Latest / Found in AI: AI Search Visibility, SEO, & GEO / Google AI Mode Gets More Links + Yahoo Scout’s AI Search Push

Transcript

Google AI Mode Gets More Links + Yahoo Scout’s AI Search Push · Found in AI: AI Search Visibility, SEO, & GEO

• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, welcome back to Found in AI.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I am Cassie Clark, an AI Search Visibility Consultant, and this is your weekly AI Search News update for Thursday, August 27th.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you out front, this isn't exactly the most explosive week in AI Search News, but there were a handful of smaller updates that I think are worth talking about together as kind of a conglomerate because they point to something bigger happening in search and discovery.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Google is giving users more control over the sources and content they see.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's also adding more opportunities to click out from AI mode.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time, Google is once again telling marketers that there's nothing particularly special they need to do to optimize for generative AI search.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's Yahoo, which appears to be looking at this entire shift in how people find information, and they're thinking, hey, maybe this is our chance to become a major gateway to the internet again.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about what's happened, but more importantly, what I think marketers should actually do with this.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with Google.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Last week, Google announced several new personalization features across Search, Discover, and Google News.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: One of the most interesting for marketers though is the expansion of preferred sources.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Google announced preferred sources a while ago and it allows people to select publications they want to see more frequently in search.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now publishers can actually add a preferred sources button to their own websites to make it easier.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: A reader can click that button, add the website as a preferred source, and then return to the publisher's website.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Google says those preferred publications can appear more often in Top Stories, AI overviews, and AI mode.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And apparently people are actually using this feature.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Google says users have already selected more than 600,000 unique sources.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Google is also making Discover more customizable.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Users will be able to tell Google in natural language, of course, which topics and links they want to see more of or less of.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And Google says Discover will remember those preferences.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now on the surface, this is just really a list of personalization features.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: But there's something here that I really think marketers should maybe write down, pay attention to.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: We've have spent a ton of time talking about how Google decides which sources it trust, but now Google is letting users tell it which sources they trust.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's a different marketing challenge.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can't technically optimize your way into becoming someone's preferred source.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: People have to recognize your brand.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: They have to find your content useful enough that they want to hear from you again.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: And they have to trust you enough to explicitly tell Google, hey, I want to hear more from these people.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: That's brand affinity.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And it reinforces what I've been saying on the show for a while now.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: AI search visibility is not only what happens on your website.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Distribution matters here.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Brand authority really matters here.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Building an audience also matters.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: If people don't know that your brand exists, they can't choose it as a source they want to hear more of.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's just it.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of AI mode, we're also seeing another shift there.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Google has now added link carousels for developing topics to AI mode.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: These were already available in AI overviews, but they're now appearing directly inside AI mode responses as well.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Robbie Stein from Google said the goal is to make it easier for users to connect with original coverage and a range of perspectives.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Directionally, I think this is good, but obviously there's still a much larger conversation happening between Google and publishers about things like traffic, attribution, and really what happens when an AI-generated answer gives someone enough information that they don't need to click through to a website.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Truthfully, a few extra links doesn't really magically solve that problem.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: But from a marketer's perspective, every additional opportunity for a source to appear within an AI response matters.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it gives us another reason to stop thinking about AI visibility as simply, was my brand mentioned?
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now we need to think, where did you appear?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Were you cited?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Was there a clickable link?
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Did the user have an obvious path from the answer to your website?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And really, did anyone actually take that path?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Those are all different questions.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Which brings me to another Google story this week.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: John Euler said on Blue Sky that from Google's point of view, there's nothing really special that websites need to do for generative AR responses in search.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if you read the LinkedIn article I published about this, you know my opinion here already.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: I published it on Monday.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: I think Google is probably right, but just for Google.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Google's AI search products are so deeply connected to Google's existing search infrastructure.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: So strong SEO fundamentals absolutely matter for visibility in AI overviews and AI mode.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think marketers need to throw away SEO and then advent an entirely new discipline every time Google adds a new AI feature.