief. Instead of visits you'll be relegated to an AIO sidebar citation, one of many.
Zero click searches will rise. But all is not lost, it's time to evolve our measures of measure and clicks, though long relied upon, are no longer the right metric to judge the success of your content. I was shared research this morning by my right-hand man in AI thinking and our Director in Brisbane, Leland Ahkit. Siege Media studied 50 websites impacted by AI Overview and Agentic AIs and found they are actually driving home page traffic UP! Endearing to see and good inspiration for us to look outside our traditional measures for the broader impact.
Takeaway 1: Do not let diminishing clicks discourage you. Showing up as a cited source will have some level of brand salience, which should in turn lead to branded searches. Look for this in Search Console.
Takeaway 2: Don't forget that upper funnel content is what makes you a topical authority, which in turn allows you to rank high for generic money terms. Do not stop investing. Above all, keep the customer at the heart of what you do by providing them great experiences and helpful content.
Takeaway 3: Clicks aren't important, sales are important. We will need to let go of our obsession with traffic, explore new ways to measure and keep our eye on the prize - incremental sales and revenue. Look broadly and measure movements in channel traffic, upweights in homepage traffic, and branded search impression and click growth as echoes of demand created by your content in AIO & Agentics.
As Google applies AI to Shopping, US users can Try it on before you buy it.
This is really cool and creates a new way to interact and engaged with fashion in a way that's not been possible before. When IKEA brought out its app that let you drop a couch in your house we thought it was the best thing ever. This is huge step in personalised shopping and a way for Google to collect more data about you, your size and style preferences, which will enable more tailored shopping recommendations.
Takeaway 1: Ensure you have a diverse range of imagery so experiences with features like this delight your users and don't make you look silly.
Takeaway 2: Are you measuring your free/organic shopping visibility in merchant centre? Are you satisfied? You shouldn't be unless you're showing on every surface for every term. Make hay while the sun shines because you'll have to pay for those spots when Google inevitably rollout shopping ads over these surfaces.
US users can now track prices on products, receive alerts, and buy with Gemini.
Takeaway 1: Be mindful that users are shopping for deals all the time and are willing to wait for prices to come down. Hopefully Google will offer some retargeting or analytics on when people are tracking products you sell, and you can push uses who are waiting through the funnel when you need a discount
Takeaway 2: Ensure you're equipped to use Deal markup so you can take advantage of price alerts
Google our past, present, and future?
These features and more herald the New Era of Gemini 2.5-powered Search as Google go full tilt in its most vulnerable period ever as shifts consumer and generational behaviours are driven Agentic AI rivals and Social platforms that are turning their focus to search.
Let's not forget this is happening against the backdrop of biggest anti-trust ruling since Microsoft 2001 monopoly ruling.
ICYMI, Google were ruled a monopolist in Search, Android and Adtech. Google may be forced to:
- Sell Chrome - it's all-seeing eye into web browsing behaviour north of 70% of desktop browsers globally
- Sell Android - the same but for mobile internet and app browsing behaviour across all non-Apple devices
- Sell off its Adtech - AdX & Google Ad Manager
- Tear up multi-billion dollar deals with smartphone manufacturers that give it dominion over search
- Restrict similar tactics from growing its dominance in AI
The best defense Google has been able to muster is calling Apple to the stand, who stated iOS search fell in April for the first time ever, attributing it to Agentic AI upticks and calling Sundar to the stand to profess that the breakup would ruin Google Search.
It seems all but inevitable Chrome will go and Adtech with it, but what would have Google running scared is hampering its aggressive growth ambition to become the dominant Agentic AI provider. Intermingling Gemini with Search, as they bundled all their ad products into Performance Max, is their best defense against this and something they've gone head long into.
Rise of the Agentic AIs
Agents like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Deepseek are reporting increased usage with OpenAI reporting 1 billion searches in a week earlier this month. Still a drop in the ocean with Google doing 100 billion a week but if what we saw from SparkToro's data is accurate, you're looking at 4X growth in 6 months.
Shopping is showing up in ChatGPT and it's quite different to Google. Where Google throws absolutely everything at you from its Shopping Graph, merchant feed pricing and expert advice from the Search index, GPT is giving simplified, high-level answers, highlighting top comparison factors that can range from price to durability to. It's been trained by other users asking similar questions and it's aiming to be your trusted advisor.
