May 29 2025
Google Discover, AI Mode, And What It Means For Publishers: Interview With John Shehata via @sejournal, @theshelleywalsh

With the introduction of AI Overviews and ongoing Google updates, it’s been a challenging few years for news publishers, and the announcement that Google Discover will now appear on desktop was welcome.

However, the latest announcement of AI Mode could mean that users move away from the traditional search tab, and so the salvation of Discover might not be enough.

To get more insight into the state of SEO for new publishers, I spoke with John Shehata, a leading expert in Discover, digital audience development, and news SEO.

Shehata is the founder of NewzDash and brings over 25 years of experience, including executive roles at Condé Nast (Vogue, New Yorker, GQ, etc.).

In our conversation, we explore the implications of Google Discover launching on desktop, which could potentially bring back some lost traffic, and the emergence of AI Mode in search interfaces.

We also talk about AI becoming the gatekeeper of SERPs and John offers his advice for how brands and publishers can navigate this.

You can watch the full video here and find the full transcript below:

IMHO: Google Discover, AI, And What It Means For Publishers [Transcript]

Shelley Walsh: John, please tell me, in your opinion, how much traffic for news publishers do you think has been impacted by AIO?

John: In general, there are so many studies showing that sites are losing anywhere from 25 to 32% of all their traffic because of the new AI Overviews.

There is no specific study done yet for news publishers, so we are working on that right now.

In the past, we did an analysis about a year ago where we found that about 4% of all the news queries generate an AI Overview. That was like a year ago.

We are integrating a new feature in NewzDash where we actually track AI Overview for every news query as it trends immediately, and we will see. But the highest penetration we saw of AI Overview was in health and business.

Health was like 26% of all the news queries generated AI Overview. I think business, I can’t remember specifically, but it was like 8% or something. For big trending news, it was very, very small.

So, in a couple of months, we will have very solid data, but based on the study that I did a year ago, it’s not as integrated for news queries, except for specific verticals.

But overall, right now, the studies show there’s about a loss of anywhere from 25 to 32% of their traffic.

Can Google Discover Make Up The Loss?

Shelley: I know from my own experience as well that publishers are being really hammered quite hard, obviously not just by AIO but also the many wonderful Google updates that we’ve been blessed with over the last 18 months as well. I just pulled some stats while I was doing some research for our chat.

You said that Google Discover is already the No. 1 traffic source for most news publishers, sometimes accounting for up to 60% of their total Google traffic.

And based on current traffic splits of 90% mobile and 10% desktop, this update could generate an estimated 10-15% of additional Discover traffic for publishers.

Do you think that Discover can actually replace all this traffic that has been lost by AIO? And do you think Discover is enough of a strategy for publishers to go all in on and for them to survive in this climate?

John: Yeah, this is a great question. I have this conspiracy theory that Google is sending more traffic through Discover to publishers as they are taking away traffic from search.

It’s like, “You know what? Don’t get so sad about this. Just focus here: Discover, Discover, Discover.” Okay? And I could be completely wrong.

“The challenge is [that] Google Discover is very unreliable, but at the same time, it’s addictive. Publishers have seen 50-60% of their traffic coming through Discover.”

I think publishers are slowly forgetting about search and focusing more on Discover, which, in my opinion, is a very dangerous approach.

“I think Google Discover is more like a channel, not a strategy. So, the focus always should be on the content, regardless of what channel you’re pushing your content into – social, Discover, search, and so on.”

I believe that Discover is an extension of search. So, even if search is driving less traffic and Discover is driving more and more traffic, if you lose your status in search, eventually you will lose your traffic in Discover – and I have seen that.

We work with some clients where they went like very social-heavy or Discover-heavy kind of approach, you know – clicky headlines, short articles, publish the next one and the next one.

Within six months, they lost all their search traffic. They lost their Discover traffic, and [they] no longer appear in News.

So, Google went to a certain point where it started evaluating, “Okay, this publisher is not a news publisher anymore.”

So, it’s a word of caution.

You should not get addicted to Google Discover. It’s not a long-term strategy. Squeeze every visit you can get from Google Discover as much as you can, but remember, all the traffic can go away overnight for no specific reason.

We have so many complaints from Brazil and other countries, where people in April, like big, very big sites, lost all their traffic, and nothing changed in their technical, nothing changed in their editorial.

So, it’s not a strategy; it’s just a tactic for a short-term period of time. Utilize it as much as you can. I would think the correct strategy is to diversify.

Right now, Google is like 80% of publishers’ traffic, including search, Discover, and so on.

And it’s hard to find other sources because social [media] has kept diminishing over the years. Like Facebook, [it] only retains traffic on Facebook. They try as best as they can. LinkedIn, Twitter, and so on.

So, I think newsletters are very, very important, even if they’re not sexy or they won’t drive 80% [of] other partnerships, you know, and so on.

I think publishers need to seriously consider how they diversify their content, their traffic, and their revenue streams.

The Rise Of AI Mode

Shelley: Just shifting gears, I just wanted to have a chat with you about AI Mode. I picked up something you said recently on LinkedIn.

You said that AI Mode could soon become the default view, and when that happens, expect more impressions and much fewer clicks.

So on that basis, how do you expect the SERPs to evolve over the next year, obviously bearing in mind that publishers do still need to focus on SERPs?

John: If you think about the evolution of SERPs, we used to have the thin blue links, and then Google recognized that that’s not enough, so they created the universal search for us, where you can have all the different elements.

And that was not enough, so it started introducing featured snippets and direct answers. It’s all about the user at the end of the day.

And with the explosion of LLM models and ChatGPT, Perplexity, and all this stuff, and the huge adoption of users over the last 12 months, Google started introducing more and more AI.

It started with SGE and evolved to AI Overview, and recently, it launched AI Mode.

And if you listen to Sundar from Google, you hear the message is very clear: This is the future of search. AI is the future of search. It’s going to be integrated into every product and search. This is going to be very dominant and so on.

I believe right now they are testing the waters, to see how people interact with AI Overviews. How many of them will switch to AI Mode? Are they satisfied with the single summary of an answer?

And if they want to dig more, they can go to the citations or the reference sites, and so on.

I don’t know when AI Mode will become dominant, but if you think, if you go to Perplexity’s interface and how you search, it’s like it’s a mix between AI and results.

If you go to ChatGPT and so on, I think eventually, maybe sooner or later, this is going to be the new interface for how we deal with search engines and generative engines as well.

From all that we see, so I don’t know when, but I think eventually, we’re going to see it soon, especially knowing that Gen Z doesn’t do much search. It’s more conversational.

So, I think we’re going to see it soon. I don’t know when, but I think they are testing right now how users are interacting with AI Mode and AI Overviews to determine what are the next steps.

Visibility, Not Traffic, Is The New Metric

Shelley: I also picked up something else you said as well, which was [that] AI becomes the gatekeeper of SERPs.

So, considering that LLMs are not going to go away, AI Mode is not going to go away, how are you tackling this with the brands that you advise?

John: Yesterday, I had a long meeting with one of our clients, and we were talking about all these different things.

And I advised them [that] the first step is they need to start tracking, and then analyze, and then react. Because I think reacting without having enough data – what is the impact of AI on their platform, on their sites, and traffic – and traffic cannot be the only metric.

For generations now, it’s like, “How much traffic I’m getting?” This has to change.

Because in the new world, we will get less traffic. So, for publishers that solely depend on traffic, this is going to be a problem.

You can measure your transactions or conversions regardless of whether you get traffic or not.

ChatGPT is doing an integration with Shopify, you know.

Google AI Overview has direct links where you can shop through Google or through different sites. So, it doesn’t have to go through a site and then shop, and so on.

