Google’s Danny Sullivan offered advice to SEOs who have clients asking for updates on what they’re going to do for AI SEO. He acknowledged it’s easier to give the advice than it is to have to actually tell clients, but he also said that advancements in content management systems drive technical SEO into the background, enabling SEOs and publishers to focus on the content.
What To Tell Clients
Danny Sullivan acknowledged that SEOs are in a tough spot with clients. He didn’t suggest specifics for how to rank better in AI search (although later in the podcast he did offer suggestions for what to do to rank better in AI search).
But he did offer suggestions for what to tell clients.
Danny explained:
“And the other thing is, and I’ve seen a number of people remark on this, is this concern that, well, I’ve been doing SEO, but now I’m getting clients or people saying to me, but I need the new stuff. I need the new stuff. And I can’t just tell them it’s the same old stuff.
So I don’t know if you feel like you need to dress it up a bit more, but I think the way you dress it up is to say, These are continuing to be the things that are going to make you successful in the long-term. I get you want the fancy new type of thing, but the history is that the fancy new type of thing doesn’t always stick around if we go off and do these particular types of things…
I’m keeping an eye on it, but right now, the best advice I can tell you when it comes to how we’re going to be successful with our AEO is that we continue on doing the stuff that we’ve been doing because that is what it’s built on.
Which is easy for me to say ’cause I don’t got someone banging on the door to say, Well, actually we do. And so we are doing that.
So that’s why, as part of the podcast, it’s just to kind of reassure that, look, just because the formats are changing didn’t mean you have to change everything that you had to do and that everything you had to shift around.”
Downside Of Prioritizing AEO/GEO For AI Search Visibility
There are many in the SEO community who are suggesting fairly spammy things to do to rank better in AI chatbots like ChatGPT, like creating listicles that recommend themselves as best whatever. Others are doing things like tweaking on keyword phrases, the kind of thing SEOs stopped doing by 2005 or 2006.
The problem with making dramatic changes to content in order to rank better in chatbots is that ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Anthropic Claude’s search traffic share is a fraction of a percent for each of them, with Claude close zero and ChatGPT estimated to be 0.2% – 0.5%.
So it absolutely makes zero sense to prioritize AEO/GEO over Google and Bing search at this point because the return on the investment is close to zero. It’s a different story when it comes to Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, but the underlying ranking systems for both AI interfaces remain Google’s classic search.
Danny shared that focusing on things that are specific to AI risks complicating what should be simple.
Google’s Danny Sullivan shared:
“And in fact, that the more that you dramatically shift things around, and start doing something completely different, or the more that you start thinking I need to do two different things, the more that you may be making things far more complicated, not necessarily successful in the long term as you think they are.”
Technical SEO Is Needed Less?
John Mueller followed up by mentioning that the advanced state of content management systems today means that SEOs and publishers no longer have to spend as much time on technical SEO issues because most CMS’s have the basics of SEO handled virtually out of the box. Danny Sullivan said that this frees up SEOs and creators to focus on their content, which he insisted will be helpful for ranking in AI search surfaces.
John Mueller commented:
“I think that makes a lot of sense. I think one of the things that perhaps throws SEOs off a little bit is that in the early days, there was a lot of almost like a technical transition where people initially had to do a lot of technical specific things to make their site even kind of accessible in search. And at some point nowadays, I think if you’re using a popular CMS like WordPress or Wix or any of them, basically you don’t have to worry about any of those technical details.
So it’s almost like that technical side of things is a lot less in the foreground now, and you can really focus on the content, and that’s really what users are looking for. So it’s like that, almost like a transition from technical to content side with regards to SEO.”
This echoed a previous statement from earlier in the podcast where Danny remarked on how some people have begun worrying less about SEO and focusing on content.
Danny said:
“But we really just want you to focus on your content and not really worry about this. If your content is on the web and generally accessible as most people’s content is, that’s it.
I’ve actually been heartened that I’ve seen a number of people saying things like: I don’t even want to think about this SEO stuff anymore. I’m just getting back into the joy of writing blogs.
I’m like, yes, great. That’s what we want you to do. That’s where we think you’re going to find your most success.”
Listen to Danny Sullivan’s remarks at about the 8 minute mark:
In organic search, disruption has always been the norm, but the integration of AI into Google Search – with AI Overviews and now AI Mode – is not an incremental change; it is a fundamental restructuring. For marketers overseeing single or multi-location SEO strategies, the transition from the traditional blue-link environment to a conversational, synthesized search experience carries important stakes.
The initial manifestation of this shift, the AI Overview (AIO), which claims the premium “Position 0” real estate on a search engine results page (SERP), provided the initial shockwave. However, the long-term competitive reality is defined by AI Mode, a full conversational ecosystem where users can engage in multi-stage dialogue with AI. This interactive mode anticipates a user’s entire “information journey” by mapping out potential subsequent inquiries, known as latent questions or query fan-out, negating the need for users to click through for additional information.
The implications for local SEO are profound. Data confirms that when an AIO is present and a business’s content is not cited, organic click-through rates (CTR) can plummet by as much as 61%.
The priority for local marketing has irrevocably shifted: Success is no longer defined by securing Position 1 in the traditional organic listings, but by achieving inclusion and citation within the Position 0 AI Overview and the expanded AI Mode. Some are of the belief Google could go full AI Mode at any moment.
This blueprint outlines eight strategic imperatives for marketers to ensure resilient local visibility and drive high-intent conversions in the AI Mode era to come.
The Paradigm Shift: From Blue Links To Entity Authority
The mechanics of AI Mode fundamentally alter local search competition. For high-intent, local or transactional queries (e.g., “best walking tour in Chicago”), the AI often replaces the traditional Google 3-Pack with an expanded, enhanced local AI Mode display including Google Business Profile (GBP) cards.
Screenshot from Google search for [best walking tours in New Orleans], November 2025
A limited study conducted in May 2025 found AI Overviews (now typically accompanied by AI Mode) appeared for local search queries 57% of the time and were particularly dominant for informational, as opposed to local/commercial, intent queries.
A more recent behavioral study of travel booking in AI Mode found Google Business Profiles to be among the most highly displayed and engaged content for searchers booking local accommodations and experiences. This is likely the case for any locally oriented search. This creates new opportunities, but demands a strategic overhaul to ensure top-tier visibility.
The AI’s choice of businesses for this enhanced local pack leans heavily on Entity Authority. LLMs synthesize business summaries and attributes by drawing information from diverse, omni-channel sources. This reliance on verified, consistent facts across the entire web makes the digital ecosystem, rather than just the website’s content or backlink profile, the primary ranking vector.
In this new environment, traditional SEO and link acquisition strategies must be rebalanced with unique fact provision and entity authority strategies
8 Local SEO Recommendations For Visibility In AI Mode
To command a dominant position in the conversational search environment, local marketers must execute a comprehensive strategy focusing on local authority, data integrity, technical compliance, and an answer-first content structure.
1. Fortify Your Google Business Profile (GBP) As The Verified Core
Primary And Secondary Category Selection Choose the most relevant and appropriate primary category for the business, along with limited additional secondary categories. Do not select generic or non-relevant categories as a means to being included or found within the same via AI search. Far too many businesses make the mistake of choosing as many categories as they think are even tangentially related to the services they offer, often diluting their primary area of expertise.
Comprehensive Service Listings Ensure accurate and comprehensive listings of all services offered, aligning them perfectly with the services listed on the website and within schema markup. Here again, do not over-extend into generic or non-relevant service offerings.
Verified Hours and Attributes Maintain current, verified hours of operation, paying special attention to temporary or seasonal closures. A newly important factor in organic and AI search visibility is whether or not a business is physically open when a search is being conducted.
Fill out all relevant business attributes, including payment types accepted, amenities (e.g., parking) available, and anything else which may set the business apart.
Active Engagement Signals Behavioral signals, such as in-store visits tracked by Google Maps, and engagement signals on the GBP are increasing in importance, suggesting the AI weights profiles demonstrating real-world activity. Responding promptly to reviews and questions posed via GBP is critical, as is regularly posting photos, offers, updates, and other helpful content for your target audience.
Recommendation: The GBP must be treated as a live, mission-critical data feed, not a static listing. Any change to a service, hour, or attribute must be propagated across the GBP first, then the website, and finally any other third-party local or industry-specific directories.
2. Mandate Technical Precision With Schema
Structured data can support AI search visibility. Large Language Models (LLMs), in part, use schema markup to categorize, verify, and ingest factual information directly. Failure to comply with stringent technical specifications may render an entity ineligible for expanded, visually-rich AI results.
