AI Mode is the future of Search. How will you adapt?

I find it interesting that Sundar said, “main experience” rather than Search. Let’s talk about how Google is moving away from the “main experience” being Search and more towards Google being your personal assistant that sometimes draws on Search.

What does this mean for your business?

How is AI Mode different from traditional Search?

AI mode uses a query fan-out technique to decide which websites to use in generating its answer and recommendations. The system divides your question into subqueries, researches each of those and then formulates an AI generated answer. It often views many websites, even over a hundred, but only four or five are displayed to the user.

What does it take to be one of those websites mentioned? The SEO community is awash with theories, but to be honest, no one at this point really knows.

I expect we will see more articles on using LLMs to predict what the fan out queries are and then use a knowledge of vector search to create content that is likely to be chosen as a good match. While this does sound like a good plan at first, I am reconsidering my thoughts on optimizing for vector search. I think that it’s possible that if your content looks good to machines, but doesn’t consistently get chosen by users as the satisfying result, your optimizations could do more harm than good.

I thoroughly believe that that most important factors when it comes to “ranking” in AI Mode are to understand the specific questions your audience has and to truly answer them in a way that is more helpful than other sites. This is why Google’s new guidance on succeeding in their new AI features tells us to focus on unique, valuable content for people that fulfils their needs. 

I'll write more on these thoughts soon.

AI Mode also offers several new features from within the Search results. I expect this is just the beginning of the AI related advancements we will see.

Live Search & Buying Agents

You may have previously used Google Lens to Search for results that match an image. Live Search goes beyond images to search for things  you are discussing with Gemini while giving Google access to your camera. 

For example, say you are out in public and see someone wearing a shirt you really like. You can open up AI Mode, give access to your camera and ask Gemini in real time, “See that shirt? Where can I get one like that but in blue?” You’ll not only see the results in Search but also be able to continue talking to Gemini about it…”Those look good, but can you find one with long sleeves?” And AI Mode will give you a new set of results. Eventually, with “Buy for me with Google Pay”, Google will buy the product for you, without you ever having to visit the website. And soon, you may even have that product delivered to you via drone. This week Google, Walmart and Wing announced a partnership that will provide drone delivery to millions of homes starting next year.

Charts and graphs

This query showed me an interactive chart I could hover over and select things on.

I'm having trouble getting bar charts or sports information just yet, but this is likely coming. For now, AI Mode can make handy tables for you:

This is bound to reduce traffic to many websites. 

It will be interesting to see what other new features Google starts testing in AI Mode and eventually moves over into the “main experience”.

AI Mode is more than just Search - it aims to be our personal assistant

When Lex asked Sundar Pichai whether taking people to the human created web will remain a feature of AI Mode, he said, “Yes, that’s going to be a core design principle for us.”

Search will always be a part of AI Mode. However, we are moving into an era where the focus of Google is not Search, but rather, to act as a helpful personal assistant. How we use Google is changing quickly.

Soon, AI Mode will give us the option of making our Search queries personalized based on what we have searched for in the past, what we’ve purchased, what’s in our Gmail and more.

Google DeepMind’s CEO Demis Hassabis recently published a blog post called, “Our vision for building a universal AI assistant.” Google is working to extend Gemini’s capabilities to understand not only the internet, but the world around us. Google’s goal is to build “an AI that’s intelligent, understands the context you are in, and that can plan and take action on your behalf, across any device.”

AI can now take action for us on our behalf on the internet via Project Mariner, an agentic system that we can put to work in up to ten Chrome browsers at a time.  You can test this now as part of Google's expensive AI Ultra Plan if you are living in the US. Off of the web, Google’s AI technology for self-driving cars, Waymo, is expanding to more and more cities, becoming our personal driving assistant. Also, Google is making incredible strides with Gemini robotics. Gemini robotics ER (enhanced reasoning) will allow robots to be real life AI assistants, most likely in our homes. This appears to be Google’s goal:

Google’s AI advancements extend far beyond Search. Right now AI Mode, Gemini the Chatbot, and Search are three separate entities with some overlap. I predict that eventually this will not be the case. Google will shift from being a Search Engine to being a helpful AI assistant across all aspects of our lives, that when needed, suggests websites for us to visit.