I think you have to track and analyze where you’re losing your traffic.

For publishers, are these verticals that you need to focus on or not? You need to track your visibility.

So now, more and more people are searching for news. I shared something on LinkedIn yesterday: If a user said, “Met Gala 2025,” Google will show the top stories and all the news and stuff like this.

But if you slightly change your query to say “What happened at Met Gala? What happened between Trump and Zelensky? What happened in that specific moment or event?”

Google now identifies that you don’t want to read a lot of stories to understand what happened. You want a summary.

It’s like, “Okay, yesterday this is what happened. That was the theme. These are the big moments,” and so on, and it gives you references to dive deeper.

More and more users will be like, “Just tell me the summary of what happened.” And that’s why we’re going to see less and less impressions back to the sites.

And I think also schema is going to be more and more important [in] how ChatGPT finds your content. I think more and more publishers will have direct relationships or direct deals with different LLMs.

I think ChatGPT and other LLMs need to pay publishers for the content that they consume, either for the training data or for grounded data like search data that they retrieve.

I think there needs to be some kind of an exchange or revenue stream that should be an additional revenue stream for publishers.

Prioritize Analysis Over Commodity News

Shelley: That’s the massive issue, isn’t it? That news publishers are working very hard to produce high-quality breaking news content, and the LLMs are just trading off that.

If they’re just going to be creating their summaries, it does take us back, I suppose, to the very early days of Google when everybody complained that Google was doing exactly the same.

Do you think news publishers need to change their strategy and the content they actually produce? Is that even possible?

John: I think they need to focus on content that adds value and adds more information to the user. And this doesn’t apply to every publisher because some publishers are just reporting on what happened in the news. “This celebrity did that over there.”

This kind of news is probably available on hundreds and thousands of sites. So, if you stop writing this content, Google and other LLMs will find that content in 100 different ways, and it’s not a quality kind of content.

But the other content where there’s deep analysis of a situation or an event, or, you know, like, “Hey, this is how the market is behaving yesterday. This is what you need to do.”

This kind of content I think will be valuable more than anything else versus just simply reporting. I’m not saying reporting will go away, but I think this is going to be available from so many originals and copycats that just take the same article and keep rewriting it.

And if Google and other LLMs are telling us we want quality content, that content is not cheap. Producing that content and reporting on that content and the media, and so on, is not cheap.

So, I believe there must be a way for these platforms to pay publishers based on the content they consume or get from the publisher, and even the content that they use in their training model.

The original model was Google: “Hey, we will show one or two lines from your article, and then we will give you back the traffic. You can monetize it over there.” This agreement is broken now. It doesn’t work like before.

And there are people yelling, “Oh, you should not expect anything from Google.” But that was the deal. That was the unwritten deal, that we, for the last two generations, the last two decades, were behaving on.

So, yeah, that’s I think, this is where we have to go.

The Ethical Debate Around LLMs And Publisher Content

Shelley: It’s going to be a difficult situation to navigate. I agree with you totally about the expert content.

It’s something we’ve been doing at SEJ, investing quite heavily in creating expert columns for really good quality, unique thought-leadership content rather than just news cycle content.

But, this whole idea of LLMs – they are just rehashing; they are trading fully off other people’s hard work. It’s going to be quite a contentious issue over the next year, and it’s going to be interesting to see how it plays out. But that’s a much wider discussion for another time.

You touched on something before, which was interesting, and it was about tracking LLMs. And you know, this is something that I’ve been doing with the work that I do, trying to track more and more references, citations in AI, and then referrals from AI.

John: I think one of the things I’m doing is I meet with a lot of publishers. In any given week, I will meet with maybe 10 to 15 publishers.

And by meeting with publishers and listening to what’s happening in the newsroom – what their pain points are, [what] efficiency that they want to work on, and so on, that motivates us – that actually builds our roadmap.

For NewzDash, we have been tracking AI Overview for a while, and we’re launching this feature in a couple of months from now.

So, you can imagine that this is every term that you’re tracking, including your own headlines and what they need to rank for, and then we can tell you, “For this term, AI Overview is available there,” and we estimate the visibility, how it’s going to drop over there.

But we can also tell you for a group of terms or a category, “Hey, you write a lot about iPhones, and this category is saturated with AI Overview. So, 50% of the time for every new iPhone trend – iPhone 16 launch date – yes, you wrote about it, but guess what? AI Overview is all over there, and it’s pushing down your visibility.”

Then, we’re going to expand into other LLMs. So, we’re planning to track mentions and prompts and citations and references in ChatGPT, which is the biggest LLM driver out of all, and then Perplexity and any other big ones.

I think it’s very important to understand what’s going on, and then, based on the data, you develop your own strategy based on your own niche or your content.

Shelley: I think the biggest challenge [for] publisher SEOs right now is being fully informed and finding attribution for connecting to the referrals that are coming from AI traffic, etc. It’s certainly an area I’m looking at.

John, it’s been fantastic to speak to you today, and thank you so much for offering your opinion. And I hope to catch you soon in person at one of your meetups.

John: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Thank you to John Shehata for being a guest on the IMHO show.

Note: This was filmed before Google I/O and the announcement of the rollout of AI Mode in the U.S.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Shelley Walsh/Search Engine Journal

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May 29 2025
Google’s Query Fan-Out Patent: Thematic Search via @sejournal, @martinibuster

A patent that Google filed in December 2024 presents a close match to the Query Fan-Out technique that Google’s AI Mode uses. The patent, called Thematic Search, offers an idea of how AI Mode answers are generated and suggests new ways to think about content strategy.

The patent describes a system that organizes related search results to a search query into categories, what it calls themes, and provides a short summary for each theme so that users can understand the answers to their questions without having to click a link to all of the different sites.

The patent describes a system for deep research, for questions that are broad or complex. What’s new about the invention is how it automatically identifies themes from the traditional search results and uses an AI to generate an informative summary for each one using both the content and context from within those results.

Thematic Search Engine

Themes is a concept that goes back to the early days of search engines, which is why this patent caught my eye a few months ago and caused me to bookmark it.

Here’s the TL/DR of what it does:

  • The patent references its use within the context of a large language model and a summary generator.
  • It also references a thematic search engine that receives a search query and then passes that along to a search engine.
  • The thematic search engine takes the search engine results and organizes them into themes.
  • The patent describes a system that interfaces with a traditional search engine and uses a large language model for generating summaries of thematically grouped search results.
  • The patent describes that a single query can result in multiple queries that are based on “sub-themes”

Comparison Of Query Fan-Out And Thematic Search

The system described in the parent mirrors what Google’s documentation says about the Query Fan-Out technique.

Here’s what the patent says about generating additional queries based on sub-themes:

“In some examples, in response to the search query 142-2 being generated, the thematic search engine 120 may generate thematic data 138-2 from at least a portion of the search results 118-2. For example, the thematic search engine 120 may obtain the search results 118-2 and may generate narrower themes 130 (e.g., sub-themes) (e.g., “neighborhood A”, “neighborhood B”, “neighborhood C”) from the responsive documents 126 of the search results 118-2. The search results page 160 may display the sub-themes of theme 130a and/or the thematic search results 119 for the search query 142-2. The process may continue, where selection of a sub-theme of theme 130a may cause the thematic search engine 120 to obtain another set of search results 118 from the search engine 104 and may generate narrower themes 130 (e.g., sub-sub-themes of theme 130a) from the search results 118 and so forth.”

Here’s what Google’s documentation says about the Query Fan-Out Technique:

“It uses a “query fan-out” technique, issuing multiple related searches concurrently across subtopics and multiple data sources and then brings those results together to provide an easy-to-understand response. This approach helps you access more breadth and depth of information than a traditional search on Google.”

