I had made several. Some turned out to be right (#ProudMoment).

But as always, Google still managed to surprise us (to say the least).

Google, the World’s Largest “AI-First Company”

In any case, and this part was no surprise, from the very beginning S. Pichai set the stage to support Google’s branding and clearly confirm that the only AI brand in the world is Google (meaning “not OpenAI”).

Pichai began by explaining Google’s overall strategic approach to AI: a differentiated, “full-stack” approach to AI innovation - from custom silicon and a secure foundation, to world-class research and models, all the way to products and platforms that reach billions of people. It is an approach that allows them to iterate and innovate faster, and one that now infuses every part of the company.

The best examples of use: students revising with Gemini, musicians and artists using Lyria and Veo in their creative workflows, developers coding and bringing their ideas to life.

To go beyond the incantation, S. Pichai then moved into the numerical demonstration of Google AI’s huge success, especially with numbers related to token usage - those fundamental units of data that models process - one of the best measures of progress.

• Two years ago: 9 trillion tokens processed per month.

• Last year at I/O: around 480 trillion tokens per month.

• Today: multiplied by 7, meaning several quadrillion tokens per month.

We can now truly talk about “token-mania.”

Google now has 30 products with more than one billion users each, a success largely driven by Gemini.

That was the part on “Google = AI First Company.”

Now, focus on Search - my favorite part.

Google Search: The Biggest Redesign in 26 Years

To summarize the essentials:

• AI Overviews: 2.5 billion monthly users in two years.

• AI Mode: 1 billion in just one year.

Search is the product that brings the benefits of generative AI to more people than any other product in the world.

On the Gemini app side, usage doubled in one year.

• 900 million monthly users (vs. 400M last year)

• Daily queries x7

• 50 billion images generated with Nano Banana - the surprise hit of the year.

“Nano Banana was the breakout star of this year - I know you had a lot of fun with it,” Pichai said with a smile.

The more people use AI in Search, the more they use Search (S. Pichai).

This is probably one of the reasons why traditional Google Search is not weakening - a figure that must annoy everyone who had buried Google during the OpenAI frenzy.

Before handing over to Liz Reid, Google’s Madame AI Search, Pichai reminded us of another blunt truth:

“Search is becoming less about individual queries, and more about an ongoing conversation, delivering deeper insights and connecting people to the richness of the web.”

Liz Reid, VP of Search, drove the point home:

“Whatever is on your mind, you can come to Google and literally ask anything.”

The Best of a Search Engine with the Best of AI

People bring billions of questions to Search every day. Sometimes the whole world is looking for the same thing, but most of the time, questions are as unique as the people asking them (the era of hyper-personalized Search is clearly here).

So the goal is clear:

→ to bring together the best of a search engine with the best of AI.

This transformation began with AI Overviews two years ago.

AI Mode was launched on the I/O stage last year and is now Google’s most powerful AI Search experience, integrating the most advanced Gemini models (and honestly, AI Mode may become Google’s default engine in 2027...).

AI Mode queries more than double every quarter.

Starting today, AI Mode is being upgraded to Gemini 3.5.

1️⃣ A New Chapter of Search

Google is entering the next chapter of Google Search.

AI features are no longer just in Search -

Google Search is AI Search from end to end (Liz Reid).

This AI Search brings together:

• the most advanced Gemini models,

• the latest agentic capabilities,

• and the full breadth of the world’s information.

More than one billion facts updated every minute. Billions of new web pages indexed every day. Connection to an endless range of human perspectives.

Whatever is in your head, you can come to Google and truly ask anything.

2️⃣ New Intelligent Search Bar

One of the “sexiest” new features.

The one that takes us from “Search on Google” to “Ask Google”: the launch of a brand-new intelligent search bar.

• Before: the search bar was a contained space.

• Now: it is completely reimagined with AI.

“Ask Search” helps us formulate our questions with AI-powered suggestions. It goes beyond autocomplete: it is nuanced, helping us move from a vague question to a more precise formulation.

The new bar gives us access to the full power of Google’s AI tools: we can “ask Google” across modalities - text, images, files, videos. Search reasons across all these modalities.

Clearly, this is the biggest upgrade to the search bar in 26 years.

→ Expected release date: Today!!

3️⃣ Unification of AI Overviews + AI Mode

Google is making it easier to continue the conversation with Search by bringing AI Overviews and AI Mode together into one fluid AI experience.

We can move effortlessly from our questions to the answer on the main results page, then to a follow-up in AI Mode. Our context follows us.

As the conversation deepens, the links and resources become even more relevant.

→ Expected release date: New experience live today, on mobile, worldwide (except France for now).

4️⃣ Say hello to “Search Agents”

Google is taking a major step toward the agentic vision and entering the era of “Search Agents.”

In other words: the big slap-back answer to Claude Cowork and Code.

We will be able to create and manage multiple AI agents for our many topics directly inside Search.

To start, we will be able to put “information agents” to work 24/7 in the background: they will find exactly what we need, exactly when we need it, and help us take action.

We will then be able to launch multiple agents simultaneously in Search, working alongside Gemini Spark (the latest version of the model).

The demo used a finance example: you ask for major biotech stocks with P/E under 15, positive cash flows, and low debt. The agent takes this highly complex question, creates a plan, determines urgency, identifies the information that is truly needed, adds triggers to monitor changes, and chooses the right tools and data streams. It connects to real-time financial data to get prices and insights down to the second. When it is finished, it sends a smart, synthesized update that helps separate signal from noise. It also points to highly relevant context: crowdsourced research platforms, news sites, and social networks.

Secondary benefit: a big boost for site creators, helping their fresh content be discovered by the people who are truly interested in it.

→ Expected release date: This summer.

5️⃣ Generative UI: When Search Builds the Ideal Interface for Every Question

The best version of Search is the one created just for you - the one that presents information in the most useful format for the question being asked. Hyper-personalization of Search at its maximum.

Google has spent years perfecting this: products for shopping, charts for data, visuals for inspiration.

It is now taking a leap by bringing Gemini 3.5 Flash’s agentic coding directly into Search, which can now build the ideal format on the fly - dynamic layouts, interactive widgets, entire experiences, fully personalized.

Agentic coding at Search scale.

The demo (astrophysics) was great: a college student asks, “How do black holes affect space?” Search returns an interactive visual directly in the AI Overview - because such a complex concept is better understood by interacting with it. Follow-up question: “Show me how two binary black holes create gravitational waves.” Google Search generates a dedicated simulation where you can adjust orbital separation and mass ratio, see wave patterns evolve, and watch the small black hole spiral around the larger one. Once the basics are mastered, you can move on to resources and the LIGO discovery papers.

Under the hood.

How do you build a personalized UI for billions of unique questions?

With Gemini 3.5, Search plans the ideal answer from scratch, chooses the components to build, performs search fan-out, then deploys the code. Everything is orchestrated by an Antigravity-powered coding agent, capable of reading, writing, and executing code in a secure container - the same technology that was used to build the OS.

Mini-apps.

Some projects are not one-off questions, but recurring tasks. Google Search can now create persistent experiences - tools, trackers, dashboards - like real little personal mini-apps. Ideal for long tasks such as planning a wedding or managing a move.

→ Expected release date: Generative UI with Antigravity is coming to Search this summer, free for everyone.

Conversational Search: Google Moves Up a Gear!

1️⃣ Ask Maps

The biggest redesign of Google Maps in a decade.

The promise: to allow people to ask complex and much longer questions in natural language.

Pichai cited a real query sent by a parent: “My tie just fell into the duck pond, and the wedding starts in 30 minutes. Where can I walk to buy a new tie?” He concluded, teasingly: “I’d really like to know how that ended.”

👀 My Take:

I tested this again recently for a client. Optimizing a Google Business Profile with all the right content is one of the first things you should do for your visibility in AI (at least Google’s AI systems). Even if you are a solopreneur without a storefront, optimize your Google Local Pack presence. Google is clearly pampering this Search feature even more this year. You should do the same.

2️⃣ Ask YouTube

This is the feature that completely reinvents video search (my favorite).

Pichai set the scene: “People come to YouTube every day to ask many questions. There are many great videos, but sometimes it is hard to know where to start.”

The demonstrated scenario: teaching a child to move from a balance bike to a pedal bike.

In concrete terms, Ask YouTube changes everything compared with classic search:

• The information is digested and easy to browse.

• You get an overview and useful advice.

• You see the videos that best match your interest.

• If you want to try a specific teaching method, you can go deeper.

• Most importantly: Ask YouTube takes you directly to the most relevant part of the video.

Context memory turns search into a continuous conversation:

• you can follow up with a question like “should I buy a bike with hand brakes or coaster brakes?”

• The information is even displayed in a table to make comparison easier. Pichai added a personal note: “It reminds me of when I was teaching my kids to ride a bike.”

→ Expected release date: testing underway, with a broader launch in the United States this summer.

👀 My Take:

If you were still wondering whether you should turn your podcast into video, or whether you need a video version of your written content... here is ONE MORE confirmation that now, it is urgent!!

3️⃣ Docs Live

Pichai set the context: we have seen many conversational text queries, but often we want to move things forward “at the speed of speech.”

This is made possible by technical advances and audio models.

Google is taking a big leap with Docs Live.

• Before Docs Live, you had to type a precise prompt to create a document with Gemini.

• Now, you simply verbalize what you have in mind, and Gemini does the rest. Important detail from Pichai: “everything is in real time, with no acceleration.”

The demo, presented by a member of the product team:

She is preparing a talk for her high school Career Day the next day. First voice prompt:

“I wrote down a few points to explain what I do as a software engineer, but I’m not really sure where to start. Can you pull my resume from Drive? That said, it might be boring. Can you find some fun analogies to make it more engaging for the students? Also, I think the school sent me an email - the subject should look like ‘Career Day Logistics.’ Pull the details and put them at the top of the doc.”

Then she iterates, still by voice:

“This is cool, but it’s a bit dense. Can you format the analogies as a table? And add a note near the top of the document so I remember to tell the story about my brother who inspired me to become a software engineer.”

What the demo shows, point by point:

• Document creation by voice, in real time.

• Automatic retrieval of information from Drive (the resume) and Gmail (the school email).

• Voice-driven formatting (tables, bolding, hierarchy).

• Iterative editing in natural language.

Eventually, we will even be able to “create documents and edit them directly, all by voice.”

→ Expected release date: Docs Live arrives this summer for Pro and Ultra subscribers. The same voice capabilities will then come to Gmail and Google Keep.

👀 My Take:

ABSOLUTELY HUGE!!!

Agentic Commerce Integrated into Search

1️⃣ Universal Cart

An “intelligent” multi-merchant cart accessible from Search, Gemini, YouTube, and Gmail. It detects product incompatibilities and finds hidden savings through Google Wallet.

As soon as a product enters the cart, the cart starts working in the background: it tracks good deals, gives insights into price history, and alerts you when an out-of-stock product is back in stock.

The real leap → intelligent reasoning.

Example cited: you are building your first custom PC; you add a motherboard that seems perfect - but you had not realized that the processor already in your cart uses a different socket. Universal Cart detects the incompatibility and suggests an alternative, preventing a problem you had not seen coming.

Another highlighted feature → hidden savings detection.

If, like most people, you have several payment cards with different rewards programs that are hard to track, the cart uses Google Wallet to do it for you -

Example given: a Target offer on products already added.

For checkout → two options:

• Pay directly on Google in just a few taps with Google Pay,

• Or send everything to the retailer to finalize there.

→ Expected release date: this summer in the US on Search and Gemini, followed by YouTube and Gmail.

2️⃣ Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)

Google’s analogy is direct: “What HTTP did for the web, UCP does for agents.”

It is an open-source standard that gives all players (merchants, agents, platforms) a common language to maintain trust throughout the shopping journey: product search, checkout, shipping tracking, and returns.

The protocol was launched with a group of founding partners - and Google noted in passing that it may be “the first time we all agree on something.”

UCP is now expanding to new verticals (hotels, local delivery) and new countries (Canada, Australia, United Kingdom).

→ Expected release date: in the coming months.

3️⃣ Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)

A secure payment protocol for AI agents, with user-defined limits and cryptographic traceability.