Required Technical Specifications:
LocalBusiness Schema And Service Schema These must be implemented meticulously, defining the business type (e.g., Dentist, Vacation Rental Operator) and precisely describing the services offered using the Service and makesOffer properties.
Geographical Precision The geo property (latitude and longitude) must be included in the LocalBusiness schema to satisfy the AI’s need for hyper-local accuracy in “near me” and navigational queries.
Visual Asset Compliance To qualify for visually enhanced AI results, websites must provide multiple relevant service, product, and location-specific images. All images require relevant descriptive filenames and alt text, which must include pertinent keywords, where applicable.
Recommendation: Implement all schema using JSON-LD for simplified maintenance and validation via Google’s Rich Results Test and Schema.org markup validator, keeping the technical markup separate from page design.
Generative AI systems rely on consistency and verifiability of a business’s factual data across multiple sources. Any conflict in Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) details, or service descriptions, across primary and third-party sources introduces ambiguity. AI models, like organic search algorithms preceding them, are programmed to reject or hesitate to cite conflicting data points, significantly degrading a business’s trustworthiness.
The Data Harmonization Mandate:
GBP Vs. Website If a business lists four specific services on its website, but six on its Google Business Profile (GBP), the AI may not be able to provide a definitive, confident summary of service offerings.
Comprehensive Auditing Invest in robust, real-time auditing and monitoring tools to ensure 100% NAP consistency across the corporate website, all individual location pages, GBPs, and major third-party directories (e.g., Yelp, Tripadvisor).
Recommendation: Treat your structured data and GBP as the single source of truth, and enforce a technical and content compliance mandate across all third-party listings and local data aggregators to eliminate signal dilution. Local authority is now synonymous with holistic entity management.
4. Harness The Power Of Authentic Review Sentiment (E-E-A-T)
Within AI-search, Google continues to emphasize the E-E-A-T framework (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). For local entities, this can in part be demonstrated through verifiable user interactions, authentic customer feedback, and structured review data. The AI synthesizes customer reviews into concise, attribute-level summaries serving as the user’s immediate decision cue.
Shifting Review Strategy To Influence The AI Summary:
Attribute-Level Prompting The strategy must shift from merely gathering high star ratings to encouraging customers to mention desirable operational attributes (e.g., “fast service,” “knowledgeable staff,” “great atmosphere”). This provides the AI with positive attributes to feature prominently in the generated summary, which acts as a primary conversion trigger.
Review Schema Implementation Implementing Review and AggregateRating schema is critical for providing the AI model with a structured roadmap to quickly identify recurring sentiment themes.
Proactive Management Active, prompt management and response to both positive and negative reviews, focusing on service attributes, further establishes the ‘A’ authority and ‘T’ trust in E-E-A-T.
5. Adopt Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) And Query Fan-Out Mapping
Content strategy must transition from traditional keyword SEO to Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). AI Mode prioritizes highly informative, concise content specifically structured to answer user queries directly. Query fan-out refers to the process of not only answering the first query submitted, but also anticipating and providing answers to a range of subsequent related questions users have.
Content Strategy For Conversational Search
Map Latent Questions Since complex queries often trigger AI Overviews, and AI Mode builds on the same multi-step reasoning systems, Google’s LLMs attempt to map the user’s broader information journey by predicting the follow-up questions they are likely to ask. Content therefore needs to address not only the initial ‘head query’ but also the latent questions that make up the next steps in that journey.
Structure For Extraction Content inclusion is assessed partly by structure. Utilize clear formatting elements easy for the AI to extract and cite:
Hierarchical Headings: Implement a clean, tiered heading structure to guide LLMs through content based on its hierarchical importance.
Answer First Content: Incorporate semantically related questions and answers tied to perceived user intent naturally into body content.
FAQs/Q&A Formatting: Use structured Q&A formats along with FAQPage schema.
Ordered Lists: Present verifiable facts in easily digestible formats like bulleted and numbered lists.
Short, Concise Paragraphs: Ensure maximum readability and extraction suitability for the LLM.
Implement A Dual Content Strategy
Tier 1 (Informational/AEO): Unique, helpful, experience-backed content optimized for AIO citation (FAQs, guides) to establish E-E-A-T and secure brand visibility.
Tier 2 (Transactional/CRO): Core service pages and hyper-local pages focused on high-intent, bottom-of-the-funnel queries (“emergency plumber near me”), prioritizing clear calls-to-action and conversion architecture.
6. Diversify Entity Authority: Chase Branded Web Mentions
The AI’s holistic approach to entity authority means links are less important than they once were, while branded mentions are experiencing a resurgence. Research indicates a strong correlation between brands cited in AI Overviews/AI Mode and the frequency of their mention across the broader web (including social media, blogs, and forums like Reddit). In AI SEO, brand mentions (linked or not) are the new link. This shift is supported by data showing web mentions correlate highly with AI visibility.
Strategy For Earning “The AI Vote”:
Omnichannel Entity Acquisition Proactively pursue high-quality, non-linked citations from authoritative local news sources, industry blogs, and high-quality directories. The goal is to maximize the sheer volume of high-quality, reinforcing brand mentions AI can reference.
Social & Video Integration Leverage social media platforms and, critically, YouTube content. LLMs scrape video and social channels for entity information and context, making these verifiable sources of service and brand attribute data.
Recommendation: Shift resources from low-value link-building activities toward Digital PR and Content Distribution campaigns designed to earn non-linked brand mentions and reinforce local expertise across third-party industry and media sites.
7. Optimize For High-Velocity Conversions (CRO)
The inevitable decline in raw organic traffic is accompanied by an efficiency challenge. The traffic successfully navigating from AI Mode to the website should typically be more qualified and higher-intent, as the AI has already satisfied low-intent informational needs. The traffic remaining is typically the commercially valuable “bottom-of-the-funnel” user.
The Conversion Imperative:
CRO Over Traffic Generation Resources should be strategically reallocated away from mass traffic generation toward maximizing the conversion potential of the qualified users who land on the website.
One interesting finding from the aforementioned AI Mode behavioral study was the number of users who expected to simply be able to complete their transaction once they left AI Mode, i.e., just click Book Now and pay. While this may be coming in the form of future Google integrations, the current transactional workflow requires users to start their booking from the beginning.
Perfecting Conversion Architecture The final click from AI Mode to the website must lead to a seamless, high-velocity user experience. This involves:
Above-the-Fold CTAs: Ensuring clear, single-focus calls-to-action (CTAs) are immediately visible on landing pages.
Minimal Friction: Reducing form fields and providing one-click access to the most high-intent action (e.g., “Request a Quote,” “Book Now,” “Call Us”).
KPI Recalibration: Focus key performance indicators (KPIs) on high-value, direct actions tracked through Google Business Insights and Search Console, emphasizing direct calls, requests for driving directions, and specific booking actions, rather than low-intent clicks. Visibility in AI Mode becomes a more meaningful success metric than a singular keyword rank.
8. Future-Proofing: Un-hide Content And Prioritize Accessibility
A foundational requirement for AI Mode visibility is ensuring technical accessibility of content for the LLM’s consumption.
Accessibility As A Generative Requirement:
Un-hide Critical Content Content crucial to establishing entity authority (e.g., licenses, certifications, key service attributes, location details) must not be hidden within toggles, tabs, accordions, or JavaScript requiring a user click to reveal.
Plain Text And HTML While visuals are important, the core factual assertions must be rendered in clean, accessible HTML any machine can easily read and interpret.
Proactive Monitoring Use LLM analysis tools (or reverse question-answering prompts) to regularly audit which questions your site is answering and which critical facts are not being found by the AI, ensuring your core message is the stuff being crawled and indexed.
The Generative Mandate For Local SEO In The AI Era
Google AI Mode represents the definitive passing of the torch from traditional link-based SEO to a sophisticated strategy centered on fact provision and entity validation. For marketers, the shift is not one to debate, but one to embrace immediately.
The future of local search visibility is a high-stakes competition for the top-tier real estate of the AI Overview and AI Mode. The required investment is a mandate across the entire digital portfolio:
Technical Compliance: Adhering to strict schema and content specifications to gain eligibility.
Data Integrity: Enforcing omnichannel consistency to build undeniable entity trust.
Content Refinement: Adopting Answer Engine Optimization to answer the full spectrum of user queries.
Link or Unlinked Branded Mentions: Earn and establish visibility in relatively high authority local and industry-relevant places.