The system described in the patent resembles what Google’s documentation says about the Query Fan-Out technique, particularly in how it explores subtopics by generating new queries based on themes.

Summary Generator

The summary generator is a component of the thematic search system. It’s designed to generate textual summaries for each theme generated from search results.

This is how it works:

  • The summary generator is sometimes implemented as a large language model trained to create original text.
  • The summary generator uses one or more passages from search results grouped under a particular theme.
  • It may also use contextual information from titles, metadata, surrounding related passages to improve summary quality.
  • The summary generator can be triggered when a user submits a search query or when the thematic search engine is initialized.

The patent doesn’t define what ‘initialization’ of the thematic search engine means, maybe because it’s taken for granted that it means the thematic search engine starts up in anticipation of handling a query.

Query Results Are Clustered By Theme Instead Of Traditional Ranking

The traditional search results, in some examples shared in the patent, are replaced by grouped themes and generated summaries. Thematic search changes what content is shown and linked to users. For example, a typical query that a publisher or SEO is optimizing for may now be the starting point for a user’s information journey. The thematic search results leads a user down a path of discovering sub-themes of the original query and the site that ultimately wins the click might not be the one that ranks number one for the initial search query but rather it may be another web page that is relevant for an adjacent query.

The patent describes multiple ways that the thematic search engine can work (I added bullet points to make it easier to understand):

  • “The themes are displayed on a search results page, and, in some examples, the search results (or a portion thereof) are arranged (e.g., organized, sorted) according to the plurality of themes. Displaying a theme may include displaying the phrase of the theme.
  • In some examples, the thematic search engine may rank the themes based on prominence and/or relevance to the search query.
  • The search results page may organize the search results (or a portion thereof) according to the themes (e.g., under the theme of ‘cost of living”, identifying those search results that relate to the theme of ‘cost of living”).
  • The themes and/or search results organized by theme by the thematic search engine may be rendered in the search results page according to a variety of different ways, e.g., lists, user interface (UI) cards or objects, horizontal carousel, vertical carousel, etc.
  • The search results organized by theme may be referred to as thematic search results. In some examples, the themes and/or search results organized by theme are displayed in the search results page along with the search results (e.g., normal search results) from the search engine.
  • In some examples, the themes and/or theme-organized search results are displayed in a portion of the search results page that is separate from the search results obtained by the search engine.”

Content From Multiple Sources Are Combined

The AI-generated summaries are created from multiple websites and grouped under a theme. This makes link attribution, visibility, and traffic difficult to predict.

In the following citation from the patent, the reference to “unstructured data” means content that’s on a web page.

According to the patent:

“For example, the thematic search engine may generate themes from unstructured data by analyzing the content of the responsive documents themselves and may thematically organize the search results according to the themes.

….In response to a search query (“moving to Denver”), a search engine may obtain search results (e.g., responsive documents) responsive to that search query.

The thematic search engine may select a set of responsive documents (e.g., top X number of search results) from the search results obtained by the search engine, and generate a plurality of themes (e.g., “neighborhoods”, “cost of living”, “things to do”, “pros and cons”, etc.) from the content of the responsive documents.

A theme may include a phrase, generated by a language model, that describes a theme included in the responsive documents. In some examples, the thematic search engine may map semantic keywords from each responsive document (e.g., from the search results) and connect the semantic keywords to similar semantic keywords from other responsive documents to generate themes.”

Content From Source Pages Are Linked

The documentation states that the thematic search engine links to the URLs of the source pages. It also states that the thematic search result could include the web page’s title or other metadata. But the part that’s important for SEOs and publishers is the part about attribution, links.

“…a thematic search result 119 may include a title 146 of the responsive document 126, a passage 145 from the responsive document 126, and a source 144 of the responsive document. The source 144 may be a resource locator (e.g., uniform resource location (URL)) of the responsive document 126.

The passage 145 may be a description (e.g., a snippet obtained from the metadata or content of the responsive document 126). In some examples, the passage 145 includes a portion of the responsive document 126 that mentions the respective theme 130. In some examples, the passage 145 included in the thematic search result 119 is associated with a summary description 166 generated by the language model 128 and included in a cluster group 172.”

User Interaction Influences Presentation

As previously mentioned, the thematic search engine is not a ranked list of documents for a search query. It’s a collection of information across themes that are related to the initial search query. User interaction with those AI generated summaries influences which sites are going to receive traffic.

Automatically generated sub-themes can present alternative paths on the user’s information journey that begins with the initial search query.

Summarization Uses Publisher Metadata

The summary generator uses document titles, metadata, and surrounding textual content. That may mean that well-structured content may influence how summaries are constructed.

The following is what the patent says, I added bullet points to make it easier to understand:

  • “The summary generator 164 may receive a passage 145 as an input and outputs a summary description 166 for the inputted passage 145.
  • In some examples, the summary generator 164 receives a passage 145 and contextual information as inputs and outputs a summary description 166 for the passage 145.
  • In some examples, the contextual information may include the title of the responsive document 126 and/or metadata associated with the responsive document 126.
  • In some examples, the contextual information may include one or more neighboring passages 145 (e.g., adjacent passages).
  • In some examples, the contextual information may include a summary description 166 for one or more neighboring passages 145 (e.g., adjacent passages).
  • In some examples, the contextual information may include all the other passages 145 on the same responsive document 126. For example, the summary generator may receive a passage 145 and the other passages 145 (e.g., all other passages 145) on the same responsive document 126 (and, in some examples, other contextual information) as inputs and may output a summary description 166 for the passage 145.”

Thematic Search: Implications For Content & SEO

There are two way that AI Mode ends for a publisher:

  1. Since users may get their answers from theme summaries or dropdowns, zero-click behavior is likely to increase, reducing traffic from traditional links.
  2. Or, it could be that the web page that provides the end of the user’s information journey for a given query is the one that receives the click.

I think this means that we really need to re-think the paradigm of ranking for keywords and maybe consider what the question is that’s being answered by a web page, and then identify follow-up questions that may be related to that initial query and either include that in the web page or create another web page that answers what may be the end of the information journey for a given search query.

You can read the patent here:

Thematic Search (PDF)

Read Google’s Documentation Of AI Mode (PDF)

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May 28 2025
Google Fixes AI Mode Traffic Attribution Bug via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has fixed a bug that caused AI Mode search traffic to be reported as “direct traffic” instead of “organic traffic” in Google Analytics.

The problem started last week. Google was adding a special code (rel=”noopener noreferrer”) to links in its AI Mode search results. This code caused Google Analytics to incorrectly attribute traffic to websites, rather than from Google search.

Reports from Aleyda Solis, Founder at Orainti, and others in the SEO community confirm the issue is resolved.

Discovery of the Attribution Problem

Maga Sikora, an SEO director specializing in AI search, first identified the issue. She warned other marketers:

“Traffic from Google’s AI Mode is being tagged as direct in GA — not organic, as Google adds a rel=’noopener noreferrer’ to those links. Keep this in mind when reviewing your reports.”

The noreferrer code is typically used for security purposes. However, in this case, it was blocking Google Analytics from tracking the actual source of the traffic.

Google Acknowledges the Bug

John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google, quickly responded. He suggested it was a mistake on Google’s end, stating:

“My assumption is that this will be fixed; it looks like a bug on our side.”

Mueller also explained that Search Console doesn’t currently display AI Mode data, but it will be available soon.

He added:

“We’re updating the documentation to reflect this will be showing soon as part of the AI Mode rollout.”

Rapid Resolution & Current Status

Google fixed the problem within days.