The number one question Google hears about agentic payments:

“How can I be sure the agent will not go off and buy something I do not want?”

AP2 is the answer.

The protocol is built on two principles:

• Limits. The user tells the agent which specific brands and products are authorized, as well as the budget. The purchase is triggered automatically if - and only if - the criteria are met.

• Accountability. AP2 creates a transparent, verifiable link between the user, the merchant, and all payment processors. Through cryptographically signed digital mandates, the agent always acts on behalf of the user, and every transaction leaves a permanent digital paper trail. In the event of a return, the user and the merchant look at exactly the same record. All of this uses privacy-preserving technology to keep payment data secure.

→ Expected release date: in the coming months, first through Gemini Spark.

👋 That’s it for this special edition. Between two workshops and a major family event tonight… I’ll be putting together a full debrief edition for you next week. Which format would work best for you?

On April 22nd, I’m in Chicago for something special. I’m joining Andy Crestodina Andy Crestodina and Orbit Media Studios Media to lead a 4-hour deep dive on the most important topic in marketing right now: “AI Search: How AI Decides Who Gets Recommended”.

No fluff. Just 4 hours of tactics and strategy on how to ensure AI (Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity) actually know—and cite—your brand. It’s happening in the best city in the States, at the best lead-gen agency in the business. Are you joining us? 🙌.

Join us

🟣 Cloudflare is trying to build a two-speed web. (Proceed with caution.)

On February 13th, Cloudflare quietly launched a feature every CMO should have on their radar: Markdown for Agents. A pretty historic announcement: for the first time, a major infrastructure player — powering roughly 20% of the web — is officially offering to serve machines a different version of your pages than the one humans see. And doing it completely “legally.” Let me explain.

What it actually does: AI crawlers hate HTML. Too heavy, too noisy, too token-expensive. A blog post that weighs 16,180 tokens in HTML drops to 3,150 in Markdown — a lightweight, clean text format. That’s an 80% reduction. Cloudflare now automatically converts your HTML to Markdown at the network level — in real time — whenever an AI agent requests it.

The question is: when the AI knocks on your door, do you answer in a language it actually understands?

Thanks to this automatic conversion, Cloudflare offers a “clean” option. For you and your human visitors: nothing changes. For ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity: your site becomes a perfectly readable document — no HTML noise, no ad scripts, no navigation menus. And contrary to what you might think, it doesn’t create a separate URL — just a different representation of the same page based on request headers.

Why it matters: A typical HTML page costs an AI up to 16,000 tokens to process. The Markdown version: 3,000. Cheaper to index, faster to read, fewer hallucinations. Your content mechanically has a better shot at being cited.

The caveats — and they’re worth taking seriously: John Mueller at Google called it a “stupid idea” — LLMs were trained on normal web pages from the start, so why show them something no user ever sees? Microsoft echoes the same concern. Fabrice Canel piles on: serving a Markdown version doubles crawl load, and Bing will check both versions for consistency anyway. And SEO consultant Jono Alderson raises the real underlying issue: the moment two representations of the same page exist, AI systems have to decide which one reflects reality. “You’re not removing clutter — you’re removing judgment and context.”

The most serious risk? Cloaking. What some SEO experts are calling the “ghost web”: sites could inject hidden instructions or manipulated product data exclusively into the Markdown version — machine-only content that humans never see.

👀 My 2 Cents:

Let’s be honest. Cloudflare didn’t invent anything. They just officially scaled up a practice as old as SEO itself — one that used to live firmly in the Black-Hat category and that Google officially classifies as spam: showing one version of your site to humans, another to machines. Before, the machine was Google. Now it’s AI agents. Same game, new players.

And Google’s disapproval? Not exactly a surprise. Google built a $2 trillion empire teaching us to create content that fed its algorithm. Now someone else is writing the rules for the machine layer. Of course they hate it.

That said, the arguments against are serious and deserve airtime. Two versions of your content means two versions of your truth. AI systems will have to decide which one to believe. The real, concrete risk: a product page could show accurate prices to humans while feeding AI agents manipulated comparisons. That’s not optimization. That’s deception. And control mechanisms on the AI agent side are still embryonic — which is exactly why some people are rushing to exploit the gap right now. I know marketers testing this quietly. It can work. For a while.

Quick reminder that’s not entirely useless: BMW (not exactly a small brand) tried cloaking once. Google handed them what the British press called the “Death Penalty” — complete deindexing. AI platforms will do the same, and faster.

Two things to take away as a business leader: These decisions can’t be delegated entirely to your developers. The business risks are too significant to stay in the technical room. You need to be part of the conversation.

Should you adopt Markdown? Case by case — but caution is warranted. We don’t have enough hindsight yet. And to play it safe: the best page to get cited by an AI is exactly the same one that works for your users. Well structured, clearly written, technically solid. No dark magic required.

As my law professor used to say: “If you won’t be honest out of conviction, at least be honest out of intelligence.” The price of algorithmic deception has always been too high. Nothing suggests that changes with AI.

📎 Source : Introducing Markdown for Agents — Cloudflare Blog

🟣 Ads are coming to ChatGPT. And they cost a for-tune.

On February 9th, OpenAI officially launched its first ads in ChatGPT. Currently limited to free users and the Go plan in the US. Plus, Pro, and Enterprise subscribers won’t see them. For now.

The price tag? Sit down. $60 CPM — cost per 1,000 impressions — versus $8–9 on Meta, $4–6 on TikTok and YouTube, and around $27 for premium streaming like Netflix. Translation ? ChatGPT is positioning itself above premium TV out of the gate. And there’s more. Minimum spend for advertisers is set at $200,000. No room for SMBs. Big brands only — led by agencies like WPP, Omnicom, and Dentsu, with clients in retail, software, and travel.

The format? Ads displayed at the bottom of ChatGPT responses, clearly labeled as sponsored, triggered by conversation context. OpenAI promises ads don’t influence responses and advertisers don’t get access to user conversations. On the measurement side though: zero conversion tracking, zero attribution, zero measurable ROI. Impressions and clicks only. In 2026. Welcome to classic display, AI remix.

While OpenAI was launching ads, Anthropic went straight for the jugular. Their Super Bowl campaign — darkly comic scenarios where a chatbot interrupts an intimate conversation to recommend a cougar dating site — shot the Claude app from 41st to 7th in the US App Store, with a 32% download spike. The tagline: “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.” Simple. Effective. Painful for OpenAI. Sam Altman, visibly irritated, called Anthropic’s ads “clearly dishonest” and “deceptive” — which is exactly the reaction Anthropic was hoping for.

The supreme irony: as OpenAI opens the advertising floodgates, Perplexity — which had launched its own ad network — is reversing course and ditching ads to refocus on a subscription model. Two visions. Two opposite bets on the future.

👀 My 2 Cents:

Ads in AI is THE trap that’s been set for OpenAI since the beginning (I’ve written about it before). And they jumped in with both feet. Read the post by Fidji Simo announcing ChatGPT ads. It reads less like a blog post and more like a 4-point legal disclaimer: no, ads don’t influence responses. No, advertisers can’t access your conversations. No, your data isn’t being sold. No, AI objectivity isn’t compromised. When you spend that much time saying what you’re not doing... you know exactly what everyone’s thinking.

The real risks are real: content objectivity, information neutrality, data privacy. And then there’s the elephant Sam Altman tried to flip into a marketing argument — “AI should be accessible to everyone, not just those who can pay” — casting himself as the Robin Hood of artificial intelligence. Rich, given that OpenAI has committed to $1.4 trillion in infrastructure spending over eight years, largely financed by Microsoft. Robin Hood... seriously?

On the numbers: the model is hard to defend right now. ChatGPT offers neither the scale of major media nor the measurement sophistication of mature digital platforms. At $60 CPM with no conversion tracking, you’re paying a lot for a promise. Worth testing? Maybe, for large premium brands hunting new territory. But to drive ROI? Nobody can tell you. Not even OpenAI.

📎 Sources: OpenAI — Testing ads in ChatGPT | Ads in ChatGPT Help Center |

🟣 Profound raises $96M and hits unicorn status. GEO is officially an industry.

Profound, barely 18 months old, just closed a $96M Series C at a $1 billion valuation. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round, with Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and South Park Commons joining. Total raised: $155 million.

What is Profound? One sentence: the marketing platform for the AI era — helping brands understand, control, and scale their presence in AI Search. Simply put, their software tracks how AI models describe and recommend your brand across millions of real queries — not just whether you appear, but why, and what your competitors are doing differently. Their internal research shows up to 90% of sources cited in AI responses can change over time, and different models draw from largely distinct source sets. In other words: optimizing once for one search engine no longer cuts it.

Numbers that hit hard, 18 months in: 700+ enterprise clients, including 10% of the Fortune 500 — Target, Walmart, Figma, MongoDB, U.S. Bank. And a new product launched this month: Profound Agents — autonomous workers that generate and distribute marketing content in real time, covering content, monitoring, AEO, and PR, letting marketing teams scale their AI presence without constant manual effort.

👀 My 2 Cents:

When top-tier investors put a billion dollars on an 18-month-old startup, the message is pretty clear: visibility in AI will be the most important marketing category of the next decade — and it will surpass budgets traditionally allocated to paid search.

Second message: urgency. This new marketing imperative isn’t something to plan for in two years. It was needed yesterday. The market confirms it: 32% of digital directors have declared GEO their #1 priority for 2026, up from 12% in 2025. This is no longer interest — it’s a budgeted strategic mandate.

But the real signal? This record investment financially validates that the critical marketing infrastructure of tomorrow is the agentic web. We’ve officially entered the era of agentic marketing. After Adobe’s acquisition of Semrush a few months ago, this raise drives the point home.

Meanwhile, legacy SEO players trying to pivot to AI Search are doing their best to be “gracious losers” — with... let’s say, pointed congratulations. You can’t really blame them.

📎 Source: As AI threatens search, Profound raises $96 million to help brands stay visible

🟣 Bing does what Google refuses to do: shows you how AI cites your content.

On February 10th, Microsoft launched a public preview of a feature that should have existed from day one of AI Search: AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools. For the first time, you can see how often your content is cited in AI-generated responses — with clear visibility into which URLs are referenced and how that activity evolves over time.

The dashboard gives you four new metrics:

• total citations of your site in AI responses;

• average pages cited per day;

• “grounding queries” — the internal queries AI uses to fetch your content;

• and citation activity by URL, to identify your most-referenced pages.

Coverage includes Microsoft Copilot, Bing AI summaries, and select partner integrations.

The limitation? These metrics show citation frequency only. They don’t indicate ranking, placement in the response, or — the real missing piece — whether citations actually drove clicks or traffic to your site. Microsoft acknowledges this and promises more data throughout 2026.

The SEO community’s reaction? Unanimously positive. Aleyda Solis called it “the first official AI Search visibility tool.” Wil Reynolds exclaimed: “Bing is finally giving us grounding queries!” The full wave of reactions is over at Barry’s roundup.

👀 My 2 Cents:

Pause. A search engine just created the first official GEO measurement tool in history. This isn’t small news. It’s institutional validation that GEO is a real discipline — with real metrics, a real dashboard. No longer a trend for SEO geeks. A measurable economic reality. And a kick in the door of the opacity that’s defined AI visibility for the past two years... courtesy of Google.

Now, the elephant in the room: this is Bing. Not Google. And that changes everything.

The SEO reaction is pretty unanimous: “I wish this had been Google or ChatGPT. We need this type of reporting. Too bad Bing/Copilot doesn’t have the users Google or GPT does.” That’s exactly the problem. The tool is excellent. But the platform is still marginal. ChatGPT holds over 80% of global AI usage. Google AI Mode is growing. And Bing... is still Bing.

So why does it still matter for you? Two reasons. First: this competitive pressure may eventually push Google to build equivalent reporting. Bing has always led on transparency — Google has often followed, in a watered-down version, but it has followed. Second — and this is the real strategic lesson — if you’re not measuring your AI visibility yet, start now. Not because Bing is the priority. But because grounding queries — the internal queries AI generates to retrieve your content — are a unique window into how machines think about your brand. What you learn there, you apply everywhere. Including for ChatGPT and Google AI Mode.