This strategic pivot – away from mass-traffic keyword pursuits and toward precise entity authority management – is the only way to mitigate the risk of CTR collapse and capitalize on the high-quality, high-intent traffic AI Mode will deliver. Your business must now be structured as an impeccable source of verified, structured facts for AI to cite. The time for strategic adaptation is now.
Google’s John Mueller and Danny Sullivan discussed their thoughts on AI search and what SEOs and creators should be doing to make sure their content is surfaced. Danny showed some concern for folks who were relying on commodity content that is widely available.
What Creators Should Focus On For AI
John Mueller asked Danny Sullivan what publishers should be focusing on right now that’s specific to AI. Danny answered by explaining what kind of content you should not focus on and what kind of content creators should be focusing on.
He explained that the kind of content that creators should not focus on is commodity content. Commodity content is web content that consists of information that’s widely available and offers no unique value, no perspective, and requires no expertise. It is the kind of content that’s virtually interchangeable with any other site’s content because they are all essentially generic.
While Danny Sullivan did not mention recipe sites, his discussion about commodity content immediately brought recipe sites to mind because those kinds of sites seemingly go out of their way to present themselves as generically as possible, from the way the sites look, the “I’m just a mom of two kids” bio, and the recipes they provide. In my opinion, what Danny Sullivan said should make creators consider what they bring to the web that makes them notable.
To explain what he meant by commodity content, Danny used the example of publishers who used to optimize a web page for the time that the Super Bowl game began. His description of the long preamble they wrote before giving the generic answer of what time the Super Bowl starts reminded me again of recipe sites.
At about the twelve minute mark John Mueller asked Danny:
“So what would you say web creators should focus on nowadays with all of the AI?”
Danny answered:
“A key thing is to really focus on is the original aspect. Not a new thing.
These are not new things beyond search, but if you’re really trying to reframe your mind about what’s important, I think that on one hand, there’s a lot of content that is just kind of commodity content, factual information, and I think that the… LLM, AI systems are doing a good job of presenting that sort of stuff.
And it’s not originating from any type of thing.
So the classic example, as you know, will make people laugh, …but every year we have this little American football thing called the Super Bowl, which is our big event.
…But no one ever can seem to remember what time it’s on.
…Multiple places would then all write their “what time does the Super Bowl start in 2011?” post. And then they would write these giant long things.
…So, you know, and then at some point, we could see enough information and we have data feeds and everything else that we just kind of said, you do a search and …the Super Bowl is going to be at 3:30.
…I think the vast majority of people say, that’s a good thing. Thank you for just telling me the time of the Super Bowl.
It wasn’t super original information.”
Commodity Content Is Not Your Strength
Next Danny considered some of the content people are publishing today, encouraging them to think about the generic nature of their content and to give some thought to how they can share something more original and unique.
Danny continued his answer:
“I think that is a thing people need to understand, is that more of this sort of commodity stuff, it isn’t going to necessarily be your strength.
And I do worry that some people, even with traditional SEO, focus on it too much.
There are a number of sites I know from the research and things that I’ve done that get a huge amount of traffic for the answer to various popular online word-solving games.
It’s just every day I’m going to give you the answer to it. …and that is great. Until the system shifts or whatever, and it’s common enough, or we’re pulling it from a feed or whatever, and now it’s like, here’s the answer.”
Bring Your Expertise To AI
Danny next suggested that people who are concerned about showing up in AI should start exploring how to express their authentic experience or expertise. He said this advice is not just for text content but also to video and podcast content as well.
He continued:
“Your original voice is that thing that only you can provide. It’s your particular take.
And so that’s what we think was our number one thing when we’re telling people is like, this is what we think your strength is going to be.
As we go into this new world, is already what you should be doing, but this is what your strength that you should be doing is focus on that original content.
I think related to that is this idea that people are also seeking original content that’s, …authentic to them, which typically means it’s a video, it’s a podcast…
…And you’ve seen that in the search we’ve already done, where we brought in more social, more experiential content. Not to take away from the expert takes, it’s just that people want that.
Sometimes you’re just wanting to know someone’s firsthand experience alongside some expert take on it as well.
But if you are providing those expert takes, you’re doing reviews or whatever, and you’ve done that in the written form, you still have the opportunity to be doing those in videos and podcasts and so on. Those are other opportunities.
So those are things that, again, it’s not unique to the AI formats, but they just may be, as you’re thinking about, how do I reevaluate what I’m doing overall in this era, that these are things you may want to be considering with it from there.”
John Mueller agreed that it makes sense to bring your unique voice to content in order to make it stand out. Danny’s point treats visibility in AI driven search as a matter of differentiation rather than optimization. The emphasis is not on adapting content to a new format, but on creating a recognizable voice and perspective with which to stand out. Given that AI Search is still classic search under the hood, it makes sense to stand out from competitors with unique content that people will recognize and recommend.
Listen to the passage at around the twelve minute mark:
Omar Yaghi was a quiet child, diligent, unlikely to roughhouse with his nine siblings. So when he was old enough, his parents tasked him with one of the family’s most vital chores: fetching water. Like most homes in his Palestinian neighborhood in Amman, Jordan, the Yaghis’ had no electricity or running water. At least once every two weeks, the city switched on local taps for a few hours so residents could fill their tanks. Young Omar helped top up the family supply. Decades later, he says he can’t remember once showing up late. The fear of leaving his parents, seven brothers, and two sisters parched kept him punctual.
Yaghi proved so dependable that his father put him in charge of monitoring how much the cattle destined for the family butcher shop ate and drank. The best-quality cuts came from well-fed, hydrated animals—a challenge given that they were raised in arid desert.
Specially designed materials called metal-organic frameworks can pull water from the air like a sponge—and then give it back.
But at 10 years old, Yaghi learned of a different occupation. Hoping to avoid a rambunctious crowd at recess, he found the library doors in his school unbolted and sneaked in. Thumbing through a chemistry textbook, he saw an image he didn’t understand: little balls connected by sticks in fascinating shapes. Molecules. The building blocks of everything.
“I didn’t know what they were, but it captivated my attention,” Yaghi says. “I kept trying to figure out what they might be.”
That’s how he discovered chemistry—or maybe how chemistry discovered him. After coming to the United States and, eventually, a postdoctoral program at Harvard University, Yaghi devoted his career to finding ways to make entirely new and fascinating shapes for those little sticks and balls. In October 2025, he was one of three scientists who won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for identifying metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs—metal ions tethered to organic molecules that form repeating structural landscapes. Today that work is the basis for a new project that sounds like science fiction, or a miracle: conjuring water out of thin air.
When he first started working with MOFs, Yaghi thought they might be able to absorb climate-damaging carbon dioxide—or maybe hold hydrogen molecules, solving the thorny problem of storing that climate-friendly but hard-to-contain fuel. But then, in 2014, Yaghi’s team of researchers at UC Berkeley had an epiphany. The tiny pores in MOFs could be designed so the material would pull water molecules from the air around them, like a sponge—and then, with just a little heat, give back that water as if squeezed dry. Just one gram of a water-absorbing MOF has an internal surface area of roughly 7,000 square meters.
Yaghi wasn’t the first to try to pull potable water from the atmosphere. But his method could do it at lower levels of humidity than rivals—potentially shaking up a tiny, nascent industry that could be critical to humanity in the thirsty decades to come. Now the company he founded, called Atoco, is racing to demonstrate a pair of machines that Yaghi believes could produce clean, fresh, drinkable water virtually anywhere on Earth, without even hooking up to an energy supply.
That’s the goal Yaghi has been working toward for more than a decade now, with the rigid determination that he learned while doing chores in his father’s butcher shop.
“It was in that shop where I learned how to perfect things, how to have a work ethic,” he says. “I learned that a job is not done until it is well done. Don’t start a job unless you can finish it.”
Most of Earth is covered in water, but just 3% of it is fresh, with no salt—the kind of water all terrestrial living things need. Today, desalination plants that take the salt out of seawater provide the bulk of potable water in technologically advanced desert nations like Israel and the United Arab Emirates, but at a high cost. Desalination facilities either heat water to distill out the drinkable stuff or filter it with membranes the salt doesn’t pass through; both methods require a lot of energy and leave behind concentrated brine. Typically desal pumps send that brine back into the ocean, with devastating ecological effects.
Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, uses a model to explain how metalorganic frameworks (MOFs) can trap smaller molecules inside. In October 2025, Yaghi and two other scientists won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for identifying MOFs.
JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/GETTY IMAGES
I was talking to Atoco executives about carbon dioxide capture earlier this year when they mentioned the possibility of harvesting water from the atmosphere. Of course my mind immediately jumped to Star Wars, and Luke Skywalker working on his family’s moisture farm, using “vaporators” to pull water from the atmosphere of the arid planet Tatooine. (Other sci-fi fans’ minds might go to Dune, and the water-gathering technology of the Fremen.) Could this possibly be real?