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: But, and I'm gonna say this until I am blue in the face, Google is not the entire AI search ecosystem.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Microsoft has publicly taken a different position on AI optimization.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: Chat GPT search isn't Google, Perplexity isn't Google, Copilot isn't Google.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: I could go on and on with all of the different AI engines.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: They are all explicitly very different.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: So when Google says you don't need to do anything special for generative AI responses in Google search, listen to that guidance, but within the context in which it was given.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: The mistake here is turning that into, hey, there's nothing different about AI search visibility anywhere.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: What happens with Google and what happens everywhere else are also very different things.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And speaking of different AI search engines, let's talk about Yahoo.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yahoo Scout is already available in beta as a standalone AI answer engine, but they're also integrating Scout across the entire Yahoo ecosystem, including search, finance, sports, news, mail, and shopping.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: But what caught my attention this week wasn't really the platform itself, it's their broader strategy around it.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yahoo's CEO recently talked about using Yahoo's history as the quote OG of the internet to appeal to younger users and make the brand culturally relevant again.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, after reading the announcement, I just think Yahoo wants another 1994 moment.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yahoo was founded in 1994 as a guide to this enormous, confusing new thing called the World Wide Web.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: And now the way we navigate the internet is being disrupted yet again.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of clicking through lists of blue links, people are asking AI engines to find information, synthesize it, recommend products, compare companies, summarize news sources, help them make decisions, and a whole host of other things.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yahoo's positioning for Scout literally calls back to being the original guide of the internet.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: I find this all a bit fascinating because Yahoo doesn't necessarily need Scout to beat Google or ChatGPT or any of the other ones.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't really need everyone to start using Scout tomorrow.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: If AI changes how people navigate information enough that Yahoo can become a meaningfully discovery destination again, I would consider that a win.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think marketers should pay attention to this for the same reason that I've been telling you not to measure AI search visibility in one single platform.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Discovery is fragmented, it happens all over the place.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe Scout becomes huge, maybe it doesn't.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe another answer engine pops up that we're not talking about yet, but it becomes important two years from now.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: The point is that we don't need to panic and create a Yahoo Scout optimization strategy tomorrow morning.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Please don't do that.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: The point is that marketers need to build brands and information systems that travel.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: That means creating authoritative content, making it easier for machines to understand who you are, what you do, and what you have an authority on.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: It means earning third-party mentions and citations.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: It means making sure that you distribute your expertise beyond your own website.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: It also means building relationships with audience who actually recognize and trust your brand.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it also, the final thing here, also means measuring visibility across the places your buyers are actually searching rather than just assuming Google represents all of them.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And before we close out this episode, one quick housekeeping note.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Google's August 2026 spam update officially finished rolling out on August 21st.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: It started August 18th, so the entire rollout lasted about two days and 16 hours.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was global and applied across all languages.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Google didn't announce any new spam policies alongside this update, so there really isn't a new checklist you need to run through.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you saw any kind of ranking changes between August 18th and August 21st, now that the rollout is complete, you can start looking at your data and diagnosing what may have happened.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: The theory that I am seeing across the internet right now is that it targeted AI-generated content at scale.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not seeing anything wonky with your data, I'm not sure I would make an emergency out of this one.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: So, like I said at the beginning of this episode, this really wasn't a massive AI search newsweek, but I really do think these smaller stories are telling us something.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: Google is giving people more control over the information and publishers they see.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: They're also creating more opportunities to connect users from AI answers back to those original sources.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yahoo sees AI as an opportunity to become the guide of the internet again.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: And Google continues to remind us within its own ecosystem, that's the important part here, the fundamentals of search haven't suddenly disappeared because AI is here now.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: These platforms are going to keep changing.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: There will be new interfaces, new answer engines, new personalization features, new acronyms that we probably need to care about.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: But underneath all of this, I think the job is becoming pretty clear.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's just become the source that people and machines want to find.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then also making sure your brand is discoverable enough whenever an audience goes looking for you.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's it for this week's AI Search News.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to go deeper, the Visibility Report is a weekly newsletter that goes out on Fridays.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's free, the link is in the show notes.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: I will be back next week.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Until then, stay visible.