Solis confirmed the fix:

“I don’t see the ‘noreferrer’ in Google’s AI Mode links anymore.”

She’s now seeing AI Mode data in her analytics and is verifying that traffic is correctly labeled as “organic” instead of “direct.”

Impact on SEO Reporting

The bug may have affected your traffic data for several days. If your site received AI Mode traffic during this period, some of your “direct” traffic may have been organic search traffic.

This misclassification could have:

  • Skewed conversion tracking
  • Affected budget decisions
  • Made SEO performance look worse than it was
  • Hidden the true impact of AI Mode on your site

What To Do Now

Here’s your action plan:

  1. Audit recent traffic data – Check for unusual spikes in direct traffic from the past week
  2. Document the issue – Note the affected dates for future reference
  3. Adjust reporting – Consider adding notes to client reports about the temporary bug
  4. Prepare for AI Mode tracking – Start planning how to measure this new traffic source

Google’s prompt response shows it understands the importance of accurate data for marketers.

Featured Image: Tada Images/Shutterstock

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May 28 2025
Future-Proofing WordPress SEO: How To Optimize For AI-Driven Search Features via @sejournal, @cshel

Search is changing. I hate saying that (again) because it feels cliche at this point. But, cliche or not, it is true and it is seismic.

With the rollout of AI Overviews, Bing Copilot, and conversational search interfaces like ChatGPT and Perplexity, SEO is no longer just about traditional rankings; it’s about representation and visibility.

Instead of obsessing over page 1 and traffic numbers, WordPress site owners need to start focusing on whether they’re represented in the answers users actually see and if that visibility is resulting in revenue.

The old rankings system itself is mattering less and less because AI-driven search features aren’t just scraping a list of URLs. They’re synthesizing content, extracting key insights, and delivering summary answers.

If your content isn’t built for that kind of visibility, it may as well not exist.

Google doesn’t even look like Google anymore. Since the March core update, AI Overviews have more than doubled in appearance, and this trend shows no signs of slowing. This is our new reality, and it’s only going to accelerate.

WordPress is already a flexible, powerful platform, but out of the box, it’s not optimized for how AI-driven search works today.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to future-proof your WordPress site by aligning your structure, content, and technical setup with what large language models actually understand and cite.

Don’t Build Trash Content

Before we talk about how to do it right, let’s talk about the strategy that’s finally running out of road.

For literal decades, site owners have spun up content sites that were never designed for people, only for ad revenue. These sites weren’t meant to inform or help – just rank well enough to earn the click and display the ad.

Unfortunately, WordPress made this model wildly scalable. It almost instantly became the go-to tool for anyone who wanted to launch dozens (or hundreds) of sites fast, slap on some AdSense, and rake in passive income – money for nothing and your clicks for free.

That model worked very well for a very long time. But (thankfully), that time has come to an end.

AI Overviews and answer engines aren’t surfacing this kind of content anymore. Traffic is drying up. Cost per mille (CPM) is down. And trust – not volume – is the currency that search engines now prioritize.

Even if you’re trying to brute-force the model with paid placements or “citation strategies,” you’re competing with brands that have earned their authority over the years.

To be clear, WordPress is not and was never the problem. The problem is that people use it to scale the wrong kind of content.

If your content is created for algorithms instead of actual people, AI is going to pass you by. This new era of search doesn’t reward valueless content factories. It rewards clarity, “usefulness,” and trust.

Nothing in the rest of this article is going to fix that dying business model. If that’s what you’re here for, you’re already too late.

If, however, you’re focused on publishing something valuable – something worth reading, referencing, or citing – then please, keep reading.

Use WordPress Like You Mean It

WordPress is the most widely used content management system (CMS) for a reason. It’s flexible, extensible, and powerful when you use it right.

However, default settings and bloated themes won’t cut it in an AI-first environment. You have to optimize with clarity in mind.

Let’s start with your theme. Choose one that uses semantic HTML properly:

,

,
, and a clear heading hierarchy.

Avoid themes and builders that generate “div soup.” Large language models rely on clean HTML to interpret relationships between elements. If your layout is a maze of

s and JavaScript, the model may miss the point entirely.

If the theme you love isn’t perfect, that’s fine. You can usually fix the markup with a child theme, custom template, or a little dev help. It’s worth the investment.

A Checklist For Optimizing WordPress Fundamentals

  • Use lightweight themes: e.g., GeneratePress, Astra, or Blocksy are all well-regarded by developers for their performance and clean markup.
  • Optimize image delivery: Large, uncompressed images are one of the biggest culprits behind slow load times. Reducing file sizes improves speed, performance scores, and user experience, especially on mobile.
  • Use caching and CDNs: These reduce server load and speed up delivery by storing content closer to your users. Better performance means faster indexing, higher satisfaction, and improved Core Web Vitals.
  • Delete unused plugins: Seriously. If it’s deactivated and collecting dust, it’s a liability. Every inactive plugin is an unpatched attack vector just waiting to be exploited.
  • Delete unused themes: Same issue as above. They can still pose security risks and bloat your site’s file structure. Keep only your active theme and a fallback default, like Twenty Twenty-Four.

Declutter Hidden Or Fragmented Content

Pop-ups, tabs, and accordions might be fine for user experience, but they can obscure content from LLMs and crawlers.

If the content isn’t easily accessible in the rendered HTML – without requiring clicks, hovers, or JavaScript triggers to reveal – it may not be indexed or understood properly.

This can mean key product specs, FAQs, or long-form content go unnoticed by AI-driven search systems.

Compounding the problem is clutter in the Document Object Model (DOM).

Even if something is visually hidden from users, it might still pollute your document structure with unnecessary markup.

Minimize noisy widgets, auto-playing carousels, script-heavy embeds, or bloated third-party integrations that distract from your core content.

These can dilute the signal-to-noise ratio for both search engines and users.

If your theme or page builder leans too heavily on these elements, consider simplifying the layout or reworking how key content is presented.

Replacing JavaScript-heavy tabs with inline content or anchor-linked jump sections is one simple, crawler-friendly improvement that preserves UX while supporting AI discoverability.

Use WordPress SEO Plugins That Help Structure For LLMs

WordPress SEO plugins are most often associated with schema, and schema markup is helpful, but its value has shifted in the era of AI-driven search.

Today’s large language models don’t need schema to understand your content. But that doesn’t mean schema is obsolete.

In fact, it can act as a helpful guidepost – especially on sites with less-than-perfect HTML structure (which, let’s be honest, describes most websites).

It helps surface key facts and relationships more reliably, and in some cases, makes the difference between getting cited and getting skipped.

Modern SEO tools do more than just generate structured data. They help you manage metadata, highlight cornerstone content, and surface author information – all of which play a role in how AI systems assess trust and authority.

Just don’t make the mistake of thinking you can “add E-E-A-T” with a plugin toggle. John Mueller has said as much at Search Central Live NYC in March of this year.

What author schema can do, however, is help search engines and LLMs connect your content to your wider body of work. That continuity is where E-E-A-T becomes real.

Finally, consider adding a WordPress SEO plugin that can generate a Table of Contents.

While it’s useful for readers, it also gives LLMs a clearer understanding of your page’s hierarchy, helping them extract, summarize, and cite your content more accurately.

Structure Your Content So AI Uses It

Whether you’re creating posts in the Block Editor, Classic Editor, or using a visual page builder like Elementor or Beaver Builder, the way you structure your content matters more than ever.

AI doesn’t crawl content like a bot. It digests it like a reader. To get cited in an AI Overview or answer box, your content needs to be easy to parse and ready to lift.

Start by using clear section headings (your H2s and H3s) and keeping each paragraph focused on a single idea.