Measuring AI visibility is no longer optional. It’s a baseline skill. And it’s official confirmation that traffic is no longer the Holy Grail it was for 25 years. The AI Search industry is structuring itself. Fast.

• 📎 Sources: Bing Blog — Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools

• 📎 Complete guide to Bing Webmaster Tools

👀 Other AI Search news worth your attention

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🟣 Google AI Mode is coming in French. Just not necessarily to France.

Google has updated the official language list for AI Mode: French is now included. Good news on the surface — except supported language ≠ available country. France doesn’t appear on the list of countries where AI Mode is live. Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg — yes. France — no. European regulatory constraints (AI Act, GDPR) likely explain the glaring absence. Translation: you might access it in French... from abroad.

📎 Google — AI Mode availability

🟣 Microsoft creates a marketplace to pay publishers when AI uses their content.

Microsoft is launching the Publisher Content Marketplace (PCM): a platform that lets publishers license their content to AI systems and get paid based on the value delivered. Publishers set usage terms; AI builders access premium licensed content. Voluntary opt-in, transparent usage reporting. Co-designed with Business Insider, Condé Nast, Hearst, The Associated Press, Vox Media, and others. Signal to watch: it’s the first formal infrastructure for compensating content creators from AI platforms. If it scales, it structurally reshapes the relationship between content producers and AI engines. Key word being “if.”

📎 Building Toward a Sustainable Content Economy for the Agentic Web

🟣 Google is reinventing the purchase journey. Your site becomes the checkout, not the salesperson.

Google is developing a Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) with Walmart, Target, Shopify, Etsy, and Wayfair — an open standard that gives AI agents a “common language” to manage the entire purchase journey: discovery, comparison, checkout, and post-purchase support. Native Checkout lets users complete a purchase directly inside AI Mode or Gemini, with zero redirect to your site. Vidhya Srinivasan, VP Ads & Commerce at Google, summed it up: “We’re not just bringing ads to AI experiences. We’re reinventing what an ad is.”

This isn’t an advertising story. It’s an existential strategic story. What Google is building is the end of the purchase journey as you know it. Discovery → evaluation → checkout: all happening inside the AI interface. Your site becomes the transaction layer, not the decision layer. The UCP is a concrete technical protocol. If your product listings don’t “speak” this language, no AI agent will be able to recommend you, compare you, or sell you. The real question for your board: has your e-commerce strategy factored in the possibility that customers are deciding inside AI before they ever come to you?

📎 Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)

🟣 Google Search Console gets an AI upgrade: analyze your data in plain language.

Google Search Console is rolling out its AI configuration tool for everyone: instead of manually setting up your filters and comparisons, you just describe the report you want in natural language and the AI handles it. Useful for non-technical marketing teams. Notable limitation: it only covers the Search Performance report. Not Discover, not News. Log into your Search Console and look for the “New! Customize your Performance report using AI” banner. The bigger question: is this Google’s timid, slightly off-topic response to the AI visibility transparency that Bing just took the lead on? Maybe. But honestly, it doesn’t quite hit the mark.

📎 Search Engine Land

🟣 Google acquires ProducerAI and folds it into Google Labs.

The platform lets you create and refine music via generative AI, powered by Lyria 3, Gemini, and Veo. What sets it apart from other tools: a conversational interface. Not a simple “prompt → result.” A genuine back-and-forth collaboration with an AI agent. For content creators: a strong signal. Google is building an ecosystem where everything is created, published, and distributed without ever leaving its platforms. Google as THE AI brand...? Honestly, we’re nearly there.

📎 Google Blog

🟣 Bing rolls out multi-turn search globally.

While scrolling results, a Copilot box appears at the bottom of the page for follow-up questions — without starting over. Conversational search is settling in everywhere. Another Bing answer to Google AI Mode, which does exactly the same thing. The underlying trend: search engines want us inside their walls, and they’ll do whatever it takes to keep us there.

📎 Search Engine Land

🟣 HubSpot pivots to agentic AI and redefines what a CRM is.

Yamini Rangan announces the “Agentic Customer Platform”: a system where humans and AI agents collaborate around a single context layer — customer data, decision history, business knowledge. The CRM-as-record-keeper is dead. It becomes the operational brain of the entire company. Reading this, my main thought is: an AI agent that doesn’t know your brand, your products, your tone, and your real customer cases can’t represent you properly in AI responses. Before optimizing to get cited by ChatGPT, structure your internal context. What AI doesn’t know about you, it can never tell your future customers.

📎 HubSpot Blog

🟣 The End of Innocence: OpenAI Tests Priority “Sponsored Content” in ChatGPT

According to a report from The Information, OpenAI is considering advertising formats where AI models would “prioritize sponsored content” directly in generated responses, offering preferential treatment to paid information.

Internal mockups show several approaches:

• Sponsored information displayed in a sidebar.

• An explicit disclosure indicating that results include sponsored content.

• Contextual ads appearing after the conversation starts, only when the user digs deeper into a topic (stronger intent).

Although an OpenAI spokesperson assures that any approach will “respect the trust relationship” with users, the SEO community (cited via Glenn Gabe) worries about seeing factual responses biased by commercial imperatives (”Oof...”). Nothing is set in stone, but the direction is clear: ad monetization is coming, and it could touch the very heart of response generation, not just the packaging.

• ✍️ Author: Barry Schwartz (Seoroundtable)

• 📎 ChatGPT Ads May Prioritize Sponsored Content In AI Responses

👀 My 2 Cents:

Okay, I’m literally falling off my chair here. This reminds me of the early days of Yahoo! (yes, I know, writing that doesn’t make me any younger). Remember their homepage? You’d type a query and land on a page full of links where you knew perfectly well that whoever paid the most was sitting at the top of the pile. Remember what happened next?

Google showed up, first as a white-label for Yahoo, and then... BOOM. Larry Page arrives with his PageRank and his list of “naturally” referenced links. Just because the black box algorithm deemed it the best content. No check, just relevance.

The irony of history? 20 years later, Google became the boss of the web (which it ended up monopolizing) and now the big boss of the AI-(re)generated web — being the first to scrape all the content it taught us to create for two decades.

Yes, we must give OpenAI credit for being the UFO that triggered this historic shift from one web to another. But if the future according to “Uncle Sam” (Altman) really is to inject sponsored responses into results like in the pre-Google era... then I don’t understand anything anymore.

🟣 Google Sues SerpApi: The End of Tolerated Commercial Scraping?

Google is suing SerpApi for using methods described as “malicious” (cloaking, massive bot networks, fake crawler names by falsifying IP addresses to pass as human users) to bypass the search engine’s security protections. The complaint details how SerpApi circumvents “SearchGuard” with these “malicious” techniques. In essence, Google accuses the Texas-based company SerpApi of generating hundreds of millions of artificial searches to pillage its results pages. The central accusation is that SerpApi ignores website directives (like robots.txt) that Google respects, thus depriving publishers of control over their content. SerpApi is accused of retrieving and reselling content (enriched data) for which Google pays costly licenses (Knowledge Panel images, real-time data, maps), violating third-party rights.

• ✍️ Author: Halimah DeLaine Prado

• 📎 Why we’re taking legal action against SerpApi’s unlawful scraping

• Chris Long’s Tweet and LinkedIn Post that sums it all up (with a good laugh)

👀 My 2 Cents:

This action echoes Reddit’s against the same company and generally against scraping companies, marking a coordinated offensive by platforms against actors who “resell” their infrastructure and data without permission. Google is positioning itself here as a defender of publisher rights and the integrity of its infrastructure.

Let’s dare say it: Google, the company that built a $2 trillion empire by scraping the entire global web for 20 years (often without asking publishers’ opinions), is now attacking an actor... for scraping. It’s literally the pot calling the kettle black.

Make no mistake, behind this “security defense” lies a targeted attack (a “Kill Switch”). SerpApi is the eyes of ChatGPT and Perplexity. By attacking the provider, Google is trying to blind its AI competitors who don’t have their own index and depend on it for “Grounding” (access to fresh information).

This case reveals the immense fragility of current GenAI. Without Google’s index, these models risk becoming empty shells or obsolete. They don’t own web knowledge, they rent it. If the data tap closes, it’s not just AI that suffers, but the entire MarTech and SEO ecosystem (ranking tools, SaaS) that risks immediate technical asphyxiation.

🟣 Instagram vs TikTok: Interview with Adam Mosseri

Instagram is launching an app for smart TVs (e.g., Amazon Fire), attempting to move from the “small screen” to the living room. Mosseri admits navigating by sight (”We’re going to learn a lot”) on actual usage: passive Reels consumption or collaborative experience?

Mosseri acknowledges that US regulatory pressure has slowed TikTok, allowing Meta to adjust its algorithms. He analyzes TikTok as becoming “too complicated” for Westerners by trying to copy the Chinese “Super App” model.

Unlike YouTube which pushes toward “premium” TV content, Instagram remains for now on variety and short-form. But Mosseri doesn’t rule out a radical pivot toward long-form if necessary, even if it contradicts their historical strategy.

Within 2 to 4 years, users will be able to “sculpt” their feed proactively thanks to AI (”tell it what you want”), surpassing simple passive recommendation.

Over 10 years, Mosseri envisions interactions dominated by smart glasses, posing a major challenge for a historically visual platform that will have to adapt to an “audio-first” world.

✍️ Author: Max Tani (Interview with Adam Mosseri for Semafor)

📎 Exclusive / Instagram’s Adam Mosseri on how to beat TikTok — on your phone and in your living room

👀 My 2 Cents (in 3 parts):

The revenge of “Long Time”! Mosseri hesitates on long-form, but he shouldn’t. In the AI era, we’re seeing a comeback of dense and deep formats (anyone who’s listened to a 2-3 hour Lex Fridman podcast episode will know what I’m talking about). Consumption is becoming asynchronous and intellectual, far from the simple dopamine rush of Reels.

With the arrival of Smart Glasses, Mosseri touches on a crucial point: the future of “visual” paradoxically passes through audio. Voice interaction and listening become the primary vectors of mobile content consumption.

AI no longer just recommends, it curates. We’re moving from a suffered feed to a user-”sculpted” feed (Active Curation). Instagram is right to prepare now: if they miss the turn toward ultra-personalization and audio, they’ll remain stuck in the smartphone decade.

🟣 AEO vs SEO: The $171 Billion Debate Dividing Marketing

The debate shaking the marketing industry is worth $171 billion. Black Friday 2024 delivered a signal: major retailers received eight times more traffic via ChatGPT than in 2023. Still tiny, but the trajectory is clear.

Two camps are clashing. Benjamin Houy shut down his startup Lorelight after six months: traditional SEO best practices already work for LLMs, nothing new to invent. On the opposite side, Brian Stempeck from Evertune claims it’s over for Google. University of Virginia students are all on ChatGPT, Gemini, or TikTok.

Reality leans toward a merger of disciplines.

AEO has its specificities: massive content volume because LLMs consume more, critical recency with 50% more chances if published in the last 13 weeks, and strong emphasis on user-generated content from Reddit, Quora, and YouTube.

On the ground, Expedia succeeds with ultra-granular descriptions, Cars Commerce prefers editorial improvements that serve both, Semrush advocates returning to brand fundamentals.

The wisest conclusion comes from Expedia: if someone claims to know how it will be in two years, they’re lying. The market will reach $171 billion by 2030, but no one holds the definitive answers. The time is for intelligent experimentation, not certainties sold at gold prices.

👀 My 2 Cents:

SEO is becoming more a question of presence than position. As for Zero-Click Search, it’s increasingly becoming a marketing baseline rather than an SEO reality. There, I said it. After dissecting the latest Semrush study on AI Overviews, the finding is clear: the objective is shifting from pure ranking to thought leadership. Becoming THE cited source. Mentions replace positions and multi-platform presence (YouTube, Reddit) is no longer optional. The post-click world exists, but it no longer rewards tactical optimization, it crowns authority.

Google remains in maximum volatility and nobody knows what the algo will look like in June 2026. So don’t waste your time ranting about the end of free traffic. Focus on the only thing you truly control: your business. The strategy now comes down to two words: GET KNOWN. Build your brand. Do everything so people know who you are.