It turns out people have been doing it for millennia. Archaeological evidence of water harvesting from fog dates back as far as 5000 BCE. The ancient Greeks harvested dew, and 500 years ago so did the Inca, using mesh nets and buckets under trees.
Today, harvesting water from the air is a business already worth billions of dollars, say industry analysts—and it’s on track to be worth billions more in the next five years. In part that’s because typical sources of fresh water are in crisis. Less snowfall in mountains during hotter winters means less meltwater in the spring, which means less water downstream. Droughts regularly break records. Rising seas seep into underground aquifers, already drained by farming and sprawling cities. Aging septic tanks leach bacteria into water, and cancer-causing “forever chemicals” are creating what the US Government Accountability Office last year said “may be the biggest water problem since lead.” That doesn’t even get to the emerging catastrophe from microplastics.
So lots of places are turning to atmospheric water harvesting. Watergen, an Israel-based company working on the tech, initially planned on deploying in the arid, poorer parts of the world. Instead, buyers in Europe and the United States have approached the company as a way to ensure a clean supply of water. And one of Watergen’s biggest markets is the wealthy United Arab Emirates. “When you say ‘water crisis,’ it’s not just the lack of water—it’s access to good-quality water,” says Anna Chernyavsky, Watergen’s vice president of marketing.
In other words, the technology “has evolved from lab prototypes to robust, field-deployable systems,” says Guihua Yu, a mechanical engineer at the University of Texas at Austin. “There is still room to improve productivity and energy efficiency in the whole-system level, but so much progress has been steady and encouraging.”
MOFs are just the latest approach to the idea. The first generation of commercial tech depended on compressors and refrigerant chemicals—large-scale versions of the machine that keeps food cold and fresh in your kitchen. Both use electricity and a clot of pipes and exchangers to make cold by phase-shifting a chemical from gas to liquid and back; refrigerators try to limit condensation, and water generators basically try to enhance it.
That’s how Watergen’s tech works: using a compressor and a heat exchanger to wring water from air at humidity levels as low as 20%—Death Valley in the spring. “We’re talking about deserts,” Chernyavsky says. “Below 20%, you get nosebleeds.”
A Watergen unit provides drinking water to students and staff at St. Joseph’s, a girls’ school in Freetown, Sierra Leone. “When you say ‘water crisis,’ it’s not just the lack of water— it’s access to good-quality water,” says Anna Chernyavsky, Watergen’s vice president of marketing.
COURTESY OF WATERGEN
That still might not be good enough. “Refrigeration works pretty well when you are above a certain relative humidity,” says Sameer Rao, a mechanical engineer at the University of Utah who researches atmospheric water harvesting. “As the environment dries out, you go to lower relative humidities, and it becomes harder and harder. In some cases, it’s impossible for refrigeration-based systems to really work.”
So a second wave of technology has found a market. Companies like Source Global use desiccants—substances that absorb moisture from the air, like the silica packets found in vitamin bottles—to pull in moisture and then release it when heated. In theory, the benefit of desiccant-based tech is that it could absorb water at lower humidity levels, and it uses less energy on the front end since it isn’t running a condenser system. Source Global claims its off-grid, solar-powered system is deployed in dozens of countries.
But both technologies still require a lot of energy, either to run the heat exchangers or to generate sufficient heat to release water from the desiccants. MOFs, Yaghi hopes, do not. Now Atoco is trying to prove it. Instead of using heat exchangers to bring the air temperature to dew point or desiccants to attract water from the atmosphere, a system can rely on specially designed MOFs to attract water molecules. Atoco’s prototype version uses an MOF that looks like baby powder, stuck to a surface like glass. The pores in the MOF naturally draw in water molecules but remain open, making it theoretically easy to discharge the water with no more heat than what comes from direct sunlight. Atoco’s industrial-scale design uses electricity to speed up the process, but the company is working on a second design that can operate completely off grid, without any energy input.
Yaghi’s Atoco isn’t the only contender seeking to use MOFs for water harvesting. A competitor, AirJoule, has introduced MOF-based atmospheric water generators in Texas and the UAE and is working with researchers at Arizona State University, planning to deploy more units in the coming months. The company started out trying to build more efficient air-conditioning for electric buses operating on hot, humid city streets. But then founder Matt Jore heard about US government efforts to harvest water from air—and pivoted. The startup’s stock price has been a bit of a roller-coaster, but Jore says the sheer size of the market should keep him in business. Take Maricopa County, encompassing Phoenix and its environs—it uses 1.2 billion gallons of water from its shrinking aquifer every day, and another 874 million gallons from surface sources like rivers.
“So, a couple of billion gallons a day, right?” Jore tells me. “You know how much influx is in the atmosphere every day? Twenty-five billion gallons.”
My eyebrows go up. “Globally?”
“Just the greater Phoenix area gets influx of about 25 billion gallons of water in the air,” he says. “If you can tap into it, that’s your source. And it’s not going away. It’s all around the world. We view the atmosphere as the world’s free pipeline.”
Besides AirJoule’s head start on Atoco, the companies also differ on where they get their MOFs. AirJoule’s system relies on an off-the-shelf version the company buys from the chemical giant BASF; Atoco aims to use Yaghi’s skill with designing the novel material to create bespoke MOFs for different applications and locations.
“Given the fact that we have the inventor of the whole class of materials, and we leverage the stuff that comes out of his lab at Berkeley—everything else equal, we have a good starting point to engineer maybe the best materials in the world,” says Magnus Bach, Atoco’s VP of business development.
Yaghi envisions a two-pronged product line. Industrial-scale water generators that run on electricity would be capable of producing thousands of liters per day on one end, while units that run on passive systems could operate in remote locations without power, just harnessing energy from the sun and ambient temperatures. In theory, these units could someday replace desalination and even entire municipal water supplies. The next round of field tests is scheduled for early 2026, in the Mojave Desert—one of the hottest, driest places on Earth.
“That’s my dream,” Yaghi says. “To give people water independence, so they’re not reliant on another party for their lives.”
Both Yaghi and Watergen’s Chernyavsky say they’re looking at more decentralized versions that could operate outside municipal utility systems. Home appliances, similar to rooftop solar panels and batteries, could allow households to generate their own water off grid.
That could be tricky, though, without economies of scale to bring down prices. “You have to produce, you have to cool, you have to filter—all in one place,” Chernyavsky says. “So to make it small is very, very challenging.”
Difficult as that may be, Yaghi’s childhood gave him a particular appreciation for the freedom to go off grid, to liberate the basic necessity of water from the whims of systems that dictate when and how people can access it.
“That’s really my dream,” he says. “To give people independence, water independence, so that they’re not reliant on another party for their livelihood or lives.”
Toward the end of one of our conversations, I asked Yaghi what he would tell the younger version of himself if he could. “Jordan is one of the worst countries in terms of the impact of water stress,” he said. “I would say, ‘Continue to be diligent and observant. It doesn’t really matter what you’re pursuing, as long as you’re passionate.’”
I pressed him for something more specific: “What do you think he’d say when you described this technology to him?”
Yaghi smiled: “I think young Omar would think you’re putting him on, that this is all fictitious and you’re trying to take something from him.” This reality, in other words, would be beyond young Omar’s wildest dreams.
Alexander C. Kaufman is a reporter who has covered energy, climate change, pollution, business, and geopolitics for more than a decade.
This week’s rundown of new products and services for ecommerce merchants includes updates on agentic commerce, marketplaces, crowdfunding, creator partnerships, rush pickups, analytics, and fraud prevention.
Got an ecommerce product release? Email updates@practicalecommerce.com.
New Tools for Merchants
Shopify introduces Agentic Storefronts.Shopify has released Agentic Storefronts to help brands get discovered on platforms such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Microsoft Copilot. Merchants can (i) define their schema and then group products by standard attributes and metafields so agents accurately present their products in searches and (ii) track policies, FAQs, and brand voice via the Knowledge Base App.
Shopify Agentic Storefronts
Klarna launches Agentic Product Protocol.Klarna, a buy-now-pay-later payment provider, has launched Agentic Product Protocol, an open standard that makes goods discoverable and understandable by AI agents. Klarna says its new protocol gives AI systems access to a live, structured feed of more than 100 million products and 400 million prices standardized across 12 markets. The protocol establishes a structured foundation that allows agents to find, compare, and recommend real products with live prices and availability, according to Klarna.