If you’re explaining steps, use numbered lists. If you’re comparing options, try a table. The more predictable your structure, the easier it is for a language model to extract and summarize it.

And don’t bury your best insight in paragraph seven – put your core point near the top. LLMs are just like people: They get distracted. Leading with a clear summary or TL;DR increases your odds of inclusion.

Finally, don’t forget language cues. Words like “Step 1,” “Key takeaway,” or “In summary” help AI interpret your structure and purpose. These phrases aren’t just good writing; they’re machine-readable signals that highlight what matters.

Show AI You’re A Trusted Source

WordPress gives you powerful tools to communicate credibility – if you’re taking advantage of them.

E-E-A-T (which stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) isn’t just an acronym; it’s the bar AI systems use to decide whether your content is worth citing.

WordPress gives you plenty of opportunities to show you’re the real deal.

Start by making your authors visible. Include a bio, credentials, and a link to an author archive.

If your theme doesn’t support it, add a plugin or customize the layout.

Schema markup for authors helps, too, but remember, it doesn’t magically give you E-E-A-T. What it does is help LLMs connect your byline to your broader body of work across the web.

From there, build out internal signals of authority. Link your content together in meaningful ways.

Surface cornerstone pieces that demonstrate depth on a topic. These internal relationships show both users and machines that your site knows what it’s talking about.

Finally, keep it fresh. Outdated content is less likely to be included in AI answers.

Regular content audits, scheduled refreshes, and clear update timestamps all help signal to LLMs (and humans) that you’re active and credible.

Final Thoughts: Build For Understanding, Not Just Ranking

At this point, it should be clear that WordPress can absolutely thrive in an AI-first search environment – but only if you treat it like a platform, not a shortcut.

Success with AI Overviews, answer engines, and conversational search doesn’t come from tricking algorithms. It comes from helping language models truly understand what your content is about – and why you’re the one worth citing.

That means focusing on structure. On clarity. On authorship. On consistency. That means building not just for Google’s crawler, but for the models that generate answers people actually read.

So, yes, SEO has changed. If you’re using WordPress, you’re already holding the right tool. Now, it’s just a matter of wielding it well.

More Resources:

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 28 2025
Google’s CEO Says AI Overviews Website Referrals Are Increasing via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s Sundar Pichai said in an interview that AI Overviews sends more traffic to a wider set of websites, insisting that Google cares about the web ecosystem and that he expects AI Mode to continue to send more traffic to websites, a claim that the interviewer challenged.

AI Agents Remove Customer Relationship Opportunities

There is a revolutionary change in how ecommerce that’s coming soon, where AI agents research and make purchase decisions on behalf of consumers. The interviewer brought up that some merchants have expressed concern that this will erode their ability to upsell or develop a customer relationship.

A customer relationship can be things like getting them to subscribe to an email or to receive text messages about sales, offer a coupon for a future purchase or to get them to come back and leave product reviews, all the ways that a human consumer interacts with a brand that an AI agent does not.

Sundar Pichai responded that AI agents present a good user experience and compared the AI agent in the middle between a customer and a merchant to a credit card company that sits in between the merchant and a customer, it’s a price that a merchant is willing to pay to increase business.

Pichai explained:

“I can literally see, envision 20 different ways this could work. Consumers could pay a subscription for agents, and their agents could rev share back. So you know, so that that is the CIO use case you’re talking about. That’s possible. We can’t rule that out. I don’t think we should underestimate, people may actually see more value participating in it.

I think this is, you know, it’s tough to predict, but I do think over time like you know like if you’re removing friction and improving user experience, it’s tough to bet against those in the long run, right? And so I think, in general if you’re lowering friction for it, you know, and and people are enjoying using it, somebody’s going to want to participate in it and grow their business.

And like would brands want to be in retailers? Why don’t they sell directly today? Why don’t they sell directly today? Why won’t they do that? Because retailers provide value in the middle.

Why do merchants take credit cards? There are many parts like and you find equilibrium because merchants take credit cards because they see more business as part of taking credit cards than not, right. And which justifies the increased cost of taking credit cards and may not be the perfect analogy. But I think there are all these kinds of effects going around.”

Pichai Claims That Web Ecosystem Is Growing

The interviewer began talking about the web ecosystem, calling attention to the the “downstream” effect of AI Search and AI search agents on information providers and other sites on the web.

Pichai started his answer by doing something he did in another interview about this same question where he deflected the question about web content by talking about video content.

He also made the claim that Google isn’t killing the web ecosystem and cited that the number of web pages in Google’s index has grown by 45% over the past two years, claiming it’s not AI generated content.

He said:

“I do think people are consuming a lot more information and the web is one specific format. So we should talk about the web, but zooming back out, …there are new platforms like YouTube and others too. So I think people are just consuming a lot more information, right? So it feels like like an expansionary moment. I think there are more creators. People are putting out more content, you know, and so people are generally doing a lot more. Maybe people have a little extra time in their hands. And so it’s a combination of all that.

On the web, look things have been interesting and you know we’ve had these conversations for a while, you know, obviously in 2015 there was this famous, the web is dead. You know, I always have it somewhere around, you know, which I look at it once in a while. Predictions, it’s existed for a while.

I think web is evolving pretty profoundly. When we crawl, when we look at the number of pages available to us, that number has gone up by 45% in the last two years alone. So that’s a staggering thing to think about.”

The interviewer challenged Pichai’s claim by asking if Google is detecting whether that increase in web pages is because they’re AI generated.

Pichai was caught by surprise by that question and struggled to find the answer and then finally responded that Google has many techniques for understanding the quality of web pages, including whether it was machine generated.

He doubled down on his statement that the web ecosystem is growing and then he started drifting off-topic, then he returned to the topic.

He continued:

“That doesn’t explain the trend we are seeing. So, generally there are more web pages. At an underlying level, so I think that’s an interesting phenomenom. I think everybody as a creator, like you do at The Verge, I think today if you’re doing stuff you have to do it in a cross-platform, cross-format way. So I think things are becoming more dynamic cross-format.

I think another thing people are underestimating with AI is AI will make it zero-friction to move from one format to another, because our models are multi-modal.

So I think this notion, the static moment of, you produce content by format, whereas I think machines can help translate it from, almost like different languages and they can go seamlessly between. I think it’s one of the incredible opportunities to be unlocked.

I think people are producing a lot of content, and I see consumers consuming a lot of content. We see it in our products. Others are seeing it too. So that’s probably how I would answer at the highest level.”

Related: The Data Behind Google’s AI Overviews: What Sundar Pichai Won’t Tell You

Search Traffic and Referral Patterns

The interviewer asked Pichai what his response is to people who say that AI Overviews is crushing their business.

Pichai answered:

“AI mode is going to have sources and you know, we’re very committed as a direction, as a product direction, part of why people come to Google is to experience that breadth of the web and and go in the direction they want to, right?

So I view us as giving more context. Yes, there are certain questions which may get answers, but overall that’s the pattern we see today. And if anything over the last year, it’s clear to us the breadth of where we are sending people to is increasing. And, so I expect that to be true with AI Mode as well.”

The interviewer immediately responded by noting that if everything Pichai said was true, people would be less angry with him.

Pichai dismissed the question, saying:

“You’re always going to have areas where people are robustly debating value exchanges, etc. … No one sends traffic to the web the way we do.”

See also: Google’s AI Overviews Slammed By News Publishers

Oh, Really?

What do you think? Are Google’s AI features prioritizing sending traffic to web sites?

Watch the Sundar Pichai interview here:

Featured image is screenshot from video

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 27 2025
Google’s Sergey Brin Says AI Can Synthesize Top 1,000 Search Results via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google co-founder Sergey Brin says AI is transforming search from a process of retrieving links to one of synthesizing answers by analyzing thousands of results and conducting follow-up research. He explains that this shift enables AI to perform research tasks that would take a human days or weeks, changing how people interact with information online.

