Recipe Intent Keywords Are Triggering Google AI Overviews via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Keywords that contain recipe intent are triggering Google AI Overviews; however, keyword phrases that expressly ask for recipes are triggering the normal recipe rich results. SEOs on social media are reporting that recipe-related queries are triggering AI Overviews, so it may very well be that these are now officially rolled out.

Tom Critchlow (LinkedIn profile) posted about it on LinkedIn. He wasn’t the only one spotting it, there are scattered posts in private Facebook SEO groups that are discussing these as well.

According to Critchlow’s post on LinkedIn:

“Starting to see AI Overviews show up for recipe queries and…. I think these are pretty good? Validates my hypothesis that each link will come with a reason to click it…. Recommendations over rankings…”

Is AI Overviews Showing Up For Recipe Queries?

At this time, for me, AI Overviews is not showing up for recipe queries that use the word “recipe” on either desktop or mobile devices. Queries that use the keyword “recipe” or “recipes” still show the regular recipe rich results regardless of device used.

However, queries that have a recipe intent but don’t contain the “recipe” keyword variants do trigger recipe queries.

Recipe Intent Screenshot

Keyword phrases that contain the word “recipe” trigger the normal recipe rich results.

Recipe Keyword Phrase

Keyword phrases that are about recipes but aren’t specifically requesting a recipe tend to trigger AI Overviews. So it’s not really showing AI Overviews for recipe queries, just for queries that are about food and have a latent recipe intent.

Not Showing Up In Mobile Search

The keyword phrases that trigger recipe AI Overviews on desktop do not appear to trigger them on mobile devices. For example, the query Cordon Bleu triggers AIO on the desktop but won’t trigger it on a mobile device.

Keyword Phrase On Mobile Device

The keyword phrase Tom Critchlow shared (healthy dinner ideas) that triggered an AI Overviews on desktop fails to do the same thing on a mobile device.

Mobile Device Results For Query: Healthy Dinner Ideas

So it could be that recipe intent queries have rolled out to desktop users but not yet to mobile devices.

Reduced Traffic To Recipe Bloggers

Recipe bloggers may begin to see reduced levels of traffic from desktop devices. This trend may accelerate as more people begin to rely on chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude for recipes.

ChatGPT Shows Recipes For Recipe Queries

Chatbots are trained to output plausible responses so users may not be able to tell the difference between an authentic recipe and an authentic-sounding recipe. Speaking from personal experience using chatbots for recipes, I find them to be unreliable sources for authentic recipes but that’s probably something that the average home cook won’t notice because the synthetic recipes generally satisfy expectations.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/New Africa

Google CEO Sundar Pichai Discusses Fate Of The Human-Created Web via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, responded to concerns about the impact of recent changes in Search and was repeatedly asked to clarify his position on the web ecosystem and how it fits into what he calls the next chapter of search. Pichai’s responses were given in the context of a recent interview on the Lex Fridman podcast.

Google CEO’s Commitment To Web Ecosystem Challenged

Lex Fridman challenged Pichai on whether Google will continue sending users to the human-created web. Pichai responded that supporting the web ecosystem is something he feels deeply about.

Fridman said:

“And the idea that AI mode will still take you to the web, to the human-created web?”

Pichai responded:

“Yes, that’s going to be a core design principle for us.”

Fridman followed up by noting that he’s been asking more questions from Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode and exploring but he still wants to end up on the “human-created web.”

Pichai responded:

“It helps us deliver higher quality referrals, right? You know where people are like they have a much higher likelihood of finding what they’re looking for. They’re exploring. They’re curious. Their intent is getting satisfied more… That’s what all our metrics show.”

The interviewer added:

“It makes the humans that create the web nervous. The journalists are getting they’ve already been nervous.”

Sundar Pichai answered:

“Look, I think news and journalism will play an important role, you know, in the future we’re pretty committed to it, right? And so I think making sure that ecosystem… In fact, I think we’ll be able to differentiate ourselves as a company over time because of our commitment there. So it’s something I think you know I definitely value a lot and as we are designing we’ll continue prioritizing approaches.”

