I’ve worked in digital marketing for more than 20 years, which means I’ve watched search change a lot.
But this moment feels different.
It’s not just the technology that’s changing. We’re all learning new behaviors at the same time.
Think about how you searched a few years ago. You typed a few words into Google, opened several tabs, compared websites, and eventually made a decision.
Now, you can ask AI a detailed question, refine what you want, compare your options, and increasingly take action without following that traditional search journey at all.
And that shift is happening faster than most businesses realize.
The distance between “I need something” and “I chose something” is shrinking.
Google says AI Mode has already surpassed 1 billion monthly users. It’s also building agentic capabilities into Search that can do more than provide information. In some local service categories, Google can even contact businesses on a user’s behalf.
ChatGPT is moving in the same direction. It can help users discover restaurants, compare options, check availability, and make reservations. Shopping experiences are becoming increasingly conversational, too.
That means your next customer may not search Google, click your website, browse five pages, and fill out a form.
They may simply ask AI who they should choose.
That changes marketing in a pretty fundamental way.
At the same time, Google is still cleaning house.
Google began rolling out its August 2026 spam update this month, and the timing feels appropriate.
AI has made it ridiculously easy to create hundreds of blogs, landing pages, and other “SEO content” at scale.
But more content has never automatically meant better marketing.
Google isn’t saying AI-generated content itself is spam. The bigger concern is content created at scale primarily to manipulate rankings without providing meaningful value.
In other words:
AI didn’t create the bad-content problem. It just made bad content a whole lot easier to produce.
And that distinction matters.
Using AI to research, brainstorm, analyze, or improve efficiency is very different from publishing hundreds of barely edited pages because you suddenly have the ability to do it.
The question businesses need to ask isn’t simply, “Was AI involved?”
A better question might be:
Would we still create this content if Google didn’t exist?
If the answer is no, it may be worth looking at why that page exists in the first place.
So, what should businesses actually do?
We don’t know exactly what search will look like three years from now. Nobody does.
But waiting until everything settles before adapting your marketing strategy doesn’t make much sense either.
The fundamentals still matter: create something useful, demonstrate real expertise, build a recognizable brand, earn trust, and make it easy for people, search engines, and increasingly AI systems to understand who you are and what you do. Rankings still matter. Traffic still matters. Leads and conversions absolutely matter.
But the picture is getting bigger.
We’re also paying closer attention to overall search presence, brand authority, AI visibility, and whether a business has enough credible signals across the web to be referenced and recommended.
Because the question is becoming bigger than:
“Do you rank #1?”
It’s becoming:
“When someone asks AI who they should trust, will it know who you are?”
Worth Knowing
A few other developments we’re watching:
- AI visibility is becoming more measurable. Google has started introducing more reporting around how websites appear within its generative AI search experiences.
- Advertising is following the audience. Google is developing ads for AI search experiences, and ChatGPT has begun testing advertising for eligible users.
- AI is becoming an actual marketing assistant. Google is building tools that can analyze performance, recommend changes, and help marketers take action.
Some things are changing incredibly fast. And apparently, some things about the internet never change. Wherever the attention goes, the ads eventually follow.
Worried About What AI Content Means for Your Website?
We’re taking a deeper look at Google’s new spam update, what “scaled content abuse” actually means, and when AI-assisted content can become a real SEO risk.
Read: Is AI Content Putting Your Website at Risk?
And if you’re trying to figure out what all of these changes mean for your own marketing strategy, we’re happy to take a look. You can book a free consultation with us anytime.
– Jenny & the Eminent SEO Team