Machine Learning Models Are Converging

For those who are interested in how search works, another interesting insight he shared was that algorithms are converging into a single model. In the past, Googlers have described a search engine as multiple engines, multiple algorithms, thousands of little machines working together on different parts of search.

What Brin shared is that machine learning algorithms are converging into models that can do it all, where the learnings from specialist models are integrated into the more general model.

Brin explained:

“You know, things have been more converging. And, this is sort of broadly through across machine learning. I mean, you used to have all kinds of different kinds of models and whatever, convolutional networks for vision things. And you know, you had… RNN’s for text and speech and stuff. And, you know, all of this has shifted to Transformers basically.

And increasingly, it’s also just becoming one model.”

Google Integrates Specialized Model Learnings Into General Models

His answer continued, shifting to explaining how it’s the usual thing that Google does, integrating learnings from specialized models into more general ones.

Brin continued his answer:

“Now we do get a lot of oomph occasionally, we do specialized models. And it’s it’s definitely scientifically a good way to iterate when you have a particular target, you don’t have to, like, do everything in every language, handle whatever both images and video and audio in one go. But we are generally able to. After we do that, take those learnings and basically put that capability into a general model.”

Future Interfaces: Multimodal Interaction

Google has recently filed multiple patents around a new kind of visual and audio interface where Google’s AI can take what a user is seeing as input and provide answers about it. Brin admitted that their first attempt at doing that with Google Glasses was premature, that the technology for supporting that wasn’t mature. He says that they’ve made progress with that kind of searching but that they’re still working on battery life.

Brin shared:

“Yeah, I kind of messed that up. I’ll be honest. Got the timing totally wrong on that.

There are a bunch of things I wish I’d done differently, but honestly, it was just like the technology wasn’t ready for Google Glass.

But nowadays these things I think are more sensible. I mean, there’s still battery life issues, I think, that you know we and others need to overcome, but I think that’s a cool form factor.”

Predicting The Future Of AI Is Difficult

Sergey Brin declined to predict what the future will be like because technology is moving so fast.

He explained:

“I mean when you say 10 years though, you know a lot of people are saying, hey, the singularity is like, right, five years away. So your ability to see through that into the future, I mean, it’s very hard”

Improved Response Time and Voice Input Are Changing Habits

He agreed with the interviewers that improved response time to voice input are changing user habits, making real-time verbal interaction more viable. But he also said that voice mode isn’t always the best way to interface with AI and used the example of a person talking to a computer at work as a socially awkward application of voice input. This is interesting because we think of the Star Trek Computer voice method of interacting with a computer but what it would get quite loud and distracting if everyone in an office were interacting audibly with an AI.

He shared:

“Everything is getting better and faster and so for you know, smaller models are more capable. There are better ways to do inference on them that are faster.

We have the big open shared offices. So during work I can’t really use voice mode too much. I usually use it on the drive.

I don’t feel like I could, I mean, I would get its output in my headphones, but if I want to speak to it, then everybody’s listening to me. So I just think that would be socially awkward. …I do chat to the AI, but then it’s like audio in and audio out. Yeah, but I feel like I honestly, maybe it’s a good argument for a private office.”

AI Deep Research Can Synthesize Top 1,000 Search Results

Brin explained how AI’s ability to conduct deep research, such as analyzing massive amounts of search results and conducting follow-up research changes what it means to do search. He described a shift in search that changes the fundamental nature of search from retrieval (here are some links, look at them) to generating insights from the data (here’s a summary of what it all means, I did the work for you).

Brin contrasted what he can do manually with regular search and what AI can do at scale.

He said:

“To me, the exciting thing about AI, especially these days, I mean, it’s not like quite AGI yet as people are seeking or it’s not superhuman intelligence, but it’s pretty damn smart and can definitely surprise you.

So I think of the superpower is when it can do things in the volume that I cannot. So you know by default when you use some of our AI systems, you know, it’ll suck down whatever top ten search results and kind of pull out what you need out of them, something like that. But I could do that myself, to be honest, you know, maybe take me a little bit more time.

But if it sucks down the top, you know thousand results and then does follow-on searches for each of those and reads them deeply, like that’s, you know, a week of work for me like I can’t do that.”

AI With Advertising

Sergey Brin expressed enthusiasm for advertising within the context of the free tier of AI but his answer skipped over that, giving the indication that this wasn’t something they were planning for. He instead promoted the concept of providing a previous generation model for free while reserving the latest generation model for the paid tiers.

Sergey explained:

“Well, OK, it’s free today without ads on the side. You just got a certain number of the Top Model. I think we likely are going to have always now like sort of top models that we can’t supply infinitely to everyone right off the bat. But you know, wait three months and then the next generation.

I’m all for, you know, really good AI advertising. I don’t think we’re going to like necessarily… our latest and greatest models, which are you, know, take a lot of computation, I don’t think, we’re going to just be free to everybody right off the bat, but as we go to the next generation, you know, it’s like every time we’ve gone forward a generation, then the sort of the new free tier is usually as good as the previous pro tier and sometimes better.”

Watch the interview here:

Sergey Brin, Google Co-Founder | All-In Live from Miami

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 23 2025
Google I/O 2025: The Background Google Didn’t Tell You via @sejournal, @MordyOberstein

On March 29, 2025, the New York Yankees hit a franchise record nine home runs in one game versus the Milwaukee Brewers.

To accomplish this feat, they used a bat that will probably change baseball forever (or not).

They provided Google with the opportunity to oversell its AI abilities, hoping that no one would be familiar with baseball, torpedo bats, and Google Search – all at the same time.

I am that person.

The Background Google Didn’t Tell You

That same day, I was sitting at the very desk I am writing this article on, ordering my groceries online and watching Nestor Cortes pitch against his former team, the New York Yankees.

Cortes, a personal favorite of mine (and of all Yankees fans), picked up right where he left off in 2024 … giving up home runs (he gave a grand slam to the Dodgers in the World Series that I am still hurting from) – dinger (that’s a word for a home run) after dinger.

As I was watching the Yankees crush Cortes (my 7-year-old was on cloud nine), I noticed one of the players’ bats was oddly shaped (that player was Austin Wells, note this for later). I thought it must have been my eyes, but then, player after player, it was the same thing.

The shape of the bat was different. What the Yankees did was custom-load the bulk of the wood of the bat to where the player (per advanced analytics) makes contact most often (so that when they did make contact, it would be harder). Not every player, but a good chunk of the lineup, was using these bats.

You do marketing, not baseball. Why do you care?

Because, as the Yankees hit a franchise record number of home runs in this game, the entire baseball world went bonkers.

Is this bat legal? What is this thing? Who is using it? Since when?

If you are in the baseball world, you know this was an absolutely huge story.

If you’re not familiar with baseball, the term “torpedo bat” sounds entirely obscure and obtuse, which is what Google was counting on when it used this example at Google I/O 2025 to show how advanced its AI abilities are.

What Did Google Say Exactly?

Rajan Patel, who is the VP of Search Engineering at Google, got on stage at Google I/O and said he was a huge baseball fan.

Screenshot from Google I/O 2025 livestream, May 2025

So what?

Rajan used a query related to baseball to show how Google’s AI Mode was analyzing complex data.

Specifically, he ran the following query (prompt?): “Show the batting average and OBP for this season and last for notable players who currently use a torpedo bat.”

It seems really complex, which is exactly how Rajan packaged this to the audience, saying: “Think about it, there are so many parts to that question.”