In order for a business to succeed in this new world, there needs to be significant value to the searcher that extends beyond what they can get from their personal AI assistant, aka Google. 

Questions every business should be asking

Here are some questions to help you brainstorm on how you can thrive in this time of change. I don’t personally have the answers to all of these questions. We have so much to learn.

1. How does the shift to AI Mode impact your business? We do not yet know what kind of tracking Google will give us for AI Mode. How will you determine whether the time and effort spent producing and working on your website is profitable? How will you shift your content creation efforts?
2. How will Live Search impact you? Can you gain an advantage here? Would it help to be using original images and video? How can you measure this impact? Can you glean information by studying image search in GSC perhaps?
3. What are the implications for your business as Google integrates agentic buying agents? It seems to me that the most important features to help a store get mentioned online will be price, shipping, quality and personal relationship. Instead of designing checkout pages for users, we will shift to making the experience seamless for AI agents. As this shift happens, how will you need to change your methods of publishing and providing the best service to your customers?
4. How do these changes impact your ability to gain new customers? If you can determine how to get your website mentioned more often in AI mode, perhaps this will drive more customers. Alternatively, if AI mode answers questions that used to drive traffic, how will your business adapt? 
5. Will interactive charts in the SERPs impact your business? Will people get the answers they need directly from the SERPs? If so, brainstorm on ways you can provide information that is so valuable that people will prefer to visit your site rather than have an AI Mode answer. (No easy task!) Or does your business model need to shift? Can you think of ways to make money in your business that do not depend on providing people with information that they can now find on AI Mode?
6. How will personalized Search impact your business? We do not yet know how strong of an impact this will be. Do you have a personal relationship with your customers? Should you be considering doing more to get into people’s Gmail, such as a newsletter or perhaps a loyalty program? How can you create loyal fans of your brand? 
7. Think ahead a few years to Google’s ultimate goal of being a helpful personal assistant. Let’s say Google succeeds and their “main experience” becomes less about Search and more about meeting people’s needs as a helpful assistant. What does your business look like in a world where information from the human-created web is much less sought after? Is it possible you could benefit from pivoting in some way?

What does the web look like in 10 years?

I recently attended Google I/O and sat in the front row for a talk with Demis Hassabis and Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin. Sergey said,

“What does the web look like in 10 years? I mean, boy. I think… 10 years… because the rate of progress in AI is so far beyond anything. Not just the web. I mean, I don’t know, I don’t think we really know what the world looks like in 10 years.”

Demis followed with,

“I think that’s a good answer. I do think the web, I think in the near term the web is going to change quite a lot. If you think about the Agent First Web, like does it really need…it doesn’t necessarily need to see renders and things like we do as humans using the web. So I think things will be pretty different in a few years.”

Here’s more reading on what an agent first web looks like:

Google’s Agent2Agent protocol will radically change the web

Finding it hard to keep up with AI?

My free newsletter, AI News You Can Use distills down the important news in Search and AI every 10-14 days.

The free SEO and AI News area of my community, The Search Bar gives you real time updates on AI in a news feed.

Become a paid member of the Search Bar Pro community for even more:

• Tips, strategies and prompts from Marie
• Twice monthly Search Bar Pro Happy Hour Google meet calls (recorded) where we discuss how AI is changing the world and how we can win!
• Tutorials like measuring AI visits in GA4, writing for vector search, and analyzing AI Mode
• Community discussion
• NEW: Short snippets you can use to explain the changes in Search to clients.
• NEW: A NotebookLM you can use with my most recent newsletter episodes in it.