Uber Direct partners with India’s ONDC.Uber has launched a foray into B2B logistics in India through Uber Direct, powered by the country’s Open Network for Digital Commerce protocol. Uber Direct operates as a logistics engine for businesses. Buyers place orders on a B2B seller’s app or website, and Uber Direct fulfills the delivery without the buyer interacting with Uber until the delivery partner arrives. Uber Direct is now live in Bangalore on the ONDC.
Uber Direct brings same-day delivery to Shopify.Uber Direct is now available to Shopify Plus merchants across the U.S., Canada, and France. The integration brings Uber Direct’s one-hour, same-day, and scheduled delivery network into the Shopify ecosystem. Merchants can get started through the Shopify App Store and embed delivery options into Shopify checkout and point of sale. Merchants can then decide whether to pass delivery costs to customers.
Shopline partners with LaunchBoom for ecommerce crowdfunding.Shopline, a global commerce platform, has partnered with LaunchBoom, a crowdfunding consultancy. LaunchBoom’s LaunchKit will integrate with Shopline, providing a transition from crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter and Indiegogo into scalable ecommerce businesses. Founders can automatically sync their pre-launch and crowdfunding data, including reservation signups, customers, and product details, into Shopline the moment their campaigns end. Shopline’s checkout, payment processing, and SmartPush tools will embed into LaunchKit.
Shopline
Meta releases AI-powered tools to scale creator and brand partnerships.Meta has introduced tools to turn organic content on Facebook and Instagram into partnership ads. Advertisers can create ads from Facebook-branded or user-generated content with Facebook’s Partnership Ads API. Brands can discover relevant organic user-generated and affiliate content within the “All” tab and check how organic is performing in Partnership Ads Hub. Plus, creators can now share an ad code with an advertiser to speed up content permissions.
Amazon plans one-hour pickup service in stores.Amazon is developing a rush pickup service that will let shoppers collect their orders at Amazon-owned stores within an hour. Shoppers can place a unified order from Amazon’s online marketplace and its own stores, including Whole Foods, Fresh grocery stores, and Go convenience stores. The tech giant plans to launch a pilot in at least one metro area by Q1 2026.
Analytic platform Decile launches Luma AI for ecommerce.Decile, an analytics platform, has launched Luma, a conversational AI analysis tool for ecommerce brands. Decile says Luma combines ecommerce experience with a data foundation to interpret results, identify causes, and recommend next steps. Luma users can generate brand-specific, multi-step analyses of real-time data, prompted by plain-language inquiries, per Decile, in which every result includes visible reasoning and data context.
Spreetail unveils True Ads to maximize incremental sales.Spreetail, an ecommerce marketplace accelerator, has launched True Ads, an AI incrementality engine that quantifies the impact of ad spend using causal inference. Per Spreetail, users can (i) distinguish incremental lift from cannibalized sales across targeting, including keywords, (ii) identify non-productive ad spend and reallocate towards profitable campaigns, and (iii) discover how paid media influences long-term brand momentum, including organic visibility and market share. True Ads is part of Spreetail’s Smart Shelf suite, which includes Price Pulse, Listing Doctor, and Promise Pro.
Spreetail
Stripe launches Agentic Commerce Suite.Stripe has introduced the Agentic Commerce Suite to help businesses sell through multiple AI agents, with the goal of making products discoverable, simplifying checkout, and allowing merchants to accept agentic payments via a single integration. The Agentic Commerce Suite will launch via the Stripe Dashboard and Stripe APIs; through ecommerce platforms such as Wix, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Squarespace, and Commercetools; and via omnichannel commerce platforms such as Akeneo, Cymbio, Logicbroker, Mirakl, Pipe17, and Rithum.
Temu expands marketplace access for small businesses via Shopify app.Temu has launched an app for Shopify merchants to list and manage products on Temu directly from Shopify accounts. The app is available on the Shopify App Store and enables merchants to access Temu’s Local Seller Program in more than 30 countries, including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany, Spain, and Australia. Via the app, Shopify merchants can manage product listings, inventory, and fulfillment.
Blox launches fraud prevention with identity linking for Shopify.Blox has launched Chargeback Blacklist on the Shopify App Store, with a customer deduplication engine to stop repeat offenders. Smart Identity Linking connects emails, credit cards, and addresses to block fraudulent data at inception. Customers blocked on other Shopify stores using Blox (or who have issued chargebacks elsewhere) are automatically flagged. The automated order cancellation detects and deletes bad orders.
Zoovu launches MCP Server to give AI agents access to product intelligence.Zoovu, an AI product search and discovery platform, has launched MCP Server, a Model Context Protocol server that gives AI agents governed access to product data. Zoovu says its new server allows enterprises (i) to connect any MCP-compatible agent to enriched and standardized product data, (ii) compatibility and configuration logic, and (iii) genAI product and shopping experts, providing consistent and trustworthy product information for scalable agentic commerce.
Seven months after Google teased “personal context” for AI Mode at Google I/O, Nick Fox, Google’s SVP of Knowledge and Information, says the feature still is not ready for a public rollout.
In an interview with the AI Inside podcast, Fox framed the delay as a product and permissions issue rather than a model-capability issue. As he put it: “It’s still to come.”
What Google Promised At I/O
At Google I/O, Google said AI Mode would “soon” incorporate a user’s past searches to improve responses. It also said you would be able to opt in to connect other Google apps, starting with Gmail, with controls to manage those connections.
The idea was that you wouldn’t need to restate context in every query if you wanted Google to use relevant details already sitting in your account.
On timing, Fox said some internal testing is underway, but he did not share a public rollout date:
“Some of us are testing this internally and working through it, but you know, still to come in terms of the in terms of the public roll out.”
You can hear the question and Fox’s response in the video below starting around the 37-minute mark:
AI Mode Growth Continues Without Personal Context
Even without that personalization layer, Fox pointed to rapid adoption, describing AI Mode as having “grown to 75 million daily active users worldwide.”
The bigger change may be in how people phrase queries. Fox described questions that are “two to three times as long,” with more explicit first-person context.
Instead of relying on AI Mode to infer intent, people are writing the context into the prompt, Fox says:
“People are trying to put put the right context into the query”
That matters because the “personal context” feature was designed to reduce that manual effort.
Geographic Patterns In Adoption
Adoption also appears uneven by market, with the strongest traction in regions that received AI Mode first. Fox described the U.S. as the most “mature” market because the product has had more time to become part of people’s routines.
He also pointed to strong adoption in markets where the web is less developed in certain languages or regions, naming India, Brazil, and Indonesia. The argument there is that AI Mode can stitch together information across languages and borders in ways traditional search results may not have for those markets.
Younger users, he added, are adopting the experience faster across regions.
Publisher Relationship Updates
The interview also included updates tied to how AI Mode connects people back to publisher content.
Preferred Sources is one of them. The feature lets you choose specific publications you want to see more prominently in Google’s Top Stories unit, and Google describes it as available worldwide in English.
Fox also described ongoing work on links in AI experiences, including increasing the number of links shown and adding more context around them:
“We’re actually improving the links within our within our AI experience, increasing the number of them…”
On the commercial side, he noted Google has partnerships with “over 3,000 organizations” across “50 plus countries.”
Technical Updates
Fox talked through product and infrastructure changes now powering AI Mode and related experiences.
One was shipping Gemini 3 Pro in Search on day one, which he described as the first time Google has shipped a frontier model” in Search on launch day.
He also described generative layouts,” where the model can generate UI code on the fly for certain queries.
To keep the experience fast, he emphasized model routing, where simpler queries go to smaller, faster models and heavier work is reserved for more complex prompts.
Why This Matters
A version of AI Mode that personalizes answers using opt-in Gmail context is still not available and doesn’t have a public timeline.
In the meantime, people appear to be compensating by typing more context into their queries. If that becomes the norm, it may push publishers toward satisfying longer, more situation-specific questions.
Looking Ahead
While AI Mode is still in its early stages, the 75 million daily active users figure suggests it’s large enough to monitor for visibility.
Google released Gemini 3 Flash, expanding its Gemini 3 model family with a faster model that’s now the default in the Gemini app.
Gemini 3 Flash is also rolling out globally as the default model for AI Mode in Search.
The release builds on Google’s recent Gemini 3 rollout, which introduced Gemini 3 Pro in preview and also announced Gemini 3 Deep Think as an enhanced reasoning mode.
What’s New
Gemini 3 Flash replaces Gemini 2.5 Flash as the default model in the Gemini app globally, which means free users get the Gemini 3 experience by default.
In Search, Gemini 3 Flash is rolling out globally as AI Mode’s default model starting today.