It does seem like a really niche sort of topic that you’d have to have very specific knowledge about.

It’s got multiple layers to it. It’s got data and acronyms wrapped up in it. It’s got everything you need to think that this is a seriously complex question that only advanced AI could answer. It’s even asking for two years’ worth of data.

The reality is that you could find this information out in three very easy searches and never even have to click on a website to do it.

Shall we?

Why What Google Said Is Not ‘Advanced’

This whole “torpedo bats” thing seems extremely niche, which is, again, from an optics and perception point of view, this is exactly what Google wants you to think.

In reality, as I mentioned, this was a hot story in baseball for a good while.

Moreover, the question of who uses these bats was a big deal. People thought, initially, that these players were cheating.

It was a semi-scandal, which means there is a ton of content from big-name websites that specifically lists which players are using the type of bat.

Here you go, it’s right in the featured snippet:

Screenshot from search for [who uses torpedo bats], Google, May 2025

The last player mentioned above, Dansby Swanson, is who Google featured in its talk:

Screenshot from Google I/O 2025 livestream, May 2025

Compare the list Google shows to the one from Yahoo Sports.

Four out of the seven on Google lists are right there in the featured snippet (Austin Wells, Jazz Chisolm [Jr.], Anthony Volpe, and Dansby Swanson).

For the record, three out of those four play for the Yankees, and Wells was the first person we saw use the bat type in 2025 (some players experimented using it in 2024).

Not hard information to access. It’s right there – so are the players who are “notable.”

Rajan makes a point of saying Google needs to know who the notable players are to answer this “complex” question. Meaning, he portrayed this as being “complex.”

Maybe in 2015, not in 2025.

It’s been stored in the Knowledge Graph for years.

Just Google [best mlb players]:

Screenshot from search for [best players mlb], Google, May 2025

Boop. Carousel of the best MLB players in the league right now (pretty good list too!)

So, the complex thing that Google’s AI Mode had to do was pull information from a Yahoo Sports page (or wherever) and combine that with information it’s been using in the Knowledge Graph for years?

If that’s hard for Google and complex for AI, then we have problems.

There were, in essence, three parts to Google’s “query” here:

  1. Answering who in the league uses a torpedo bat.
  2. Identifying notable current players.
  3. Pulling the stats (this year’s and last year’s) of these notable players using this new bat.

The data part seems complex. Stats? Current stats? Seems like a lot.

There are two things you need to know:

The first thing is that baseball is famous for its stats. Fans and teams have been tracking stats for 100 years – number of home runs, batting averages, earned run averages, runs batted in, strikeout walks, doubles, and triples (we haven’t even gotten into spin rates and launch angles).

That’s correct, baseball teams track how many times the ball spun between when the pitcher threw the ball and when the catcher caught the ball.

Today, the league is dominated by advanced analytics.

Guess who powers it all?

I bet you guessed, Google.

Screenshot from search for [who powers mlb statcast], Google, May 2025

The second thing you need to know is that Google has been collecting stats on specific players in its Knowledge Graph for a good while.

Forget that the stats on specific players can be found on dozens upon dozens of websites; Google itself collects them.

Here’s a search for the league’s best player (no, he does not use a torpedo bat):

Screenshot from search for [aaron judge stats], Google, May 2025

Did you notice the stats? Of course, you did; it’s a tab in the Knowledge Panel.

It’s information that might seem incredibly vast or complex, but it’s literally stored by Google.

What I’m saying is, Google created a “complex” scenario that was nothing more than combining two things it stores in the Knowledge Graph with one thing that is spread all over the web (i.e., the list of players using this type of bat).

Is that really that complex for Google, or was it engineered to look complex for the optics?

What Is The Best Way To Talk About AI Products?

I love the graphs. Taking the data and the information and creating a custom graph with AI?

Love that. That’s amazing. That’s so useful.

Google, you don’t need to oversell it; it’s awesome without you doing that.

Google is not going to listen to me (it will read this article, but it will not listen to my advice). I’m not writing this for Google.

I am writing this for you. If you are a small or a medium-sized marketing team and you’re looking at how Google and other big brands market their AI products as a beacon for your own marketing … don’t.

Don’t feel you have to. Decide on your own what is the best way to talk about AI products.

Is the best way really to overstate the complexity? To try to “package” something as more than it really is?

I get the temptation, but people are not stupid. They will start to see through the smoke and mirrors.

It may take them time. It may take them more time than you might think – but it will happen.

I’ll end with a personal story.

My wife is a nurse. She was recently sent to a seminar where they talked about “what’s happening with all the AI stuff.”

My wife came home and was taken aback by what’s going on out there and how people are using AI, as well as how good the AI was (or wasn’t).

My wife is now a thousand times more skeptical about AI.

What happens if you’re following what these brands are doing and oversell AI when your target audience eventually has the experience my wife did?

More Resources:

Featured Image: Master1305/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 21 2025
Google’s Official Advice On Optimizing For AI Overviews & AI Mode via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has released new guidelines for website owners who want to excel in AI-powered search.

In a blog post, Search Advocate John Mueller shared tips for ranking in AI Overviews and AI Mode.

This guidance comes as Google moves beyond traditional “blue links” to offer more AI-driven search features.

AI Is Changing Search Behavior

Google noted that users now ask longer questions and follow-up queries through these new interfaces, which creates challenges and opportunities for publishers.

Mueller writes:

“The underpinnings of what Google has long advised carries across to these new experiences. Focus on your visitors and provide them with unique, satisfying content.”

Content Quality Remains Paramount

Google says creating “unique, non-commodity content” is still the foundation for success in all search formats, including AI.

The company recommends focusing on content that meets user needs instead of trying to trick the algorithm.

Google points out that AI search users ask more specific questions and follow-ups. This suggests that thorough, detailed content works especially well in these new search environments.

Technical Requirements and Page Experience

Beyond good content, Google stressed the importance of technical access.

This includes ensuring that:

  • Googlebot isn’t blocked
  • Pages load correctly
  • Content can be indexed

Also focus on user experience factors like mobile-friendly design, fast loading speeds, and clear main content.

Mueller writes in the blog post:

“Even the best content can be disappointing to people if they arrive at a page that’s cluttered, difficult to navigate or makes it hard to find the main information they’re seeking. Ensure that you’re providing a good page experience for those who arrive either from classic or AI search results…”

Managing Content Visibility In AI Experiences

Google confirms that current content controls work for AI search.

Publishers can use the following tags to control how their content appears:

  • nosnippet
  • data-nosnippet
  • max-snippet
  • noindex

More restrictions will limit visibility in AI results.

Multimedia Content For Multimodal Search

Google’s blog post stressed the growing importance of images and videos as Google’s AI improves.

With multimodal search, you can upload images and ask questions about them. Google recommends adding high-quality visuals to support your text content.

Ecommerce businesses should keep their Merchant Center and Business Profile information updated for better performance in visual searches.

Rethinking Success Metrics

Google shared insights about user behavior with AI search results, suggesting publishers may need to reconsider how they measure success:

“We’ve seen that when people click to a website from search results pages with AI Overviews, these clicks are higher quality, where users are more likely to spend more time on the site.”

Google suggests AI results provide better context about topics, potentially sending more engaged website visitors.

Mueller encourages site owners to look beyond just clicks and focus on more meaningful metrics like sales, signups, and engagement.

What This Means

This guidance shows that while search looks different now, Google’s main ranking principles haven’t changed.

Unique content, technical quality, and user experience still define success, even as AI changes how people use search.

The key takeaways are:

  • Your website meets the technical requirements for Google Search
  • Optimize your images and videos
  • Review your meta directives
  • Rethink how you measure traffic quality from AI search rather than just counting clicks.