• ✍️ Author: Patrick Coffee, Wall Street Journal

• 📎 A Billion-Dollar Question Hangs Over the New AI Search Marketing Industry

🟣 I’m Karine. I help you adapt your content strategy to AI Search and GEO through a masterclass and a community focused on AI marketing. The next session of my GEO masterclass in english will be in May.

→ 90 minutes to master the impact of AI Search and GEO on your marketing and content strategy in 2026: understand the ongoing transformations and effectively reallocate your marketing, content, and SEO budgets.

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HELLO!!!

So? How’s that first day back at work going? Full of joy and good vibes… 😩😬.

To help you make sense of the (yet another) flood of Google innovations from this summer, AI and marketing, here’s a Special Edition. This time, I spent a good ten hours gathering, reading, and sorting through all my curation to bring you only the essentials. This time I waited until the month was really over to encompass everything up to yesterday, Sunday, August 31st, the very last day. Last month, I’d barely hit “publish” when Google released the video version of Notebook LLM (#Heavy).

Before I dive in, I’m also giving you my big picture vision - where Google wants to take us with this flow of AI products and innovations, and what message they want to convey:

Transform and train: We’re all transitioning from content creator to vibe coder.

Loud and clear: AI Mode is truly the future of Google Search. It’s here, really here, and here to stay.

On the menu for this back-to-school season:

• 🤖 AI Overviews & AI Mode

• 🛠️ Google AI Tools & Gemini

• 📈 SEO & Publisher Relations

I’m Karine. I help you adapt your content strategy to AI Search and GEO through a masterclass and a community focused on AI marketing. The next session of my GEO masterclass in english will be in May. Check it out and join me!

Join the waitlist

🤖 AI Overviews, AI Search and AI Mode

🟣 AI Mode is now accessible in 180 countries and regions

Geographic expansion: Since August 21st, AI Mode is now accessible in 180 countries and regions. This is a massive increase compared to its previous availability, which was limited to the United States, United Kingdom, and India. Note that the feature remains, for now, only in English. As of that date, it was still not available in France but…

📎 What’s new on Search

🟣 Google is testing AI Mode in the European Union

…A few days ago, Radu Oncescu shared on X that, in his opinion, Google was preparing the launch of AI Mode in the European Union.

📎 Google is preparing the launch of Google AI Mode in the European Union

🟣 Google is testing AI Mode to send more traffic to publisher websites

Google, through Robby Stein, announced tests to evolve its AI Mode. The main objective is to encourage clicks and send more traffic to publisher websites, particularly by making these links more visible and useful within its AI responses to better support the web ecosystem and content creators. The three major changes being tested are:

1. Integrated Link Carousels: Link galleries will be directly inserted into AI responses, a feature already launched on desktop and coming soon to mobile.

2. Improved Inline Links: Google will optimize the display of links placed directly in the text of AI responses, with the intention of showing more in the future.

3. Web Guide Extension: This experimental feature, which organizes the most relevant web links, will be tested on the main search tab (”All”) and not just on the “Web” tab. I talked about this in the July special edition.

📎 Post by Robby Stein, VP Product @Google Search on X. Spotted by Barry Schwartz.

🟣 Click collapse: true for content publishers - but false for Google

Google claims that the impact of AI Overviews is neutral on website traffic, declaring it “relatively stable” and of better quality. However, this claim has been sharply criticized for its lack of evidence: Google indeed provides no numerical data and, most importantly, offers no filter in Search Console to allow publishers to verify this impact themselves.

I’ve already written this several times: the novelty here is the introduction of a “click quality” criterion, a concept that Sundar Pichai (who is nevertheless the champion at conducting 2+ hour interviews without really making any actual announcements) had clearly mentioned in this interview that I identified as essential this year.

📎 Liz Reid’s article or storm in SEO land

🟣 Google presents its advertising offering for AI Mode

Google has begun actively presenting its advertising offering for AI Mode to advertisers, signaling an imminent broader rollout (probably before Q4 2025). Key takeaways:

Ad Formats: Ads in AI Mode will primarily be text ads and Shopping ads, integrated via Search, Shopping, and Performance Max (PMax) campaigns.

Targeting: Ads will be targeted based on the user’s query but also on the content of the AI-generated response, which represents a new approach.

Advertiser Requirements: Google emphasizes the importance of “feed hygiene,” meaning the need for brands to maintain perfectly up-to-date product catalogs.

📎 How Google is pitching new AI Mode search ads to marketers

🟣 New AI Catch up feature

Google is testing a new feature named “AI Catch Up,” specifically for search results related to sports matches. Similar to AI audio overviews, this option offers an audio summary of match highlights directly in search results. Users can choose to listen to the summary in English or their local language, and can also share it via a dedicated button.

📎 SEO Roundtable, Barry Schwartz: Google AI Catch Up

🟣 Google launches Preferred Sources in the US

Google has launched “Preferred Sources,” a new feature that allows US and Indian users to choose their favorite publishers for news. The idea is simple: when you search for a news topic, you can select sources you like. After that, these sites will appear more often in “Top Stories” or in a dedicated section. The results you see aren’t personalized, but you can always refine your search to find even more information.

📎 How to select your preferred sources in Top Stories in Search

📎 What’s News on Search - Publisher Center Help

🟣 Google launches specialized Search

AI-powered Search has a major characteristic that’s been taking shape for 24 months: Search is micro-fragmenting and Google is - still - leading the dance on this trend.

Google is launching Flight Deals, a new AI-powered feature in Google Flights. This new tool uses a conversational chat interface to help travelers save money on their flights. The feature launches next week in the United States, Canada, and India.

📎 Flight Deals is our new, AI-powered flight search tool

They’re also testing a new version of Google Finance, powered by AI. Google Finance is being redesigned with AI at its core. New features include the ability to ask complex financial questions and get detailed AI-generated answers, access to advanced graphical tools for data visualization, and receiving real-time market data and news. This new version will be rolled out gradually in the United States at google.com/finance, with an option to switch between the old and new interface. As of August 27, 2025, it’s accessible via Search Labs in the United States.

📎 We’re testing a new, AI-powered Google Finance.

🟣 ChatGPT allegedly uses Google SERP data for its answers

According to a report, ChatGPT (OpenAI) uses the services of a startup named SerpApi to scrape Google search results. This method is primarily used to provide answers on current topics. The article from The Information media is based on the fact that SerpApi has listed OpenAI as a client in the past. Other AI services, like Perplexity, allegedly use a similar technique.

📎 The Information article “OpenAI is challenging Google - While using its Search data“. Since then, the media has investigated further into SerpApi.

🛠️ Google AI Tools & Gemini

🟣 Gemini’s Storybook mode transforms presentations into captivating narratives

Storybook is a revolutionary Gemini feature that automatically converts technical presentations into narrative stories.

📎 Marie Haynes tested it, and she loved it.

📎 You can access it directly through Gemini Drops

🟣 New AI-based instant translation and language learning tools in Google Translate

Google Translate introduces new features powered by cutting-edge AI, such as Gemini. The app now offers enhanced instant translation that enables seamless bidirectional conversations in over 70 languages, intelligently detecting pauses and intonations. Additionally, a new experimental function offers personalized conversation practice sessions that adapt to the user’s level, which is ideal for people learning Spanish, French, or English.

📎 New AI-powered live translation and language learning tools in Google Translate

🟣 NotebookLLM and audio and video mode…

NotebookLLM is THE amazing Google product that’s your AI-based research assistant, and it can’t hallucinate because it’s only trained on the data you provide it (but it can also search the web if you ask it to). In my opinion, it’s the best tool from these past two incredible years. It can do almost everything in terms of content creation and lets you juggle multimodality effortlessly. Until now, you could create written, visual, and audio content with 1 click. The announcement made on July 29th (but I had already published my “round up” of announcements for July so I didn’t include it) adds the ability to transform all that into video!!

📎 What’s new in NotebookLM: Video Overviews and an upgraded Studio

🟣 … and since August 25th, now available in 80 languages (no longer just English)

Until August 24th, you could only make videos in English even if the notebook content was in French. For the past few days, you can also do it in French and in 79 other languages 🥳.

📎 NotebookLM’s Video Overviews are now available in 80 languages

🟣 Google Notebook LLM Enterprise Agent

Google has launched several agents to help us automate a lot of things. My favorite being Notebook LLM, I’m sharing info about Notebook LLM Enterprise with you.

NotebookLLM is an AI-based research and writing tool that helps summarize and extract information from various sources. It acts as a virtual research assistant, allowing you to get analyses, brainstorm, and summarize facts from your documents.

Difference between regular Notebook LLM and Notebook LLM Enterprise: Basically, the normal version of NotebookLLM is for individuals. The “Enterprise” version has all the same functions, but additionally, it’s made for businesses. That means it has enhanced security options, so data stays within the company: the data isn’t used to train the AI model, and the company maintains full control over who can access what.

📎 What is NotebookLLM Enterprise?

🟣 Google DeepMind released URL Context

Heavy stuff! URL Context from Google DeepMind allows extracting content from 20 URLs simultaneously via a prompt, shaking up comparative analysis and data extraction quite a bit. You can now extract content from any web page, PDF, or image just by pasting a URL. It pulls live data from up to 20 links per query! No setup needed. Just pass the links in your prompt. Use case ideas: Compare reports, PDFs, or articles; extract data (names, prices, highlights…); analyze codebases, GitHub repos, or docs or even summarize multiple sources at once.

📎 URL context | Gemini API | Google AI for Developers

📎 Discovered by Charly Wargnier

🟣 Nano Banana: the image editing tool that’s crushing it and could knock out Photoshop

New Google tool NANOBANANA that’s buzzing because it excels at prompt-based image editing, surpassing ChatGPT in precision and preservation of non-targeted elements, a game-changer for photo editing. No Photoshop skills needed. It changes and alters elements in images that you can command by prompt. And it doesn’t touch any other part of the image that you didn’t want to change (ChatGPT, I’m looking at you!)

📎 The announcement post on the Mideast blog Nano Banana: Image editing in Google Gemini gets a major upgrade and the one on The Keyword.

📎 Gemini AI image generator — text to image & editing with Nano Banana

🟣 New features in AI Mode

Google announces testing of new agentic capabilities for AI Mode as well as two other improvements.

Agentic capabilities: AI is now able to perform more complex tasks and take more initiative to help users. This new agentic experience is rolling out for Google AI Ultra subscribers in the United States through the “Agentic capabilities in AI Mode” experience in Labs for the modest sum of $124.99 USD/month.

Personalization: Google also announces a new test for Americans who have opted into the AI Mode experience in Labs who will see results adapted to their personal preferences and interests; starting with restaurant-related topics, helping discover new restaurants and cafes that match users’ unique tastes. This confirms one of the big announcements from Google I/O last May: AI Mode responses will only become more personalized and tailored to each user’s interests.

Easy sharing: A new option to share AI responses has been introduced.

📎 Google’s official statement

📈 SEO, AI Search and Publisher Relations

🟣 Danny Sullivan leaves Google…

Danny Sullivan, the iconic figure who held the position of “Search Liaison” at Google for over seven years, has officially left this role. He remains at Google but will dedicate himself to new projects within the search team, in a role that promises to be less public. The “Search Liaison” role, which served as a bridge between Google and the SEO community, has therefore been eliminated. The official X account @searchliaison has been deactivated. From now on, Google’s official communication with site owners will happen exclusively through the usual Google Search Central channels. This news is not a surprise to the industry, given the decline in Danny Sullivan’s public activity in recent months.

📎 Danny Sullivan is no longer the Google Search Liaison

🟣 … Since then, Google has been looking for a new “Search Liaison”

Initially, a new job posting at Google for a communications position was spotted by Lily Ray. This announcement quickly sparked debates in the SEO community, with many thinking it’s the position meant to replace the former “Search Liaison,” Danny Sullivan. Others, like Barry Schwartz, think the position is clearly attached to the public relations (PR) team, whereas the former Search Liaison wasn’t part of it, and the official account has been deactivated.

📎 Official announcement on Google’s site “External Communications Manager, Search” (the job all SEO pros would dream of having without ever admitting it).