AI Is The Next Chapter Of Search?

Pichai mentioned that user metrics of AI search are “encouraging” and referred to it as the “next chapter of search,” underlining that AI Search is an inevitability and is not going away.

Search technologies have consistently been in a steady state of change. The strongest effects were visible in the 2004 Florida update, the 2012 Penguin links update, the 2018 Medic update, and the more recent series of helpful content updates, all of which brought massive changes to search rankings. None of those changes are as ambitious and consequential as what the human-created web is facing with Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Speaking as someone who has been a part of search marketing for over 25 years, I believe Pichai may be understating the situation by calling it the next chapter in search. It may well be that Google AI Search is an entirely new book.

Search Is Evolving To More Context

Lex Fridman remarked on how Google was legendary for its simple layout and the ten blue links, saying that Google is starting to “mess with that” and that surely there must have been battles within Google about that.

Pichai subtly corrected Fridman’s suggestion that Google was moving away from the ten blue links, which hasn’t been a thing for nearly 15 years by stating that the shift to mobile is the reason why Google shifted away from ten blue links, evolving along with the pace of technological advancements and user’s expectations for answers, not links.

Pichai emphasized that Google remains the “front page of the Internet” as Fridman put it, because of their commitment to making it easier for users to explore the web, only with more context.

Pichai answered:

“Look… in some ways when mobile came… people wanted answers to more questions, so we’re …constantly evolving it. But you’re right, this moment, …that evolution, because underlying technology is becoming much more capable. You can have AI give a lot of context.

But one of our important design goals though, is when you come to Google search. You’re going to get a lot of context. But you’re going to go and find a lot of things out on the web. So that will be true in AI mode. In AI overviews and so on.

But I think to our earlier conversation, we are still giving you access to links, but think of the AI as a layer which is giving you context summary. Maybe in AI mode you can have a dialogue with it back and forth on your journey.

But through it all, you’re kind of learning what’s out there in the world. So those core principles don’t change, but I think AI mode allows us to push… we have our best models there, models which are using search as a deep tool.

Really, for every query you’re asking, fanning out doing multiple searches, assembling that knowledge in a way so you can go and consume what you want to and that’s how we think about it.”

Advertising In AI Mode

Something that isn’t immediately apparent is that Google treats advertising as a form of content that is relevant to users. Advertising is not seen as an intrusion but as something relevant to users within a context of their interests.

Fridman next asked him about advertising in AI Mode. Pichai responded that they are currently focusing on getting the “organic experience” right but he also turned to the concept of context.

Pichai’s response:

“Two things.

Early part of AI mode will obviously focus more on the organic experience to make sure we are getting it right. I think the fundamental value of ads are it enables access to deploy the services to billions of people.

Second is, the reason we’ve always taken ads seriously is we view ads as commercial information, but it’s still information. And so we bring the same quality metrics to it.

I think with AI mode, to our earlier conversation, I think AI itself will help us over time, figure out the best way to do it.

Given we are giving context around everything, I think it will give us more opportunities to also explain, okay, here’s some commercial information. Like today, as a podcaster, you do it at certain spots and you probably figure out what’s best in your podcast.

There are aspects of that, but I think the underlying need of people value commercial information. Businesses are trying to connect to users. All that doesn’t change in an AI moment. But look, we will rethink it.”

Will AI Mode Replace Everything?

Lex Fridman asked if Pichai sees a time where AI Mode will become the interface through which the Internet is filtered, asking if there’s a future where it completely replaces the current combination of AI Overviews and ten blue links.

Pichai answered:

“Our current plan is AI Mode is going to be there as a separate tab for people who really want to experience that, but it’s not yet at the level where our main search pages, but as features work, we’ll keep migrating it to the main page. And so you can view it as a continuum. AI model offer you the bleeding edge experience. But things that work will keep overflowing to AI Overviews in the main experience.”

Takeaways

The questions posed by Lex Fridman echo the fears and negative sentiment felt by many publishers about Google’s evolution to providing answers to queries instead of links to the open web.