For developers, Gemini 3 Flash is available in preview via the Gemini API, including access through Google AI Studio, Google Antigravity, Vertex AI, Gemini Enterprise, plus tools such as Gemini CLI and Android Studio.
Pricing
Gemini 3 Flash pricing is listed at $0.50 per million input tokens and $3.00 per million output tokens on Google’s Gemini API pricing documentation.
On the same pricing page, Gemini 2.5 Flash is listed at $0.30 per million input tokens and $2.50 per million output tokens.
Google says Gemini 3 Flash uses 30% fewer tokens on average than Gemini 2.5 Pro for typical tasks, and citing third-party benchmarking for a “3x faster” comparison versus 2.5 Pro.
Why This Matters
The default language model in the Gemini app has changed, and users have access at no extra cost.
If you build on Gemini, Gemini 3 Flash offers a new option for high-volume workflows, priced well below Pro-tier rates.
Looking Ahead
Gemini 3 Flash is rolling out now. In Search, Gemini 3 Pro is also available in the U.S. via the AI Mode model menu.
The updated documentation focuses on a timing issue specific to JavaScript sites: canonicalization can happen twice during Google’s processing.
Google evaluates canonical signals once when it first crawls the raw HTML, then again after rendering the JavaScript. If your raw HTML contains one canonical URL and your JavaScript sets a different one, Google may receive conflicting signals.
The documentation notes that injecting canonical tags via JavaScript is supported but not recommended. When JavaScript sets a canonical URL, Google can pick it up during rendering, but incorrect implementations can cause issues.
Multiple canonical tags, or changes to an existing canonical tag during rendering, can lead to unexpected indexing results.
Best Practices
Google recommends two best practices depending on your site’s architecture.
The preferred method is setting the canonical URL in the raw HTML response to match the URL your JavaScript will ultimately render. This gives Google consistent signals before and after rendering.
If JavaScript must set a different canonical URL, Google recommends leaving the canonical tag out of the initial HTML. This can help avoid conflicting signals between the crawl and render phases.
The documentation also reminds developers to ensure only one canonical tag exists on any given page after rendering.
Why This Matters
This guidance addresses a subtle detail that can be easy to miss when managing JavaScript-rendered sites.
The gap between when Google crawls your raw HTML and when it renders your JavaScript creates an opportunity for canonical signals to diverge.
If you use frameworks like React, Vue, or Angular that handle routing and page structure client-side, it’s worth checking how your canonical tags are implemented. Look at whether your server response includes a canonical tag and whether your JavaScript modifies or duplicates it.
In many cases, the fix is to coordinate your server-side and client-side canonical implementations so they send the same signal at both stages of Google’s processing.
Looking Ahead
This documentation update clarifies behavior that may not have been obvious before. It doesn’t change how Google processes canonical tags.
If you’re seeing unexpected canonical selection in Search Console’s Page indexing reporting, check for mismatches between your raw HTML and rendered canonical tags. The URL Inspection tool shows both the raw and rendered HTML, which makes it possible to compare canonical implementations across both phases.
Trust is commonly understood to be a standalone quality that is passed between sites regardless of link neighborhood or topical vertical. What I’m going to demonstrate is that “trust” is not a thing that trickles down from a trusted site to another site. The implication for link building is that many may have been focusing on the wrong thing.
Six years ago I was the first person to write about link distance ranking algorithms that are a way to create a map of the Internet that begins with a group of sites that are judged to be trustworthy. These sites are called the seed set. The seed set links to other sites, which in turn link to ever increasing groups of other sites. The sites closer to the original seed set tend to be trustworthy websites. The sites that are furthest away from the seed set tend to be not trustworthy.
Google still counts links as part of the ranking process so it’s likely that there continues to be a seed set that is considered trustworthy from which the further away you a site is linked from the seeds the likelier it is considered to be spam.
Circling back to the idea of trust as a ranking related factor, trust is not a thing that is passed from one site to another. Trust, in this context, is not even a part of the conversation. Sites are said to be trustworthy by the link distance between the site in question and the original seed set. So you see, there is no trust that is conveyed from one site or another.
The word Trustworthiness is even a part of the E-E-A-T standard of what constitutes a quality website. So trust should never be considered as a thing that is passed from one site to another because it does not exist.
The takeaway is that link building decisions based on the idea of trust propagated through links are built on an outdated premise. What matters is whether a site sits close to trusted seed sites within the same topical neighborhood, not whether it receives a link from a widely recognized or authoritative domain. This insight transforms link evaluation into a relevance problem rather than a reputation problem. This insight should encourage site owners to focus on earning links that reinforce topical alignment instead of chasing links that appear impressive but have little, if any, ranking value.
Why Third Party Authority Metrics Are Inaccurate
The second thing about the link distance ranking algorithms that I think is quite cool and elegant is that websites naturally coalesce around each other according to their topics. Some topics are highly linked and some, like various business association verticals, are not well linked at all. The consequence is that those poorly linked sites that are nevertheless close to the original seed set do not acquire much “link equity” because their link neighborhoods are so small.
What that means is that a low-linked vertical can be a part of the original seed set and display low third-party authority metrics scores. The implication is that the third-party link metrics that measure how many inbound links a site has fail. They fail because third-party authority metrics follow the old and outdated PageRank scoring method that counts the amount of inbound links a site has. PageRank was created around 1998 and is so old that the patent on it has expired.
The seed set paradigm does not measure inbound links. It measures the distance from sites that are judged to be trustworthy. That has nothing to do with how many links those seed set sites have and everything to do with them being trustworthy, which is a subjective judgment.
That’s why I say that third-party link authority metrics are outdated. They don’t follow the seed set paradigm, they follow the old and outdated PageRank paradigm. The insight to take away from this is that many highly trustworthy sites are being overlooked for link building purposes because link builders are judging the quality of a site by outdated metrics that incorrectly devalue sites in verticals that aren’t well linked but are actually very close to the trustworthy seed set.
The Important Of Link Neighborhoods
Let’s circle back to the observation that websites tend to naturally link to other sites that are on the same topic. What’s interesting about this is that the seed sets can be chosen according to topic verticals. Some verticals have a lot of inbound links and some verticals are in their own little corner of the Internet and aren’t link to from outside of their clique.
A link distance ranking algorithm can thus be used to calculate the relevance according to whatever neighbhorhood a site is located in. Majestic does something like that with their Trust Flow and Topical Trust Flow metrics that actually start with trusted seed sites. Topical Trust Flow breaks that score down into specific topic categories. The Topical Trust Flow metric shows how relevant a website is for a given metric.
My point isn’t that you should use that metric, although I think it’s the best one available today. The point is that there is no context for thinking about trustworthiness as something that spreads from link to link.
Once you can think of links in the paradigm of distance within a topic category it becomes easier to understand why a link from a university website or some other so-called “high trust” site isn’t necessarily that good or useful. I know for certain because there was a time before distance ranking where the topic of the site didn’t matter but now it does matter very much and it has mattered for a long time now.
The takeaways here are:
It is counterproductive to go after so-called “high trust” links from verticals that are well outside of the topic of the website you’re trying to get a link to.
This means that it’s more important to get links from sites that are in the right topic or from a context that exactly matches the topic, from a website that’s in an adjacent topical category.
For example, a site like The Washington Post is not a part of the Credit Repair niche. Any “trust” that may be calculated from a New York Times link to a Credit Repair site will likely be dampened to zero. Of course it will. Remember, seed set trust distance is calculated within groups within a niche. There is no trust passed from one link to another link. It is only the distance that is counted.
Logically, it makes sense to assume that there will be no validating effect between irrelevant sites. relevant website for the purposes of the seed set trust calculations.
Takeaways
Trust is not something that’s passed by links Link distance ranking algorithms do not deal with “trust.” They only measure how close a site is to a trusted seed set within a topic.
Link distance matters more than link volume Ranking systems based on link distance assess proximity to trusted seed sites, not how many inbound links a site has.
Topic-based link neighborhoods shape relevance Websites naturally cluster by topic, and link value is likely evaluated within those topical clusters rather than across the entire web. A non-relevant link can still have some small value but irrelevant links stopped working almost twenty years ago.
Third-party authority metrics are misaligned with modern link ranking systems Some third-party metrics rely on outdated Page Rank-style link counting and fail to account for seed set distance and topical context.
Low-link verticals are undervalued by SEOs Entire niches that are lightly linked can still sit close to trusted seed sets, yet appear weak in third-party metrics, causing them to be overlooked in link builders.