VIdéo manquante

🟣 How Google sees AI, SEO and AI Mode

During an interview in Japan, Gary Illyes from Google shared several important pieces of information about Google’s vision regarding AI and SEO. Here are the essential points to remember:

How Google’s AI works: AI features (AI Mode, AI Overviews) use a customized Gemini model. The AI relies exclusively on Google’s search index for its answers; it doesn’t explore the web in real-time. Webmasters can prevent their content from being used by Gemini via the Google-Extended directive in the robots.txt file.

AI-generated content: Google accepts this type of content provided it’s high quality and there’s human editorial oversight. The risk of AIs training on other AIs’ content is not currently considered a problem for Google Search.

Other key SEO points: Illyes reaffirmed that Google Search doesn’t use social signals (shares, likes) as a ranking factor. He confirmed that ads will soon arrive in AI responses. New, more precise crawl controls are being studied with the IETF.

🟣 AI, AEO, GEO, LLMO, etc.: beware of spam and scams

John Mueller from Google issued a warning against the proliferation of new AI-related acronyms in the SEO sector, such as GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), AIO (AI Optimization), etc. According to him, strong marketing pressure to impose new terms is often a sign that actors are trying to sell services resembling spam or scams.

This warning responds to the trend of some declaring SEO “dead” to replace it with these new disciplines and try to create a term that will make them famous (in the fashion of Hubspot which created the term inbound marketing… to both sell its software and name a new marketing trend - not everyone is Darmesh Shah…).

So? Real semantic debate marking a fundamental change or just another marketing stunt? Too early to say. Some like Profound, which I’ve already told you about, might well succeed in qualifying SEO in the AI era, AEO. That said, in most cases, you need to be careful about all these new acronyms because they could simply mask low-quality service offerings.

📎 Google’s John Mueller warns AI SEO acronyms signal spam tactics

🟣 Reddit CEO’s bold statement about Google: “Anyone using Google will end up on Reddit”

Reddit is killing it. Success confirmed by their latest Earning Call. During recent earning calls, Reddit’s CEO, Steven Huffman, didn’t miss displaying his pride, particularly when he recalled the central place of his platform in the search ecosystem: “practically anyone using Google [...] will end up on Reddit at some point,” emphasizing that “Reddit” is one of the most searched terms on Google.

He did have the honesty to recall that despite this particular visibility in SERPs and AI Overviews, traffic from Google is variable and constituted a “headwind” (had a negative impact) during the second quarter. These statements are part of Reddit’s strategy to position itself as a search engine in its own right, where users come to find authentic answers.

Honestly, I don’t really understand the “I’m showing off”… it’s great to be cited all the time by Google, but it also seems to me to be a pretty big risk to be so dependent on it, right? Well, the whole internet is aware that when Google pulls out a Kleenex, the entire web catches Covid!! AKA: the slightest little change in its algorithm and Google undoes in a few hours what Reddit takes pride in today and what took years to build.

📎 Reddit wants to be a search engine now | The Verge

🟣 Google is preparing to give first access to its new Google Trends API

It had been announced a month ago. It’s already starting to be implemented and apparently, it’s already pleasing people a lot. According to Daniel Waisberg from Google, the onboarding process for the first testers will begin around mid-September 2025.

However, Google warned that selection will be very strict at the beginning, with a “very small” number of participants. For those who won’t be selected in this first wave, the wait could last several months. Google had initially stated that SEO professionals wouldn’t be prioritized. The reason given by John Mueller from Google is that Google Trends is used by many types of organizations (major media, data analysts, companies, etc.), which will probably be prioritized.

📎 I already talked about it in July

📎 See Daniel Waisberg’s post

🟣 Google offers completely free AI courses

No prerequisites, no prior technical skills, no fees: truly accessible to everyone. I’m only sharing those I thought interesting from a marketing + content perspective.

• 🔗 Introduction to Generative AI: Simple and quick course on generative AI. Shows how to develop AI apps with Google tools.

• 🔗 Introduction to Large Language Models (LLMs): Course to understand LLMs… and present their applications. Basically, you learn how to create apps with AI

• 🔗 Introduction to Image Generation: Course that presents diffusion models, a promising category in machine learning applied to imagery.

• 🔗 The Attention Mechanism: Introduction to the attention mechanism, which allows neural networks to focus on certain parts of an input sequence.

🟣 I’m Karine. I help you adapt your content strategy to AI Search and GEO through a masterclass and a community focused on AI marketing. The next session of my GEO masterclass in english will be in May. Check it out and join us!

Join the waitlist

It’s always the same story with Google: while we’re all in lounge-chair mode 🏖️ between July and August, they roll out announcements at a completely crazy pace. And this summer, given the tidal wave of innovations announced at the last Google I/O in May, it was clear we’d get almost one release per day.

I’m going to fully disconnect for 15 days in August (the first time in years I’m allowing myself to do that). But I felt a bit guilty leaving without giving you a quick update — especially with everything that has dropped lately. So I prepared a recap post for you, focused on innovations that impact marketing.

My real back-to-school newsletter about AI Search will come as usual with a big recap of Google news. But July was so dense that I had to split the summer into two parts. Otherwise it would have been unmanageable for September. So here’s this summer special edition ☀️.

• 🤖 AI Overviews – Expansion, Impact & Major backlash

• 🌍 AI Mode – Global rollout, features & interfaces

• 🛠️ AI-powered search interfaces & tools

• 🛍️ Shopping & retail innovations

• ✍️ Content, AI & ecosystem

Want to share this special edition? 👇👇👇

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1️⃣ AI Overviews – Expansion, Impact & Major backlash

🟣 “Zero-click” boom since AI Overviews (Similarweb study)

According to Similarweb, searches without clicks jumped from 56% to 69% since AI Overviews were introduced. Publishers’ fears are justified: AI summaries really do divert readers away from media sites, and clicks melt away like snow in the sun.

📎 My analysis of the Similarweb research

🟣 Enriched Overviews: videos, movies, lyrics

AI Overviews now increasingly display embedded YouTube videos, including trailers and explanatory content.

Example with the query “how to fix a cracked tile.” Google even offers an audio version of the AI Overview.

Barry Schwartz notes that Google is also targeting movie-related queries, with AI summaries replacing links. Same thing for song lyrics, which are now automatically generated. This will leave many sites in that niche struggling.

📎 Google AI Overviews For Movie Queries

🟣 Pew study: clicks drop when AI Overviews are present

A Pew Research Center study shows users click far less on results when an AI Overview appears. Google is cementing its role as an answer engine rather than a search engine. When you search on Google, you increasingly get… Google’s answer, and less often publishers’ answers.

📎 My detailed analysis of the Pew research

🟣 Cloudflare asks Google for an opt-out

As mentioned earlier, Cloudflare made headlines by announcing it would block AI bots that scrape site content without compensation. Their solution: Pay-Per-Crawl.

Except… as most SEO specialists know, Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews cannot be blocked without also blocking Google search indexing entirely, which obviously nobody wants (who in 2025 wants Google not to index their site at all? 🤔)

But Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, believes Google will provide a way to block AI Overviews and Answer Boxes without blocking standard indexing. He wrote on X:

“Gemini is blocked by default. We will also get Google to provide ways to block AnswerBox and AIOverview without blocking classic search indexing.”

To be continued…

And one more note: we love this debate in our community. This fall, we’ll host a Fireside Chat with Stéphanie Cohen, Chief Strategy Officer at Cloudflare 🥳

Join my community

🟣 Google: “Classic SEO still works”

Despite generative AI, Google reminds us, through analyst Gary Illyes, that traditional SEO still helps appear in AI Overviews. This was shared during Search Live Central and widely relayed.

So for those still wondering whether SEO is alive, dead, or both: the answer is a mix of “maybe we don’t call it that anymore BUT the core ingredients are still relevant.” Original content, topical authority, optimized structure… all of that still works. It’s no longer sufficient, but it remains necessary.

📎 THE top LinkedIn post from Kenichi Suzuki summarizing everything
📎 Full article in Search Engine Journal

2️⃣ AI Mode – Global rollout, features & interfaces

🟣 AI Mode rolling out in India, UK, and Workspace

India received AI Mode without Search Labs registration. The UK too. For those who thought Google was still hesitating to deploy AI Overviews, think again. A progressive global rollout makes sense. Europe next? Meanwhile, all professional Workspace accounts now also have access. Personally, I’m a fan. I’ll do a full demo soon.

📎 Introducing AI Mode in India
📎 Google Search’s AI Mode is rolling out in the UK
📎 AI Mode in Google Workspace

🟣 New integrated features

Google added file uploads, a Canvas Planner, and a “Search while browsing” function. We’re moving from search engine to personal research co-pilot.

AI Mode is now available on desktop via a homepage button. Users can ask complex questions about images and soon import PDFs to analyze content. The system combines file information with web data to deliver detailed answers. More file types, including Google Drive content, will be supported later. Currently available in English in the US and India for users 18+.

Google launches “Canvas,” a feature helping users organize complex projects and plans. It runs in a dynamic side panel that saves progress continuously. Users can refine AI-generated plans and soon integrate their own files.

Google launches “Search Live,” allowing live video interaction through Google Lens. Users can point their phone camera and interact with AI seeing their environment in real time.

Google also integrates Lens and AI Mode deeper into Chrome. Users can select parts of a page to get AI summaries and ask follow-up questions.

📎 New ways to learn and explore with AI Mode in Search

🟣 Vertical use cases: Shopping, Lens, Circle

AI now enables guided shopping (“Help Me Shop”) and searches via Google Lens and Circle to Search.

📎 Dive deeper with AI Mode and get gaming help in Circle to Search

🟣 Paid version with Gemini 2.5 Pro & Deep Search

Google introduces a premium AI Mode with Gemini 2.5 Pro and Deep Search, accessible only via subscription. A strategic shift toward monetizing AI search.

3️⃣ AI-powered search interfaces & tools

🟣 Google Web Guide structures results

Web Guide organizes search results by topics and subtopics using Gemini.

AI replaces the “10 blue links” logic with thematic organization, helping users navigate complex searches more easily.

📎 Web Guide announcement

🟣 Google Trends API finally opens

An official Google Trends API is now available, allowing analysts and marketers to automate trend research. A real gem for content marketers seeking emerging topics.

📎 Access the alpha version of the Google Trends API

🟣 Launch of “Search Live With Video”

Google now integrates live videos into search results: sports events, news, concerts, etc. Search becomes a real-time platform.

🟣 AI summaries now deployed in Discover (US)

Google officially launched AI summaries in Google Discover on iOS and Android. Instead of headlines, users see AI-generated summaries with source logos.

Publishers’ last reliable traffic channel is once again threatened. Zero-click searches hit new highs. Result: Google strengthens control over access to information while weakening content monetization. Smile, you’re surrounded.

Google’s Discover page now summarizes news with AI

4️⃣ Shopping & Retail innovations

🟣 Virtual try-on & personalized price alerts

Google activates virtual try-on for clothing with modeling across body types. Personalized price alerts now help track product price drops. Google continues making Search a shopping destination.

📎 Try on styles with AI, jump on great prices and more

5️⃣ Content, AI & Ecosystem

🟣 Google launches vibe coding app: Opal

Opal is an experimental Google Labs tool that lets users create and share mini AI apps without coding, using natural language and visual interfaces. Currently public beta in the US only.

With Opal you can:

• Create AI workflows combining prompts, models, and tools
• Edit visually or by describing changes
• Share apps instantly via Google accounts
• Explore template galleries

📎 Introducing Opal

🟣 Reddit posts replace forums

Google replaces “Forums & discussions” with “Posts on Reddit,” discovered by Barry Schwartz.

The web has become conversational. Google wants more human, community-based answers in an AI-saturated world. But what happens when Reddit answers are themselves AI-generated? 😬

📎 Barry Schwartz article

🟣 Does ChatGPT use Google results?

Rumors grow that ChatGPT sometimes relies on Google Search results. Several SEO professionals in the US report similar findings.

📎 Confirmed: ChatGPT uses Google SERP snippets

🟣 …And Google may rank ChatGPT results

Everyone scrapes everyone’s content now. Even personal chats might end up ranking in Google. Personal branding era, taken to the extreme…

📎 LinkedIn post shared by Christèle
📎 Original announcement article

To help users keep up, Google launches Gemini Drops — a hub summarizing Gemini feature releases, tips, and community uses.