Sundar Pichai repeatedly stated that Google intends to keep sending users to the human-created web, explaining that AI provides more context that encourages users to explore topics on the web in greater depth.

Those statements, however, are undermined by Google’s delay in enabling web publishers to accurately track referrals from AI Overviews and AI Mode. This creates the impression that publishers are an afterthought and feeds web publisher skepticism about Google’s commitment to the human-created web. While it’s refreshing to hear Google’s CEO emphatically declare his concern for the web ecosystem, I believe it will take more positive actions from Google to overcome web publishers’ negative outlook on the current state of AI search.

Google Outage Disrupts Lens, Discover, & Voice Search Results via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google has confirmed an ongoing disruption that is preventing some results from appearing in Google Lens, Discover, and Voice Search.

According to the company’s Search Status Dashboard, the incident began on June 12 at 1:00 p.m. Pacific Time. A follow-up entry posted at 1:16 p.m. states:

“There’s an ongoing issue with serving Google Lens, Discover, and Voice Search results that’s affecting some users. We’re working on identifying the root cause. The next update will be within 12 hours.”

At press time, the disruption is still marked as “Incident affecting Serving,” meaning the underlying services remain online but are not consistently delivering results.

Why This Matters

Google Lens, the Discover feed, and Voice Search collectively drive significant traffic to publishers, ecommerce catalogs, and local businesses.

When any of these surfaces go dark or return incomplete results, sites that rely on them can experience abrupt drops in impressions and clicks.

What To Do Next

Check for sudden drops in Discover, image, or voice traffic starting around 1:00 p.m. PT. If you see a temporary decline that matches the time on Google’s dashboard, this is likely due to the outage, not a ranking change.

Share Google’s official dashboard notice with website stakeholders. Mention that there will be another update from Google in 12 hours and explain that performance should return to normal once the service is back up.

When Will Service Be Restored?

Google hasn’t offered an estimated time of full resolution, committing only to provide another status update within 12 hours of the 1:16 p.m. post.

Historically, incidents affecting a limited number of users have been fixed within hours, although larger issues can take longer to resolve.

Until Google publishes its next update, the safest assumption is that Lens, Discover, and Voice Search services will remain unpredictable.

The core web search experience is currently listed as “Available,” so blue-link ranking checks and traditional query troubleshooting can proceed as usual.

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

Google Search Team Explains The “It Depends” Response via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google’s Search Relations team has explained why their SEO advice often sounds vague or comes with conditions, such as “it depends.”

In a recent Search Off the Record podcast, team members Martin Splitt and Gary Illyes shared the challenges that prevent them from providing clear-cut answers.

The discussion was part of what the team referred to as a “more human episode.”

The Googlers acknowledged they sometimes come across as robotic and used this episode to show a more human side.

The Context Problem

Splitt works as Google’s bridge between developers and SEO professionals. He provided an example of how good advice can be distorted when people overlook the broader context.

At a Tech SEO Summit, he presented a slide with a bold statement about JavaScript performance. To prevent confusion, he added a note stating that the slide lacked context and provided a full explanation during the talk.

But even with that, he said the statement still got pulled out and repeated on its own.

“I had a remark on that slide saying there’s context missing here, and then I gave all that context… The problem with me saying that in general is that people will just take that one sentence and ignore everything else I said before or after.”

He clarified that JavaScript plays an important role in many web experiences, like enabling offline support. But that nuance often gets lost when single lines are quoted in isolation.

Why Google Doesn’t Share Slides

This loss of context is one reason why Google teams don’t typically share their presentation slides.

Illyes confirmed that slides on their own can be misleading:

He stated:

“Our slides without context, they are useless.”

The team sees what happens when advice meant for one specific situation gets used everywhere. This can hurt websites that have different needs.

For example, advice that works for a small local business might be wrong for a global company with websites in multiple languages.

The “It Depends” Situation

Both Google reps know the SEO community gets frustrated with “it depends” answers.

Splitt even called it his “pet peeve.” But they explained why they can’t give simple yes-or-no answers.