Takeaway 1: You can help ChatGPT discover your products by submitting a form here. And ensure your not blocking ChatGPT from accessing your site. Instructions can be found in the above link
Takeaway 2: Setup GA4 referral traffic reports for Agents AIs - sources containing chatgpt, gemini, perplexity to begin with
Takeaway 3: Reportedly, Agentic AIs are crawling websites, but don't have the capability to render them. If your website contains lots of fancy JavaScript, Agentics may not be able to get to your content and pull it into their systems. An easy way to test is to go into your browser, deactivate JavaScript and see if your content, images and navigation/links appear. This is what the AIs see and we may need to build more friendly environments to make this data accessible to them.
What's going on at OpenAI?
Microsoft Build developer conference was last week and after unveiling Codex, OpenAI's agentic coding agent, Sataya and Sam Altman chatted about what to expect from their model roadmap and advice on using their apps.
Altman noted things are going to get simpler in the near future and the models and going to be easier to use. He closed with "we haven't seen many technological shifts like this in history, but every time one has come, leaning in early and hard has been very rewarded.”
On that note, I'll wrap this up I'll share a few interesting LLM tools that have caught my eye allowing you to let Agents connect to your platforms or data and enable transformative, automated workflows to take place.
Make.com
Automated 'recipes' made by linking ChatGPT with your email, socials, CRM and various other systems. Think If This Then That but driven by an LLM with many recipes ready to go out of the box to save you time and money.
AirOps
Like Make had a baby with Monday. You get more LLMs that you can put together and create sequences for things like creating blog posts from search, social or analytics data. Seems like the tool of Pros.
Operator
You can now put ChatGPT to work for you as your assigned. Tell it to do your work, book your holiday or research and setup novel ways to get AI to help improve your work and life.
Takeaway 1: If you do only one thing it should be experimenting with one of the above LLM Workflow tools. We're at a point of serious technology change and experimenting and leaning in will only benefit you.
Takeaway 2: Lean in harder and do more than one takeaway from this post.
Evolving the agency model
As I mentioned before, Leland, myself and our Resolution Digital leadership have been doing a lot of thinking about the changes AI represents not just for SEO agencies but for our clients and their respective industries (ecommerce chief among them). All of the above is new so we are working this out and learning with our partners but at the very least we see the following necessary shifts to role of website, role of measurement and role of agency.
The role of the website is evolving from an online brochure and marketplace to a hub for AI to gather fragments, feed and structured data and the essence of your brand, its distinctiveness and position in the market that it will relay to users prompting for discovery and consideration. A few things we need to consider here:
The role of measurement and our questions need to evolve, too. If we can't rely on clicks and traffic then what? Don't assume this only applies to organic search, we may see similar measures impacted across paid media in the future. Thoughts on evolving the measurement mindset:
The role of the SEO agency needs to evolve, shifting focus to solve challenges we talked to today and many more that will emerge. Not just in solving problems but helping clients make sense of the changes as they happen. This is the human art that AI can't replace and what makes us great partners who are on the journey together.
I acknowledge from speaking to many of my peers this is quite a scary time for most. AI is in our faces every day and there are more questions about application every week. Remember, you are not alone in this, your peers are likely having similar feelings so open some dialog, be brave and vulnerable and make people feel seen and you'll feel better. Remember the thing AI can't replace is our human ability to connect, to be kind and show empathy. If you're feeling unsettled, you should read Leland's post here.
Mindset to go forward
One novel use for AI I'm really enjoying is the ability to find quotes - many of which I've never heard before. Here's one which I really like that we should adopt as a mindset moving through this changing landscape:
"Uncertainty is the fertile ground of creativity and freedom" - Pema Chödrön
Learning more about Pema I found she teaches:
Lean into discomfort: avoiding pain creates more suffering. Facing it with awareness opens the door to healing
Groundlessness: life has no fixed certainty; this can be frightening or freeing - depending on your relationship with it.
Compassion over control: rather than trying to control our environment, she advocates for cultivating an inner sense of kindness and presence.
You can read more about Pema Chödrön here.