🟣 The cherry on top — closing this special edition

Google knows it’s hard to keep up with innovation speed around Gemini. Gemini Drops centralizes updates so we can stay informed.

📎 Gemini Drops launch announcement here

👋 That’s all for July. Have a great rest of summer and see you at the end of August for a BIG AI Search edition. If you’re not subscribed yet, you can do so here.

🟣 I’m Karine. I help you adapt your content strategy to AI Search and GEO through a masterclass and a community focused on AI marketing. The next session of my GEO masterclass in english will be in May. Want to join?

Join the waitlist

A must-read!

🎁 But I’m breaking it all down for you in this post because honestly, it’s dense to read and listen to.

My Summary

1️⃣ The web, as the world’s largest media platform, is living its final hours. It’s transitioning from a passive information platform to an active, transactional ecosystem composed of a multitude of specialized and individualized applications.

2️⃣ Web 2.0 allowed everyone to become a content creator. The AI-powered web is now set to transform the next generation (our children) into programmers of super-personalized applications. Yesterday’s content creators become tomorrow’s Vibe Coders (or... today’s?).

3️⃣ What is AI search? Very soon, we won’t even be scrolling through content anymore (let alone clicking). Tomorrow’s search will focus on data visualization—data generated and made accessible by this new wave of applications. The web becomes a series of databases that AI agents and apps will query.

4️⃣ Google is profoundly transforming traffic dynamics—and this is huge. The scope of the web has exploded: +45% in two years on Google! And it’s not just “noise” generated by AI. It’s related to the fact that content consumption has become deeply multi-platform and multi-format, with AI smoothing transitions (much less friction).

Google claims it will continue to send traffic, but with two major changes:

Traffic dilution: Traffic is now distributed across a much wider variety of sites and creators. This explains why many notice a traffic drop—the pie is bigger, but so are the slices.

Emergence of the “Click Quality” concept: This is the real paradigm shift. Google now measures the quality of traffic it sends. The key criterion? Time spent by the user on the page. As Google becomes a response platform more than a search engine, its objective is to reduce unqualified traffic and favor targeted and engaging visits.

🧨 Honestly, this is huge.

We’re witnessing a complete overhaul of our relationship with digital. Attention no longer focuses on raw quantity, but on real engagement, perceived utility, and extreme personalization.

Details of S. Pichai’s Interview - From a Marketing Perspective

1) On the Evolution of the Web in General

Sundar Pichai addresses the web’s evolution by drawing parallels with previous major technological changes.

He notes that the arrival of the Internet enabled new forms of creation and expression, like blogs, which allowed many to share their thoughts with the world.

Pichai recalls joining Google at a time when AJAX was the “revolution” that made the web dynamic, leading to the emergence of applications like Google Maps, Flickr, and Gmail.

Despite past predictions like the 2015 meme “The web is dead,” Pichai affirms that the web continues to grow. He particularly highlights a “stunning” phenomenon where the number of available web pages has increased by 45% in just the last two years. He mentions that Google’s search techniques evaluate page quality, including whether content is machine-generated, and that this doesn’t explain the overall growth trend they observe.

Pichai suggests that creators must now operate cross-platform and cross-format, noting the sophistication of content formats like video.

He believes AI will make the transition between different content formats “frictionless” because AI models are natively multimodal. He gives the example of NotebookLLM enabling document transformation into something resembling a podcast.

This suggests that content production is moving away from static, format-specific creation.

Pichai concludes that people consume and produce much more content in general, and he sees this as a moment of expansion—contrary to what many marketers and content creators (including journalists) observe and deplore.

2) Google’s Perspective on Traffic Facing Publishers’ Anger

The interview addresses the tension between Google’s changes and content publishers’ concerns, particularly regarding traffic.

The News Media Alliance, representing publishers like The New York Times and The Verge’s parent company Vox Media, issued an “angry” statement calling AI mode “theft” for using content without economic return.

The News/Media Alliance organization, which represents major American publishers like Condé Nast and Vox Media, has strongly criticized Google’s AI mode expansion, outright calling it “theft.” Its president, Danielle Coffey, claims Google “forcibly takes content and uses it without any compensation,” thus depriving publishers of both traffic and revenue. The conflict concerns the issue of publisher consent. Internal documents from the antitrust lawsuit against Google revealed that the company deliberately chose not to ask publishers’ permission to include their content in its AI features. Instead, publishers must completely opt out of search results if they don’t want their content used in AI. Publishers consider Google’s response a form of blackmail: either you accept that your content is exploited to feed Google’s AI; or you completely disappear from the web as Google presents it—without any visibility in results. A binary choice without compromise, justified by Liz Reid, head of Google Search, who believes more nuanced opt-outs would generate “enormous complexity.”

The Alliance claims that links (and resulting traffic) were the only redeeming quality of search that gave publishers traffic and revenue.

In response, Pichai:

• Affirms that the web continues to grow and that Google sends more traffic to more websites than ever (this is vigorously contested - I’m preparing a detailed post on the subject)

• Affirms that AI mode will include sources and that more than ever Google commits to letting users experience the breadth of the web and go where they want, with Google providing “more context”

• States that the breadth of domains to which Google sends users is increasing and expects this to be true with AI mode as well. However, he acknowledges there will always be vigorous debates about value exchange on platforms

• Affirms that Google, more than any other company, prioritizes sending traffic to the web and will continue to do so in five years

Regarding data on traffic quality, Pichai responds that:

Google sends traffic to a wider range of sources and publishers. He claims this referral traffic is of “higher quality” because Google measures time spent on page and other metrics, and this quality is increasing.

The fact of transforming Google from a search engine into an answer engine (via Featured Snippets, etc.) allows keeping people longer on the platform, this time being an indicator of better quality traffic.

Pichai confirms that Google sees overall query growth in Search, including on Apple devices and platforms. He quantified query growth from AI overviews. He considers the situation “very far from a zero-sum game.”

Generally, he especially reminds that although more people may be highlighted, potentially leading to individuals seeing less traffic, Google reflects what users want. This has always been their position as I remind in this post: sending traffic was one of the elements that was part of the “package” in the intermediation and tripartite relationship between Google, the end user, and in the middle, the site publisher/content creator. Today this balance is evolving, certainly. But Pichai reminds that it’s the result of what users want. Pichai even concludes by saying that “if Google made the wrong choice, users would go elsewhere - but data shows the opposite.”

3) The Evolution and Functioning of Google Search

The interview covers how Google Search evolves with AI integration.

This year’s I/O marked the beginning of what appears to be a “new era” for search and the web.

Google’s vision for Search goes beyond links to web pages, evolving toward something that much more resembles developing personalized applications.

Google’s new AI mode builds a personalized search results page with interactive graphics and potentially other types of applications, in real-time.

Google plans to “evolve” AI mode features into the main search experience over time.

Pichai recalls that the functioning of Search, particularly ranking, is “sacred” at Google and that “no person at Google can influence the ranking algorithm.”

Google uses many ranking signals, far more complex than PageRank today. A page’s authority is determined by these signals (how other pages link to it, like an academic citation), Google doesn’t individually evaluate a page’s authority.

Pichai states that AI mode is no different in this regard. In particular (and one might say “obviously”...) Google will not adjust AI mode responses in response to political pressure. If broad user feedback indicates something isn’t working, Google systematically examines changes, but they don’t look at individual cases or change rankings based on pressure.

Regarding information synthesis and potential misinformation, Pichai clarifies that Google’s signals determine authority, not individual evaluation. He believes Google has always operated at a high level of responsibility and constantly works to earn users’ trust. AI overviews had a low error rate even under adversarial questioning.

4) The Web as Media vs. Application/Database for Agents

Pichai discusses a fundamental change in the web’s purpose and structure, driven by AI and agents.

According to him, the current phase means people will be able to “create AI applications.” He sees this as a “multiplicative” phase where more people than ever before can build products. He highlights that the web is becoming a space where applications are “added.”

Examples include Figma, TikTok, Substack/Ghost, and communities.

“Vibe Coding” is considered a bridge for this trend, suggesting future generations will easily program and create everything they imagine.

Pichai agrees with the idea that the web, as a media platform, is “living its final hours” since AI’s advent. While the web as an application platform is at an “all-time high,” he notes that the web as a media or information platform “seems to be at its lowest level.”

The web is shifting from a media platform (information) to a transaction platform.

He also highlights that some of Google’s most interesting search results now involve generating “personalized web applications” for data visualization.

He agrees with the concept developed by the interviewing journalist that the web is fundamentally a “series of databases,” on which user interfaces are built. Envisioning an “agent-driven web” in 10 years, he believes this web might not resemble the current web. It could be optimized for agents to query these databases.

For companies like Uber, DoorDash, or Airbnb, participating in this agent-driven world means considering value exchange. They might see their overall business increase, or feel disintermediated and choose not to participate, just as a restaurant might choose not to do delivery.

He acknowledges companies could charge fees to agents for accessing their services, comparing this to retailers providing value to brands or merchants paying credit card fees. He thinks the system will find balance. There are many possible models (subscription, revenue sharing).

He suggests the transition to agents might happen faster in enterprise because CIOs can mandate interoperability. In the consumer space, users will decide which experience they prefer.

The conclusion of this massive interview is quite promising:

He emphasizes that the power developers will have to create on the web thanks to tools like “vibe coding” hasn’t been seen in 25 years. And already projects into the next phase after this one could be when AI translates into the physical world via robotics, creating a “magical” moment with more versatile robots.

Sources:

• The complete S. Pichai interview: Google CEO Sundar Pichai on the future of Search, AI Agents, and selling Chrome

• For a summary: This LinkedIn post

• For an overview of News on this topic and periphery: My AI Marketing Curation

🟣 I’m Karine. I help you adapt your content strategy to AI Search and GEO through a masterclass and a community focused on AI marketing. The next session of my GEO masterclass in english will be in May. Want to join?

Join the waitlist

What: A summary of all Google I/O announcements that directly impact marketing, content creators, and Search in general.

By whom: Me (with AI’s help to keep it not too long - I tend to write too much).

In brief: Over a hundred announcements during this Google I/O and a good quarter concern Search and content.

Other Link to help you: This LinkedIn post where I summarized, while following Google I/O Live, the main changes

👉 I don’t think anyone in the world right now is ready for what Google is bringing to the table with its New Era of Google Search.

In Detail:

During its Google I/O 2025 conference, Google introduced new AI features to make search easier and smarter. Here’s my condensed version of AI Search-related news:

Shift in Search Usage

Since the launch of AI Overviews last year, Google Search usage has profoundly changed. Users ask more questions, including more complex, longer, and multimodal questions. AI in Search makes it easier to ask any question and get a useful answer with links to the web.

Success of AI Overviews

AI Overviews is one of Search’s most successful launches in the last decade. AI Overviews has been extended to more than 1.5 billion users per month in over 200 countries and territories. Users using AI Overviews are more satisfied with their results and search more often. In the largest markets like the United States and India, AI Overviews drives more than a 10% increase in Google usage for query types that display AI Overviews. This growth accelerates over time. AI Overviews offers the industry’s fastest AI responses. It’s also an important driver of visual search growth in Google Lens.

Introduction of AI Mode in Search

Google is launching an all-new AI Mode for those who want an end-to-end AI Search experience. According to I/O announcements, this AI Mode began testing earlier this year in Labs and is now rolling out in the United States, with no Labs signup required. This is Google’s most powerful AI search, offering more advanced reasoning, multimodality, the ability to dive deeper with follow-up questions, and useful links to the web. A new tab for AI Mode will appear in Search and in the Google app search bar in the coming weeks. AI Mode is described as a total reinvention of Search.

“Query Fan-out” Technique

Under the hood, AI Mode uses the “query fan-out” technique, which breaks down the question into sub-topics and launches a multitude of queries simultaneously on behalf of the user. This allows Search to dive deeper into the web than a traditional search, helping to discover even more of what the web has to offer and find hyper-relevant content.