Google’s full guidance, along with additional resources on AI features and generative AI content, can be found on the Google Search Central blog.

Featured Image: bluestork/Shutterstock

Ecommerce MGMT 0 Comments
May 20 2025
Google Gemini Upgrades: New AI Capabilities Announced At I/O via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has announced updates to its Gemini AI platform at Google I/O, introducing features that could transform how search and marketing professionals analyze data and interact with digital tools.

The new capabilities focus on enhanced reasoning, improved interface interactions, and more efficient workflows.

Gemini 2.5 Models Get Performance Upgrades

Google highlights that Gemini 2.5 Pro leads the WebDev Arena leaderboard with an ELO score of 1420. It ranks first in all categories on the LMArena leaderboard, which measures human preferences for AI models.

The model features a one-million-token context window for processing large content inputs, effectively supporting both long text analysis and video understanding.

Meanwhile, Gemini 2.5 Flash has been updated to enhance performance in reasoning, multimodality, code, and long context processing.

Google reports it now utilizes 20-30% fewer tokens than previous versions. The updated Flash model is currently available in the Gemini app and will be generally available for production in Google AI Studio and Vertex AI in early June.

Gemini Live: New Camera and Screen Sharing Capabilities

The expanded Gemini Live feature is a significant addition to the Gemini ecosystem, now available on Android and iOS devices.

Google reports that Gemini Live conversations are, on average, five times longer than text-based interactions.

The updated version includes:

  • Camera and screen sharing capabilities, allowing users to point their phones at objects for real-time visual help.
  • Integration with Google Maps, Calendar, Tasks, and Keep (coming in the next few weeks).
  • The ability to create calendar events directly from conversations.

These features enable marketers to demonstrate products, troubleshoot issues, and plan campaigns through natural conversations with AI assistance.

Deep Think: Enhanced Reasoning for Complex Problems

The experimental “Deep Think” mode for Gemini 2.5 Pro uses research techniques that enable the model to consider multiple solutions before responding.

Google is making Deep Think available to trusted testers through the Gemini API to gather feedback prior to a wider release.

New Developer Tools for Marketing Applications

Several enhancements to the developer experience include:

  • Thought Summaries: Both 2.5 Pro and Flash will now provide structured summaries of their reasoning process in the Gemini API and Vertex AI.
  • Thinking Budgets: This feature is expanding to 2.5 Pro, enabling developers to manage token usage for thinking prior to responses, which impacts costs and performance.
  • MCP Support: The introduction of native support for the Model Context Protocol in the Gemini API allows for integration with open-source tools.

Here are examples of what thought summaries and thinking budgets look like in the Gemini interface:

Image Credit: Google
Image Credit: Google

Gemini in Chrome & New Subscription Plans

Gemini is being integrated into Chrome, rolling out to Google AI subscribers in the U.S. This feature allows users to ask questions about content while browsing websites.

You can see an example of this capability in the image below:

Image Credit: Google

Google also announced two subscription plans: Google AI Pro and Google AI Ultra.

The Ultra plan costs $249.99/month (with 50% off the first three months for new users) and provides access to Google’s advanced models with higher usage limits and early access to experimental AI features.

Looking Ahead

These updates to Gemini signify notable advancements in AI that marketers can integrate into their analytical workflows.

As these features roll out in the coming months, SEO and marketing teams can assess how these tools fit with their current strategies and technical requirements.

The incorporation of AI into Chrome and the upgraded conversational abilities indicate ongoing evolution in how consumers engage with digital content, a trend that search and marketing professionals must monitor closely.

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May 20 2025
Google Expands AI Features in Search: What You Need to Know via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

At its annual I/O developer conference, Google announced upgrades to its AI-powered Search tools, making features like AI Mode and AI Overviews available to more people.

These updates, which Search Engine Journal received an advanced look at during a preview event, show Google’s commitment to creating interactive search experiences.

Here’s what’s changing and what it means for digital marketers.

AI Overviews: Improved Accuracy, Global Reach

AI Overviews, launched last year, are now available in over 200 countries and more than 40 languages.

Google reports that this feature is transforming how people utilize Search, with a 10% increase in search activity for queries displaying AI Overviews in major markets like the U.S. and India.

At the news preview, Liz Reid, Google’s VP and Head of Search, addressed concerns regarding AI accuracy.

She acknowledged that there have been “edge cases” where AI Overviews provided incorrect or even harmful information. Reid explained that these issues were taken seriously, corrections were made, and continuous AI training has led to improved results over time.

Expect Google to continue enhancing how AI ensures accuracy and reliability.

AI Mode: Now Available to More Users

AI Mode is now rolling out to all users in the U.S. without the need to sign up for Search Labs.

Previously, only testers could try AI Mode. Now, anyone in the U.S. will see a new tab for AI Mode in Search and in the Google app search bar.

How AI Mode Works

AI Mode uses a “query fan-out” system that breaks big questions into smaller parts and runs many searches at once.

Users can also ask follow-up questions and get links to helpful sites within the search results.

Google is using AI Mode and AI Overviews as testing grounds for new features, like the improved Gemini 2.5 AI model. User feedback will help shape what becomes part of the main Search experience.

New Tools: Deep Search, Live Visual Search, and AI-Powered Agents

Deep Search: Research Made Easy

Deep Search in AI Mode helps users dig deeper. It can run hundreds of searches at once and build expert-level, fully-cited reports in minutes.

Image Credit: Google
Image Credit: Google

Live Visual Search With Project Astra

Google is updating how users can search visually. With Search Live, you can use your phone’s camera to talk with Search about what you see.

For example, point your camera at something, ask a question, and get quick answers and links. This feature can boost local searches, visual shopping, and on-the-go learning.

Image Credit: Google

AI Agents: Getting Tasks Done for You

Google is adding agentic features, which are AI tools capable of managing multi-step tasks.

Initially, AI Mode will assist users in purchasing event tickets, reserving restaurant tables, and scheduling appointments. The AI evaluates hundreds of options and completes forms, but users always finalize the purchase.

Partners such as Ticketmaster, StubHub, Resy, and Vagaro are already onboard.

Image Credit: Google
Image Credit: Google

Smarter Shopping: Try On Clothes and Buy With Confidence

AI Mode is enhancing the shopping experience. The new tools use Gemini and Google’s Shopping Graph and include:

  • Personalized Visuals: Product panels show items based on your style and needs.
  • Virtual Try-On: Upload a photo to see how clothing looks on you, powered by Google’s fashion AI.
  • Agentic Checkout: Track prices, get sale alerts, and let Google’s AI buy for you via Google Pay when the price drops.
  • Custom Charts: For sports and finance, AI Mode can build charts and graphs using live data.
Image Credit: Google

Personalization and Privacy Controls

Soon, AI Mode will offer more personalized results by using your past searches and, if you opt in, data from other Google apps like Gmail.

For example, if you’re planning a trip, AI Mode can suggest restaurants or events based on your bookings and interests. Google says you’ll always know when your personal info is used and can manage your privacy settings anytime.

Google’s View: Search Use Cases Are Growing

CEO Sundar Pichai addressed how AI is reshaping search during the preview event.

He described the current transformation as “far from a zero sum moment,” noting that the use cases for Search are “dramatically expanding.”

Pichai highlighted increasing user excitement and conveyed optimism, stating that “all of this will keep getting better” as AI capabilities mature.

Looking Ahead

Google’s latest announcements signal a continued push toward AI as the core of the search experience.

With AI Mode rolling out in the U.S. and global expansion of AI Overviews, marketers should proactively adapt their strategies to meet the evolving expectations of both users and Google’s algorithms.

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