Relevance outweighs perceived link strength Links from well-known but topically irrelevant sites likely contribute little or nothing compared to links from closely related or adjacent topic sites.
Modern link evaluation is about topical proximity, not “trust” or raw link counts. Search systems measure how close a site is to trusted seed sites within its own topic neighborhood, which means relevant links from smaller, niche sites can matter more than links from famous but unrelated domains.
This knowledge should enable smarter link building by focusing efforts on contextually relevant websites that may actually strengthen relevance and rankings, instead of chasing outdated link authority scores that no longer reflect how search works.
If you’re planning to build a website or publish a blog post, you’ve probably heard the word permalink pop up. But what is a permalink, really? In simple words, it’s the permanent link to a page on your website, like the official street address of your house. No matter how many times you update your content, this link remains the same and tells people (and Google) exactly where that page is located. In this blog, we’ll break down what a permalink is, why it matters, how to pick the right permalink structure, and how Yoast SEO helps you manage everything easily.
Quick note: If your website is already established, changing existing permalinks can cause broken links and SEO issues. Don’t worry, we’ll show you how to do it safely later in this guide.
Table of contents
Key takeaways
A permalink is a permanent link to a specific page on your website, ensuring a stable URL even when content updates occur
Choosing the right permalink structure improves SEO by creating clean, readable, and memorable URLs
Changing existing permalinks can result in broken links; always set up redirects when updating them to maintain SEO value
Best practices include keeping permalinks short, using hyphens, and avoiding dates unless necessary for clarity
Tools like Yoast SEO help manage permalinks effectively and prevent 404 errors during changes
What is a permalink?
Before we go any deeper, let’s start with the basics: what is a permalink? A permalink (short for “permanent link”) is the stable URL that points to a specific page or post on your website. Think of it as the forever address of a piece of content. Even if you update the page, the permalink remains the same, ensuring that people and search engines can always find it.
💡 Fun fact:
Permalinks gained popularity around the early 2000s, when bloggers sought clean, permanent URLs instead of long, messy links filled with numbers and symbols. The idea quickly spread across blogging platforms, and that’s how permalinks became a standard part of the web.
The slug, which is the last part of the URL, tells people what the page is about
So a clean permalink might look like:
→ https://yourdomain.com/sponsored-tweets-guide
And it will always lead to that exact guide.
Compare that to a messy, auto-generated URL like:
→ https://yourdomain.com/post-id?=5726fjwenfkd
The first one is easier to read, easier to remember, more suitable for sharing, and more beneficial for SEO. That’s precisely why understanding what the permalink in WordPress is so important, especially when your site grows, and you want your content to be easy to find.
Permalinks can also include categories or subfolders depending on your structure. For example:
→ https://yourdomain.com/blog/best-yoga-poses
No matter how your website changes on the backend, a permalink should always point to the same page. However, if you ever update your URL structure or change the slug, you’ll need to set up redirects; otherwise, the original permalink won’t work. We will discuss it further later in this blog post.
Clear, simple permalinks make your content easier to read, index, and trust. That’s why choosing a proper permalink structure early on matters so much.
A brief overview of permalink anatomy
Now that you know what a permalink is, let’s quickly break down what it’s actually made of. A permalink may seem simple on the outside, but each part of it has a specific purpose. Think of it like a small puzzle; every piece helps your browser understand exactly where to take you.
Let’s use a sample URL to make things easy:
Here’s a brief overview of each element in a permalink:
Protocol (or scheme)
This is the beginning of every URL, the http:// or https:// part. It tells your browser how to connect to a website.
→ http:// is the old, not-so-secure version → https:// is the secure, modern version that protects your data
Today, https:// is a must, especially if you care about trust, SEO, and safety.
Subdomain
This is the little prefix that comes before your main domain. In our example, it’s www. You can also use subdomains like shop.example.com or blog.example.com when you want to separate different sections of your website.
Root domain (or hostname)
This is your main website address, the part you buy, like example.com.
It has two pieces:
→ The name you choose (example) → The extension that follows (.com, .org, .net, etc.)
Together, they form the foundation of your website’s identity.
Path (or slug)
Everything that comes after the domain is usually the part WordPress users think of as the permalink.
In our example: /blog/my-first-post
→ The path (/blog/) shows the section or folder → The slug (my-first-post) is the unique part that describes the page
In WordPress, you can easily edit the slug for every post or page to make your permalink clean and SEO-friendly.
Parameters and anchors (optional extras)
These parts don’t appear in every permalink, but when they do, they provide additional information.
Parameters come after a question mark, like ?page=2 or tracking codes like ?utm_source=email
Anchors are denoted by a hash (#), such as #comments, and direct the visitor to a specific section on the same page
Difference between permalinks and URLs
You may wonder how a URL differs from a permalink. They look similar, they point to web pages, and they both live in your browser’s address bar, so what sets them apart? The easiest way to understand it is this: every permalink is a URL, but not every URL is a permalink.
To understand the difference better, URLs can be split into two types:
Static URLs:
These remain the same and always direct you to the same page. Example: yourdomain.com/blog/how-to-bake-sourdough. This is a static URL, and yes, it’s also a permalink.
Dynamic URLs:
These changes depend on user actions and typically include additional parameters, such as ?page=2 or ?color=blue. Example: yourdomain.com/products/shirt?color=blue&size=large. Dynamic URLs are not considered permalinks because search engines treat each version with different parameters as separate pages.
Examples of URLs that are not permalinks
Not every URL qualifies as a permalink. Here’s why:
Dynamic URLs containing parameters
These URLs load content, but the added parameters make them temporary and subject to change. For example, yourdomain.com/blog?page=2 and yourdomain.com/best-yoga-poses?source=email.
Static URLs that don’t point to a specific page
These are still URLs, but they direct you to the homepage, root domain, or a general section, rather than a specific piece of content. So they aren’t considered permalinks. For example, yourdomain.com, www.yourdomain.com, and shop.yourdomain.com.
The importance of permalinks in your digital presence
Now that you know what a permalink is and how it’s built, let’s talk about why it actually matters. Many people think permalinks are just tiny technical settings inside a content management system CMS, but they play a much bigger role in how your website looks, feels, and performs on the SERPs.
Search engines, such as Google, pay close attention to your URLs. A clean permalink clearly indicates what your page is about, making it easier for your content to rank high on Google.
For example: yourdomain.com/blog/what-is-a-permalink vs. yourdomain.com/?p=123. The first one clearly explains the topic. The second one tells Google nothing.
A strong permalink structure helps with:
Keywords: If your slug includes your main keyword, Google gets instant context
Crawlability: Clear folders, such as /services/web-design/, help search engines understand your site’s hierarchy
Link equity: People are far more likely to link to clean URLs than long, confusing ones. More links = stronger SEO
How permalinks shape the user experience
Permalinks aren’t just for search engines; they also affect how real people feel when they visit your website.
Clean, readable URLs make your site look professional and trustworthy. When someone sees a link like /contact-us/ or /shop/, they instantly know where they’re going. However, when they encounter something like /c/post?id=72, it appears suspicious and difficult to understand.
Good permalinks help with:
Clarity: Users can guess the topic from just the URL
Confidence: A neat URL feels more trustworthy than a random string of numbers
Memorability: Simple slugs are easy to remember or type again later
In short, clean permalinks create a smoother, friendlier experience for every visitor.
How permalinks support your site structure
Your permalink structure is basically the map of your website. It shows how your content fits together, and it helps both users and search engines move around your site easily.
For example, a URL like: yourdomain.com/services/web-design/.
Immediately tells someone:
They’re in the Services section
They’re looking at the Web Design page
This clear parent–child relationship makes your site feel more organized. And when your site structure is clean, Google can crawl and understand your content much faster.
Choosing the right permalink structure early on keeps your website simple, safe, and easy to manage as it grows.
Configuring permalinks in WordPress
When you publish a new page or post in WordPress, the platform automatically creates a permalink for you. The problem? The default permalink isn’t great for SEO or user experience. The good news is that WordPress makes it super easy to change your permalink settings and choose a structure that works better for your website.
Step 1: Log in to your WordPress dashboard and look for the Settings option on the left-hand menu
Step 2: Click on the ‘Permalinks.’ option to open the page permalink settings.
Lastly, select your desired permalink format as per your needs.
WordPress permalink options
Recommendations for each WordPress configuration
Each structure has its own purpose, so the best one for you depends on your SEO goals and the kind of content you publish. Here’s a quick and friendly breakdown:
Permalink settings
Setting recommendations
Day and name [https://example.com/2025/10/27/sample-post/]
Good for news-heavy sites.