Integration of Gemini 2.5 in Google Search: AI Mode

This AI mode will be the first place where Gemini’s cutting-edge capabilities will be integrated. Starting the week following Google I/O (May 20), a customized version of Gemini 2.5, Google’s smartest model, will be integrated into Search for AI Mode and AI Overviews in the United States. Gemini 2.5 is described as the best-performing multimodal foundation model, and AI responses are of the quality and accuracy expected from Search.

New Advanced Capabilities in AI Mode (Labs)

New advanced capabilities are coming to AI Mode. According to I/O announcements, these features will launch first in Labs in the coming months to gather feedback from experienced users. AI Mode is described as a preview of what’s coming, and many features and capabilities will move from AI Mode directly to the main Search experience as Google receives feedback. I did a demo here.

Deep Search

For questions requiring an even deeper answer, Google is integrating advanced search capabilities into AI Mode with Deep Search. Deep Search uses the “query fan-out” technique, but taken to the next level, capable of launching dozens or even hundreds of searches. It can reason about disparate information and create a fully cited expert-level report in minutes, saving hours of research. Deep Search includes links to the web throughout the report.

Search Live (Project Astra Live Capabilities)

According to announcements, Google is taking the next step in multimodality by integrating Project Astra’s live capabilities into Search. With Search Live, users can dialogue with Search in real-time about what they see, using their camera. Search becomes a learning partner that can see what the user sees, explaining difficult concepts and offering suggestions, as well as links to different resources. Search Live arrives in Labs this summer. Project Astra is the prototype from which new ideas are developed before being integrated into products like Gemini Live and new experiences in Search.

Agentic Capabilities (Project Mariner)

According to I/O announcements, Google is integrating Project Mariner’s agentic capabilities into AI Mode to help save time on tasks. Project Mariner is a research prototype exploring human-agent interaction, starting with browsers. It’s available to Google AI Ultra subscribers in the United States. Agents can perform up to ten different tasks at once. In Search, this enables managing tasks like ticket purchasing. For example, asking to find tickets for a game, AI Mode launches a “query fan-out” analyzing hundreds of ticket options with real-time prices and inventory, and handles the tedious work of filling out forms. AI Mode presents options matching the user’s criteria, and purchase can be completed on the preferred site, saving time while maintaining control. This will start with event tickets, restaurant reservations, and local appointments. Google is working with companies like Ticketmaster, StubHub, Resy, and Vagaro. Project Mariner capabilities are integrated into the Gemini API and more of its capabilities will be integrated into Google products throughout the year.

AI Shopping Partner

The new AI Mode shopping experience combines Gemini model capabilities with Google’s Shopping Graph. The Shopping Graph has over 50 billion product listings, constantly updated. This helps navigate to find inspiration, consider considerations, and refine products. Shopping queries launch a “query fan-out” to suggest options based on specific criteria. Dynamically generated results include a browsable display of personalized images and products. The dynamic panel feature on the right refreshes with relevant products and images.

Virtual Try-On

If the user wants to see how an outfit would look on them, they can virtually try on billions of clothing listings by simply uploading a single image of themselves. This technology is the industry’s most advanced at scale and allows visualizing the appearance of billions of clothing products on a wide variety of people. Virtual try-on in AI Mode arrives in Labs starting today.

Agentic Checkout

When the user has found the perfect item, they can ask the new agentic checkout feature to buy it on their behalf with Google Pay when the price is right. It’s always under the user’s direction and supervision. With one click, Search securely purchases the item with Google Pay. Agentic checkout arrives in the coming months. Shopping features arrive in AI Mode in the United States in the coming months.

Personal Context in AI Mode

For an even more personalized experience, AI Mode will soon offer personalized suggestions based on the user’s past searches. The user can also choose to connect other Google apps, starting with Gmail, to bring more personal context. For example, if the user searches “things to do in Nashville this weekend with friends, we’re big foodies who love music” before a trip, AI Mode can display restaurants with outdoor seating based on past restaurant reservations and searches. The user can get event suggestions during their stay, many of which are close to their accommodation, based on their flight and hotel confirmations. The user will see when AI Mode uses their personal context to help. This is always under their control, and they can choose to connect or disconnect this at any time. Personal Context arrives in AI Mode this summer. Google is working to bring Personal Context to Search, Docs, Gemini, and more.

Custom Charts and Diagrams

When the user needs additional help processing numbers or visualizing data, AI Mode will analyze complex datasets and create charts highlighting them, entirely built for their query. For example, if the user wants to compare home-field advantage for two different baseball teams, Search will provide analysis and generate an interactive chart to answer their specific question, using Google’s real-time sports information. This feature will be available for sports and financial queries this summer.

Rollout and Labs Access

AI Mode begins rolling out for everyone in the United States starting today. All new features presented at I/O will arrive for Labs users for AI Mode in the coming weeks and months. Users can activate the AI Mode experience in Labs to be the first to test them. Some features like virtual try-on are already available in Labs today. Search Live arrives in Labs this summer. No opening planned in France yet. In any case, no announcements on this subject - for now.

Sources:

Google created a NotebookLLM to allow you to access all announcements made during Google I/O 2025 👉 Notebook LLM Google I/O.

🟣 I’m Karine. I help you adapt your content strategy to AI Search and GEO through a masterclass and a community focused on AI marketing. The next session of my GEO masterclass in english will be in May. Want to join?

Join the waitlist

* What: The report titled “Journalism Zero: How Platforms and Publishers are Navigating AI”

By Whom: Tow Center for Digital Journalism - Dr. Peter Brown & Klaudia Jazwinska

In Brief: Report examining the evolving and often tense relationship between news publishers and tech companies, particularly in the context of generative AI’s rise. Based on 34 interviews with news leaders, former platform executives, AI company representatives, and AI experts, conducted between May and October 2024, the report assesses the current state of this relationship and explores the hopes and fears surrounding AI’s impact on journalism.

Other link to help you: I detailed quite a bit what I think of this report and especially what media could transform this (major) source of annoyance from the constant (and apparently limitless) traffic drop into opportunity in my monthly newsletter on LinkedIn.

👉 AI Marketing News Wrap-up (06-01-2025) - that is June 1st last (for the date in English).

In Detail:

A History of Turbulence

The report acknowledges a “long and strange journey” for news leaders in their interactions with tech companies, marked by failed products, ill-advised strategies, and inadequate financial support from platforms. Publishers have learned to be wary, with a refocusing on direct relationships with their audience after “the platform affair” proved to be a distraction.

The Changing Platform Landscape

While giants like Google and Meta (Facebook) have reduced their focus and investments in news initiatives, new AI-based platforms like OpenAI and Perplexity have emerged, alongside increased involvement from Microsoft. This shift has introduced new dynamics and new challenges.

The Dual Impact of Generative AI:

Internal Use: Newsrooms are experimenting with generative AI for tasks such as data analysis, content reformatting, translation, and draft writing. However, concerns about lack of reliability (”hallucinations”) and potential brand damage mean most are cautious about public-facing AI products.

External Threat and Opportunity: The most contentious issue is AI companies training large language models (LLMs) on vast amounts of published journalism, often without permission or compensation. Generative search products that summarize news on the platform reduce referral traffic to publishers, a major concern.

The “Journalism Zero” Concern

A central fear is reaching “Journalism Zero”—a point where the links between journalism and its audience are completely broken due to disintermediation by AI platforms. This could have disastrous consequences for the news industry and the information ecosystem.

Copyright and Intellectual Property

This is a major battlefield. The New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft is a highly publicized example. Many publishers feel their content was stolen, while AI companies invoke fair use or now pursue licensing agreements.

Licensing Agreements - A Mixed Record:

Value Precedent: Some see agreements (e.g., OpenAI with Axel Springer, Associated Press; Perplexity with TIME) as establishing that journalism has financial value for AI.

Exploitation Concerns: Others view these agreements as AI companies preying on news organizations’ precarious financial situation, offering “hush money” or “non-prosecution deals” without addressing long-term implications or fair compensation for past use. There’s a lack of transparency regarding terms.

Strategic Considerations: Agreements often involve access to archives for training and real-time content for grounding. Publishers weigh short-term money against long-term brand dilution and disintermediation.

The Value Exchange Revisited

The old model of platforms offering traffic in exchange for content is collapsing. AI summaries reduce click-through rates. Publishers demand a new value exchange that includes retrospective compensation and fair terms for continued use of their content. There’s a fundamental disagreement about journalism’s value, with tech companies often undervaluing its societal impact.

Traffic Flow Tightening

Publishers are already seeing a decline in referral traffic from traditional search and expect this to worsen with “AI Overviews” and generative search. This is an existential threat for many, pushing them to further strengthen direct relationships with their audience (e.g., newsletters, apps, subscriptions). Some even adopt a “Google Zero” mindset, planning for a future without referral traffic from search.

Blocking Crawlers

Many publishers are blocking AI crawlers, although the effectiveness of robots.txt is debatable, and some AI companies would bypass these measures.

Data Requests

Publishers need more granular audience data from AI platforms to understand impact and value, but historically, tech companies have been reluctant to share.

Distrust and Divergent Mindsets:

• Past experiences have bred skepticism. Publishers fear repeating mistakes.

• The rapid pace of tech development contrasts with news’s deliberative nature.

• Tech’s focus on “scale” (doing more with fewer staff) clashes with journalism’s mission-driven approach.

• Early signs of distrust include AI companies’ lack of transparency regarding data scraping.

The Call for Collaboration:

Among Publishers: Many interviewees emphasized the need for news organizations to collaborate, share knowledge, negotiate collectively (if possible), and present a united front.

With AI Companies: Some hope for genuine partnerships where tech companies would help news organizations innovate, rather than simply extracting value. However, skepticism remains high.

Future Uncertainties

The report concludes that the landscape is shrouded in uncertainty, depending on legal battles over copyright, government intervention, AI technology evolution, and changes in audience behavior. The concentration of information control among a few private companies poses significant risk to democracy and media plurality.

In essence, the report depicts a news industry at a critical juncture, grappling with generative AI’s disruptive power, wary following its past encounters with tech platforms, and fighting for its value and future viability in a rapidly changing information ecosystem.

Source:

• The full PDF: Journalism Zero_ How Platforms and Publishers are Navigating AI_0.pdf

• The article introducing it and providing detailed analysis

There it is! We are closing this crazy year 2023, the very first year where Generative AI, has transformed our job from top to bottom.

This past month, I have read over a hundred newsletters, reports, and predictions from influencers and major players in Generative AI + Marketing for 2024. I have selected six of them. For each, I provide you with the key takeaways and the prediction I consider to be the most relevant for 2024.

Happy New Year 😘!!

If you’ve been forwarded this newsletter, you can share the 💜 here👇

Subscribe now

🔮 In Today’s edition - 2024 Predictions time!

• 5 marketing & AI predictions from the Gartner Report

• 9 SEO, content & AI predictions from Search Engine Land

• 29 journalism & AI predictions from Nieman Labs

• 8 tech & AI predictions from Stanford HAI Faculty

• 5 media, entertainment & AI predictions from Alix Partners

• 8 consumer tech, web 3 & AI predictions from a16z

• 21 AI tools I used the most in 2023

Read time: 12 min

Marketing & AI

📍The Gartner Marketing Predictions Report

🔎 The Short of it

• By 2026, 80% of advanced creative roles will use generative AI to achieve differentiated results, requiring increased spending on creative talent rather than reducing costs.

• By 2026, 60% of CMOs will adopt content authenticity measures and guidelines to shield brands from misleading information generated by AI.

• By 2025, 50% of consumers will significantly limit social media usage due to perceived decay from misinformation, toxic communities, and bots.

• By 2027, 20% of brands will position themselves as “AI-free” to differentiate based on authenticity and address consumer distrust of AI.

• By 2028, brands’ organic search traffic will fall 50%+ as consumers shift to AI-powered search engines like Google’s Generative Search.

🧠 The one I believe in the most

‘Brands will see a 50% reduction in organic search traffic’.

Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) must prepare for significant disruptions in customer acquisition as AI transforms search engines, social media, and other marketing channels. Welcome to the era of zero-click searches! Building trust, developing unique high-quality content, and experimenting with new channels will be crucial to compensate for the decline in organic visibility.

So what?