Splitt noted:

“Someone who is serving a very specific niche with highly regulated content in a single country in a single language might have very different requirements than a multilanguage multinational brand that sells everything to everyone.”

They try to give more complete answers by explaining what factors matter. But this makes their advice longer and more complex.

The Google team also worries about how people use their quotes. Splitt said people often pick one statement while ignoring other important information.

Splitt explained:

“It often makes things tricky because people might cherry pick and might pick one thing you said, take that out of context and use it as an example why people should follow their agenda rather than ours.”

While they know public statements can be quoted freely, both reps feel bad when selective quoting gets out of control.

What This Means

The Google team’s openness about their struggles affirms the experience of many SEO professionals.

Google’s guidance often feels cautious because it needs to account for a wide range of use cases.

Instead of seeking simple answers, focus on the factors that influence Google’s recommendations.

Understanding the “why” behind Google’s advice is more useful than chasing one-size-fits-all solutions.

Listen to the full podcast episode below:

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

Google Offers Voluntary Buyouts To Core U.S. Teams Amid AI Push via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

Google is offering voluntary buyouts to employees across several of its core U.S.-based teams, including Search, Ads, engineering, marketing, and research.

The offer provides eligible employees with at least 14 weeks of severance and is available through July 1, according to reporting from The Verge and The Information.

The buyouts are limited to employees in the U.S. who report into Google’s Core Systems division, and exclude staff at DeepMind, Google Cloud, YouTube, and central ad sales.

An Exit Path, Not a Layoff

While Google has conducted layoffs in other departments earlier this year, the current program is being positioned differently.

It’s entirely voluntary and framed as an opportunity for employees to step away if their goals or performance no longer align with Google’s direction.

In a memo obtained by Business Insider, Jen Fitzpatrick, the Senior Vice President of Core Systems, explained the reasoning behind the move:

“The Voluntary Exit Program may be a fit for Core Googlers who aren’t feeling excited about and aligned with Core’s mission and goals, or those who are having difficulty meeting the demands of their role.”

Fitzpatrick added:

“This isn’t about reducing the number of people in Core. We will use this opportunity to create internal mobility and fresh growth opportunities.”

While the message downplays the idea of forced exits, this move bears a resemblance to earlier reorganizations.

In January, Google began with internal reshuffling in its Platforms and Devices division, which later led to confirmed layoffs affecting Pixel, Nest, Android, and Assistant teams. Whether the current buyouts will lead to further cuts remains to be seen.

New Return-to-Office Rules

Alongside the exit program, Google is updating its hybrid work policy.

All U.S.-based Core employees who live within 50 miles of an approved return site are being asked to transfer back to an office and follow the standard three-day in-office schedule.

Fitzpatrick noted that while remote flexibility is still supported, in-person presence is viewed as critical to collaboration and innovation.

Fitzpatrick wrote:

“When it comes to connection, collaboration, and moving quickly to innovate together, there’s just no substitute for coming together in person.”

These changes are positioned as part of a cultural shift toward spending more time in the office and aligning around shared goals.

Tied to Google’s Broader AI Push

This move comes as Google deploys its AI strategy across multiple business units. Over the past year, the company has:

This shows AI is driving changes both internally and externally.

Fitzpatrick’s memo opens by framing the current moment as a “transformational” shift for Google:

“AI is reshaping everything—our products, our tools, the way we work, how we innovate, and so on.”

Looking Ahead

While Google insists this isn’t about cutting jobs, the voluntary exit program and mandatory RTO policies make a couple of things clear. Google is fine-tuning who builds its products and how they do it.

Google wants its teams engaged, in-office, and ready to build the next generation of AI-driven tools.

For marketers and SEO professionals, this restructuring could foreshadow faster product rollouts, rapidly evolving search experiences, and continued automation in advertising tools.

Featured Image: Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

Google Shows Why Rankings Collapsed After Domain Migration via @sejournal, @martinibuster

Google’s John Mueller used a clever technique to show the publisher of an educational site how to diagnose their search performance issues, which were apparently triggered by a domain migration but were actually caused by the content.