Ideal for publishers who post multiple updates daily. However, for most websites, adding the full date makes your content appear outdated too quickly.
Month and name [https://example.com/2025/10/sample-post/]
The verdict is the same as above. Slightly shorter, but it still adds a timestamp that most businesses might not need.
Numeric [https://example.com/archives/123]
Skip this one.
Just another version of an unclear, non-descriptive link. It provides readers and search engines with no indication of what the page is about.
Post name [https://example.com/sample-post/]
The best option for 99% of websites.
Clean. Short. Easy to read. Keyword-friendly. Perfect for SEO. If you’ve ever searched for ‘what is a permalink in WordPress’ or ‘what is a WordPress permalink’, this is the recommended format.
Custom structure
This allows you to create your own format using tags like /%category%/, /%postname%/, or /%author%/.
Changing permalinks without ending up in 404
Although we refer to them as permalinks or permanent links, there may be instances when you need to update them. Maybe a page title has changed, maybe you’re fixing your site structure, or maybe you’re cleaning up old URLs. Whatever the reason, changing a permalink isn’t something you should do casually; one wrong move can lead to 404 errors.
So before we talk about how to change a permalink in WordPress, it’s important to understand when you should change it, why it matters, and what the possible impact might be.
When should you change a permalink?
Even though permalinks are meant to stay the same, there are situations where changing them makes sense. Here are the most common use cases where updating a permalink is not only acceptable, but sometimes necessary.
When your current permalink isn’t SEO-friendly
If your site started with WordPress’s default “plain” URLs (like /?p=123), you’ll quickly realize they don’t describe the content, which makes ranking harder. Switching to a clean, keyword-rich structure helps search engines better understand your page.
Example:
❌ yourdomain.com/?p=245
✔ yourdomain.com/how-to-start-a-blog
If your permalink doesn’t reflect your topic, fixing it may be a smart move.
When you’re improving user experience
Sometimes, older permalink formats are confusing or too long. Updating them to something short and clear makes URLs easier for people to read, remember, and share.
Users are much happier to click something like yourdomain.com/blue-dress instead of yourdomain.com/products/?id=blue&ref=123.
Clean permalinks help establish trust, which in turn leads to more clicks.
When your content feels “dated” because of the URL
If your permalink includes the year or full date (like news-style URLs), users may assume the content is outdated, even if the blog post remains relevant. Switching to a timeless structure can improve click-through rates; for example, use yourdomain.com/best-seo-tips/ instead of yourdomain.com/best-seo-tips-2025/.
When you’re rebranding or restructuring your site
If you are rebuilding your website, changing domain names, or reorganizing categories, ensure that your permalinks align with your new structure. This keeps your content consistent and prevents confusion.
When you’re moving to HTTPS
Switching from HTTP to HTTPS is a major security upgrade, and it affects your permalinks. It requires redirects to make sure your old links still work.
If the previous owner used messy or unclear permalinks, updating them can help you improve SEO, rebuild trust, and create a more organised structure.
The impact of changing permalinks (and why you must be careful)
Changing permalinks without a plan can cause serious problems, especially for SEO. Since permalinks function like permanent addresses, updating them incorrectly can break links throughout your entire website.
Here’s what can go wrong:
You may trigger 404 errors: This happens when the old URL no longer exists, and you haven’t added a redirect. Too many 404s hurt both user experience and SEO
You can lose rankings: If you change a permalink without a 301 redirect, Google treats the new URL as a brand-new page, causing drops in traffic and lost link value
Internal links can break: Any links inside your own site that point to the old URL will stop working unless they’re updated or redirected
External links stop sending traffic: Backlinks from other websites, emails, or social posts will lead to broken pages if redirects aren’t in place
How to safely change permalinks in WordPress (without breaking your site)
If you ever need to update a permalink, you shouldn’t jump straight in. There’s a simple three-step process that keeps your website safe, your rankings stable, and your visitors away from 404 errors. Think of it as your mini checklist for making permalink changes the right way.
Step 1: Back up your website (just to be safe)
Before touching your URL structure, always create a full backup. If anything goes wrong, you can restore your site in seconds, rather than trying to fix broken links one by one.
Step 2: Set up a 301 redirect for the old URL
This is the most important step. A 301 redirect informs Google and your visitors that your page has been permanently moved. It redirects everyone to the new permalink and retains nearly all of your SEO value.
Without a 301 redirect
With a 301 redirect
Your old link becomes a 404
Your traffic stays safe
Your new link loses rankings
Your SEO strength moves with the new URL
Any backlinks pointing to the old URL lose their power
Google updates the new permalink over time
You can set up redirects manually, but this usually requires knowledge of databases or cPanel. Thankfully, WordPress plugins make it easy, and this is where Yoast SEO Premium becomes incredibly helpful.
The plugin’s redirect manager feature automatically creates a 301 redirect every time you change a URL or move/delete a page. So even if you forget to set up a redirect, Yoast handles it for you and protects your SEO behind the scenes.
Here’s how the Yoast SEO Premium plugin takes the stress out of the process:
Automatically creates redirects when you change or delete a URL
Prevents 404 errors by forwarding visitors to the correct page
Let you choose the right redirect type (301, 302, 307, 410, etc.)
Organises all redirects in one clean dashboard
Supports advanced options like REGEX redirects and import/export
With Yoast SEO Premium, you don’t have to remember any of these steps. You change the permalink, and the plugin handles the redirect instantly, keeping your SEO, structure, and user experience intact.
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Step 3: Change your permalink structure
Once your redirects are ready, you can safely update your permalink in the WordPress editor or change the global permalink settings. At this point, you won’t break any links because your redirects are already in place.
Permalink best practices to prevent frequent changes
A well-structured permalink saves you from future headaches. Here are the best practices to follow every time you create a new permalink on your WordPress site.
Keep your permalink short, simple, and descriptive
A slug should not look like a full sentence. It should act like an address that clearly tells users and search engines what the page is about. Shorter permalinks are easier to read, share, and understand. For example, /improve-seo-2025/
Use your target keyword naturally
Your main keyword should appear in the slug, but only once. This helps search engines identify the topic without making your URL look spammy. For example, /what-is-a-permalink/.
Use hyphens to separate words
Hyphens are the correct standard for URLs. Search engines read them as natural separators between words.
Avoid:
Underscores (my_post)
Spaces (my%20post)
Words combined without separation (mypost)
Always write them like this: yourdomain.com/chocolate-cake
Use dates with care
As mentioned earlier, dates can be particularly helpful for news sites or when covering strictly time-sensitive topics. However, for most blogs and business websites, dates in permalinks can make your content appear outdated, even when it remains relevant. Therefore, when possible, choose evergreen URLs, such as /best-yoga-poses/.
Use lowercase letters in all URLs
Since URLs can be case-sensitive, uppercase and lowercase versions of the same slug may be treated as distinct pages. This can cause duplicate content issues. Always stick to lowercase, such as: yourdomain.com/types-of-tea.
Encode special characters and emojis
If your slug includes accented characters (ä, å, ö) or emojis (which you should avoid using), they must be encoded using UTF-8. Without encoding, browsers may break the URL or cause crawl errors.
Encoding ensures the permalink displays correctly and remains accessible to search engines.
Stay consistent with your permalink structure
Whether you are using /blog/%postname%/ or placing all service pages under /services/%postname%/, choose one approach and follow it for the entire site; consistency improves navigation, user experience, and SEO.
Your permalinks are your digital foundation
Your permalink structure may appear simple on the surface, but it silently supports the way users and search engines interact with your site. A clear and consistent URL helps readers understand your content, builds trust, reduces confusion, and prevents the need for constant changes later. It also provides search engines with a clear path to follow, which enhances your overall SEO performance.
By keeping permalinks short, descriptive, and keyword-focused, avoiding unnecessary stop words, choosing hyphens, maintaining consistency in formats, and using lowercase letters, you create a structure designed to last. These small choices make your URLs easy to share, maintain, and understand by Google.
With the right permalink strategy and the help of tools like Yoast SEO for managing redirects and site structure, you can build a solid foundation that supports your content for years to come.
Your URLs are not just technical details. They are part of your site’s identity. Treat them with care, and they will continue to guide search engines and users to the right place every time.
Ahad Qureshi
I’m a Computer Science grad who accidentally stumbled into writing—and stayed because I fell in love with it. Over the past six years, I’ve been deep in the world of SEO and tech content, turning jargon into stories that actually make sense. When I’m not writing, you’ll probably find me lifting weights to balance my love for food (because yes, gym and biryani can coexist) or catching up with friends over a good cup of chai.