The personal brand will evolve into a unique channel distribution and destination. Customers may not click on any of your brand content anymore, but if they know and trust you personally (aka, if you’re known) they will actively seek you out. To quote Seth Godin’s my way, Personal branding is the only marketing that is left.

Source: Check the full report (Here)

SEO, Content & AI

📍 Predictions & tips from Search Engine Land’s top SEO Experts

🔎 The Short of it

• Focus on scaling high-quality content production using AI, but with significant human input to improve output quality (Kevin Indig).

• Target mid-funnel keywords focused on product comparisons and buyer personas rather than high-volume keywords (Eli Schwartz).

• Keep pace with emerging content consumption trends that influence algorithm changes rather than overly focusing on responding to AI (Mordy Oberstein).

• Evaluate optimal content distribution strategies across search engines and social media platforms tailored to different audience search behavior (Suganthan Mohanadasan).

• Create “we experience” first-hand knowledge content at scale by engaging loyal customer advocates (Dan Taylor).

• Analyze Google search features like Topics and Filters to understand user search journeys and potential content needs (Gianluca Fiorelli).

• Shift from a focus on content production, link building, and site optimization to improving overall business helpfulness to users using expertise across domains like CX, PR, and product (Jono Alderson).

• Monitor ongoing Google lawsuits for insights into ranking factors like page quality, links/anchors, and especially user behavior metrics (Alli Berry).

• Leverage unique, proprietary data to create insightful analysis that stands out from AI-generated content (Dixon Jones).

🧠 The one(s) I believe in the most

• Leveraging unique proprietary data to create insightful content. This is where one of the true values of AI lies for content marketers and strategists, far surpassing its use in basic content creation, which isn’t very effective. Pay particular attention to the section about data wrangling below👇.

  Thanks to AI, creating outstanding, personalized, and highly targeted content based on your data is now more feasible and cost-effective than ever before.

• All the ones that place satisfying users’ behaviors and content consumption habits at the core of any SEO strategy.

  It’s somewhat cliché for a content strategist to claim that creating useful content for our target audience is the key to a successful content strategy. However, with AI now capable of writing and speaking as effectively as humans, our true advantage lies in leveraging our unique human qualities.

  We must focus on creating content that triggers and allows real human connections to engage our audience as authentically and humanly as possible.

Sources: Check the full report (Here)

Journalism & AI

📍 The 2024 Journalism Predictions from 144 journalists curated by Nieman Lab

🔎 The Short of it (& my favorites)

• Journalists will look for answers outside the news industry (Leezel Tanglao).

• Everyone gets an AI Agent (Javaun Moradi).

• Channels change the publishing game on WhatsApp (Meena Thiruvengadam).

• Print isn’t dead, it’s just being delivered by mail (Mizell Stewart III).

• AI will democratize disinformation (Matt Skibinski).

• We navigate deep uncertainty with community (Ax Mina).

• Behold, the journarator (Rishad Patel).

• Podcasting goes bionic (Joni Deutsch).

• Build your own platform (Rick Berke).

• Publishers’ short video strategy is put to the test (Snidgha Sur).

• Visuals get a boost from AI-powered tools (Amara Aguilar).

• AI kills the one-size-fits-all model (Nikita Roy).

• Memberships go off-platform (Francesco Zaffarano).

• Fact-checking needs a reboot (Bill Adair).

• “Link in comments” won’t save democracy (S. Mitra Kalita).

• The Homepage is back (Andrew Kaczynski).

• Scale is a trap (Ernie Smith).

• Journalists abandon social media, and news audiences follow (eventually) (Jacob L. Nelson).

• To build trust, news outlets prioritize transparency (Sue Cross).

• Publishers will finally be influenced by influencers (Andrew Losowsky).

• The algorithm will be the message (Alvarazo Liuzzi).

• TV reporters become TikTok Influencers (Jessica Maddox).

• News confronts reaching audiences in a post-social world (Sam Cholke).

• The press adopts a new level of transparency around images (Stale Grut).

• Celebrities will endorse publishers (and will get paid for it) (Ryan Kellet).

• Hyperlocal information warfare rises (A.J. Bauer).

• Journalism prepares for a post-search, post-social future (Alfred Hermida).

• We get past “post-platform” (Sarah Marshall).

• Headlines are going out of style (Zizi Papacharissi).

🧠 The one I believe in the most

All of them!! Remember those days when marketers were encouraged to turn their brand into a media? Since then, we, as marketers, have consistently drawn inspiration from how journalists create compelling content for their target audience. And here we are, back at that point again.

In this collection of predictions, you’ll find all the essential marketing elements for your 2024 marketing strategy in a world of AI, post-social media, and beyond Google search. Your magic formula for 2024 = personal branding + unique, personalized, trustworthy content creation + community.

Source: Check the full report (Here).

Tech & AI

📍Stanford HAI Faculty Predictions

🔎 The Short of it

• Mass adoption of AI will shift white-collar work - knowledge workers will see productivity benefits but also changes to their jobs.

• Advances in multimodal models will lead to more convincing deepfakes - consumers and policymakers need to be vigilant.

• There may be a global shortage of GPUs to power AI systems as demand surges - alternative hardware solutions are needed.

• More capable “agents” will emerge who can not just chat but also take actions and connect to services.

• Progress towards multimedia AI with models that can process video in addition to text and images.

• Hopes for US regulation, like the bipartisan CREATE AI Act and adherence to Biden’s Executive Order on AI.

• Organizations will need to set guidelines on permissible uses of AI and be prepared to update policies.

• Companies will navigate complicated new regulations on automated decision-making that let consumers opt out of certain AI uses.

🧠 The one I believe in the most

‘We will see a lot of controversies of “Is this AGI?” and “What is AGI?” I think people shouldn’t be worried about AI taking over the world. That’s all hype. But we should be worried about these harms that are happening now - disinformation and deepfakes. We’ll certainly see more of that in 2024.

This opportunity will be a significant business venture for any ambitious AI entrepreneur in 2024. Even if Apple, which is heavily investing in AI next year, does not seize it, major tech companies and venture capital firms like Andreessen Horowitz or Khosla Ventures might. Wherever there are substantial financial prospects, there is likely to be a brilliant mind motivated enough to find quickly a solution to the problem.

Sources: Check the full report (Here).

Media, Entertainment & AI

📍 The 2024 Media & Entertainment Predictions from Alix Partners

Alix Partners’ approach to AI implementation

🔎 The short of it

• AI will radically transform operations and competitiveness, with a significant impact on advertising and the creator economy.

• Generative AI will not fully replace human creative work, especially for premium content. AI will help streamline tasks, offer insights, and assist in aspects of content creation (summarizing or editing) which will enable creators to focus on artistry and innovation.

• Three rising generative AI use cases: creative ad generation/modification, post-production like deepfake dubbing, and real-time video analysis.

• About 80% of initial effort in AI/ML projects is data wrangling (the process of cleaning, transforming, and preparing raw data for analysis) - media companies must assess their level of readiness.

• Change management will be crucial as new generative AI tools are adopted and humans need to work differently.

🧠 The one I believe in the most

The data-wrangling part.

‘Media and entertainment companies vary on the maturity scale in terms of mining, structuring, and leveraging data. These companies must assess and determine their starting point based on data readiness. While they have treasure troves of proprietary data, it is often not in good enough shape for ML and GenAI. By addressing issues like granularity, data provenance, duplication, and accuracy, companies can transform their unstructured data into a foundation for scalable ML and GenAI solutions.

Done properly, this one leads straight to transforming the media into his AI Agent, which could be an awesome move to switch the business model of most media. Another one is the recent move from Axel Springer to sign a deal with OpenAI to authorize them to train their AI on their content.

Source: Check the full report (Here)

Consumer Tech, Web 3 & AI

📍a16z Big ideas for 2024

🔎 The short of it

• Voice-first apps will become integral to our lives.

• Narrowly Tailored, Purpose-build AI: While ChatGPT was a great general AI assistant in 2023, it may not excel in every task. The future holds AI platforms tailored for specific purposes such as research, journalism, and design.

• AI tools will teach kids.

• Code-free AI Generators Spark New Behaviors.

• Creativity gets supercharged.

• AI & blockchain will come together.

• New models of storytelling, beyond text-based chat.

• B2B AI products embedded in our workflow.

🧠 The one I believe in the most

‘AI revolutionizes the way we produce information — changing society, culture, politics, the economy — it also creates a world of abundant AI-generated content, including deep fakes. Crypto technology can be used here as well to open the black box, track the origin of things we see online; and much more. We also need to figure out ways to decentralize generative AI and govern it democratically, so that no one actor ends up with the power to decide for all others; web3 is the laboratory for figuring out how. Decentralized, open-source crypto networks will democratize (vs. concentrate) AI innovation, ultimately making it safer for consumers.

Andrew Hall - Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Business.

The big excitement - quickly deflated - for the metaverse and the crypto winter have too quickly buried the “Web 3”. The blockchain that underlies Web 3 is a robust technology that is here to stay. For over a year, I have been convinced that at the intersection of Web 3 and AI lies the solution to some of the biggest challenges posed by AI, including deepfakes and synthetic media.

Sources: Check the full report (Here).

My AI Tool Stack in 2023

The one I used daily

Using some AI tools in my job as a Content Strategist helped me become X10 more productive (and independent).

👉 Here are the 9 AI tools I can’t live without (Here).

The one I use sometimes

• Thoth: AI-Powered infographics. Turn any text into a 1-page infographic in literally 1 minute (🔗 Here).

• Character.ai: Trigger different types of conversations with an AI and turn them into content (🔗Here).

• MagicBookifier: Turn audio into a Book. Great repurposing tool if your main platform is a Podcast (🔗 Here).

• y2mate. com: To help you download audio and video from YouTube (🔗Here).

• GapScout: Helps you identify gaps and emerging trends in your industry by providing you with data mining Reviews from Amazon, Capterra, G2, Trustpilot, and WordPress Plugin Repo (🔗 Here).

• Remesh: Helps you organize and lead online focus groups at scale, interact with them through real-time conversation via their platform, and generate automatic reports with all insights and data based on the surveys (🔗Here).

• Castmagic: A pure gem. Just download your video. Click on the “AI Content” tab and let the magic (for real!) happen (🔗 Here).

New ones from this past month

• Pika: Supposedly the new Midjourney, etc. Nice one, it’s true. But haven’t been that impressed (yet). That being said, when you live in Miami Beach all year long, any snowy atmosphere is a blast!

Generated by Pika

snowing, light is shining

pika.art/video/c620d883-0b7f-41bd-ad1a-9d464ef8ed67

• Search +: This one is ok. It’s a Chatbox designed specifically for interacting with very large PDFs. Typically, I use Claude for working with PDFs. However, those pasts weeks, I’ve been utilizing Search+ extensively to delve deeper into and extract key information from a massive PDF I’m working on. It has honestly saved me a lot of time. The tool requires mainly single-topic use, as its interface is not particularly user-friendly when switching between different PDFs or topics.

• Learniverse: Harness AI to curate tutorials for your unique goals. Adjust and adapt your curriculum seamlessly as you evolve. I tested it. It’s ok, not wow, but ok. It allows you to curate both video and written content on a specific topic you wish to learn about. For the free version, it curates up to 6 pieces of content (Here).

• D-ID: Turn still images into speaking digital persons in seconds. I did this one in less than a minute. The free version doesn’t offer a great scope of creativity, but for a few $ (ranging from $6 to $16 per month) you can build nice videos with your avatar. Here is my wishing you (again) a sweet, peaceful, and energetic New Year (Here).

Click on the picture to watch the video

A Gem for you

• ChatHub: I literally can’t live without this one now. It saved me hours of work. It’s a Chrome App that enables you to chat with the most used Chatbot currently available (they recently included Gemini Pro and Grok) on 1 screen.

• From 1 interface (you can choose to display up to 8 bots on the same page), you can chat and get all your conversations. You can download each of them whenever you’d like to. A really cool tool (Here).

  You’re welcome 🙃.

🟣 I’m Karine. I help you adapt your content strategy to AI Search and GEO through a masterclass and a community focused on AI marketing. The next session of my GEO masterclass in english will be in May. Want to join?

Join the waitlist