Site With Ranking Issues

Someone posted a plea for help on the Bluesky social network to help their site recover from a site migration gone wrong. The person associated with the website attributed the de-indexing directly to the site migration because there was a direct correlation between the two events.

SEO Insight
An interesting point to highlight is that the site migration preceded the de-indexing by Google but it’s not the cause. The site migration is not the cause for the de-indexing. The migration is what set a chain of events into action that led to the real cause, which as you’ll see later on is low quality content. A common error that SEOs and publishers make is to stop investigating upon discovering the most obvious reason for why something is happening. But the most obvious reason is not always the actual reason, as you’ll see further on.

This is what was posted on social media:

“Hello SEO Community,

Sudden Deindexing & Traffic Drop after Domain Migration (from javatpoint.com to tpointtech.com) – Need Help”

Google’s John Mueller answered their plea and suggested they do a site search on Bing with their new domain, like this:

site:tpointtech.com sexy

And when you do that Bing shows “top ten list” articles about various Indian celebrities.

Google’s John Mueller also suggested doing a site search for “watch online” and “top ten list” which revealed that the site is host to scores of low quality web pages that are irrelevant to their topic.

A screenshot of one of the pages shows how abundant the off-topic web pages are on that website:

Where Did Irrelevant Pages Come From?

The irrelevant pages originated from the original domain, Javatpoint.com, from which they migrated. When they migrated to Tpointtech they also brought along all of that low quality irrelevant content as well.

Here’s a screenshot of the original domain, demonstrating that the off-topic content originated on the old domain:

Google’s John Mueller posted:

“One of the things I noticed is that there’s a lot of totally unrelated content on the site. Is that by design? If you go to Bing and use [site:tpointtech.com watch online], [site:tpointtech.com sexy], [site:tpointtech.com top 10] , similarly probably in your Search Console, it looks really weird.”

Takeaways

Bing Is Useful For Site Searches
Google’s John Mueller showed that Bing can be useful for identifying pages that Google is not indexing which could then indicate a content problem.

SEO Insight
The fact that Bing continues to index the off topic content may highlight a difference between Google and Bing. The domain migration might be showing one of the ways that Google identifies the motivation for content, whether the intent is to rank and monetize rather than create something useful to site visitors. An argument could be made that the wildly off-topic nature of the content betrays the “made-for-search-engines” motivation that Google cautions against.

Irrelevant Content
A site generally has a main topic, with branching related subtopics. But in general the main topic and subtopics relate to each other in a way that makes sense for the user. Adding wildly off-topic content low quality content betrays an intent to create content for traffic, something that Google explicitly prohibits.

Past Performance Doesn’t Predict Future Performance
There’s a tendency on the part of site publishers to shrug about their content quality because it seems to them that Google likes it just fine. But that doesn’t mean the content is fine, it means that it hasn’t become an issue yet. Some problems are dormant and when I see this in site reviews and generally say that this may not be a problem now but it could become a problem later so it’s best to be proactive about it now.

Given that the search performance issues occurred after the site migration but the irrelevant content was pre-existing it appears that the effects of the irrelevant content were muted by the standing the original content had. Nevertheless the irrelevant content was still an issue, it just hadn’t hatched into an issue yet. Migrating the site to a new domain forced Google to re-evaluate the entire site and that’s when the low quality content became an issue.

Content Quality Versus Content Intent
It’s possible for someone to make a case that the content, although irrelevant, was high quality and shouldn’t have made a difference. What calls attention to me is that the topics appear to signal an intent to create content for ranking and monetization purposes. It’s hard to argue that the content is useful for site visitors to an educational site.

Expansion Of Content Topics
Lastly there’s the issue of whether it’s a good idea to expand the range of topics that a site is relevant for. A television review site can expand to include reviews of other electronics like headphones and keyboards and it’s especially smoother if the domain name doesn’t set up the wrong expectation. That’s why domains with the product types in them are so limiting because they presume the publisher will never achieve so much success that they’ll have to expand the range of topics.

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Ollyy