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Google Is Moving From AI Search to AI Agents · Found in AI: AI Search Visibility, SEO, & GEO

• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Found in AI.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I am Cassie Clark, an AI Search Visibility Consultant, and today is September 3rd.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is your AI Search news update for the week, and it is a relatively light week again, being the end of summer and all, I get it, but to be honest, I'm not complaining a bit.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: My brain is very much in vacation mode, and I'm about to have four days away from my desk.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, there are a few Google updates that we need to look at, and I think they are much more interesting when we look at them together because Google is continuing to show us where search is headed.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: He is Google's Deep Minds Senior Vice President and Chief AI architect, and he has been talking about how Google is thinking about Gemini.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the big takeaway is that Google increasingly sees Gemini not as a chatbot or even just a model, but as an agent, which goes back to what Sundar Pichai said earlier in the year that the future is a gen tech.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: In the interview, he said the transition they've been working on is, quote, from a model to an agent, end quote.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the important part for us is what that actually means.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Google isn't just trying to build an AI model that gives you a better answer.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: The DeepMind VP talks about systems that can work with tools and functions.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Those same systems can also understand what users need and take actions alongside them.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: That might sound like a conversation about Gemini rather than search, except we've already been watching Google put these ideas directly into search over the last couple of months.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Last week Google announced several new travel capabilities in AI mode, and I promise this is not a features list to promote the product, but we have to look at those features to understand what this means for businesses and brands.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: The example they gave is that you can now ask AI Mode to track flight prices for you.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say you give it a trip you're considering.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: It can find flight options using current pricing from more than 300 airlines and travel sites.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then you can tell it to track those prices.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: If the price changes, Google emails you.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: AI Mode can also show the current cost of flights and hotels in points or miles for supported rewards programs.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: So if you collect those and use them quite often, this is really helpful.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the piece that matters most for this conversation is now hotel booking.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Google is beginning to roll out hotel booking directly inside AI mode, in the US at least for now.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure it will become a global thing later, but for right now it's in the US.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can tell AI mode where you're going and what you want in a hotel.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: So do you give it options like it needs a pool or a hot tub or a king-size bed?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Then you can look at guest reviews and information to help you compare everything.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Once you choose one, you can ask AI Mode to help complete the booking.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, with Google's integrated partners, you can select continue on Google, choose your room, review things like the cancellation policy, and then complete the booking with Google Pay.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: The hotel or booking platform is still the merchant of record, so this isn't Google suddenly becoming the Marriott and having all that for you.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: But think about how much of that customer journey can now happen without the person leaving the AI experience at all.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Discovery now happens within AI surfaces, so does research, comparisons, reviews, selection, and now transactions.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And travel isn't the only place where we are seeing pieces of this.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Google also published a post recently about using search for home decor.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now at first glance, this one doesn't really necessarily look like huge AI search news, but if you look at it deeper, we have to look at the customer journey.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: With this, with AI Search and the example they gave, you can upload a picture of your living room to AI mode and then ask what kind of couch would work within an 84-inch wall.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Then you can ask it to show you what, I don't know, an emerald green velvet sofa would look like in that room.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you see something that you like somewhere else, a lens or circle to search can help you identify it and find similar products.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Once you're shopping, Google can help you compare prices, look at price history, track the price until it drops into your budget.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: It does a whole bunch of things.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And after you buy something, Search Live can even use your camera to help you walk through something like installing your new floating shelves.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: So when we put all of this together with what the Google DeepMind VP is saying about Gemini becoming an agent, I think we need to start looking beyond the question that has dominated AEO and GEO for the last year.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: That question is, how do I get AI to recommend my brand?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: That question still matters quite a bit.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: AI search visibility is the first step.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: The agent cannot choose your brand if it cannot find you, if it cannot understand what you sell, and if it can't determine that you're relevant to what the buyer actually wants, and then trust you enough to include you in the first place.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that is just step one.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: And spoiler, a little spoiler, Adam Whistler is coming to the Visibility Report in the coming weeks to talk about this some more.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not part of the newsletter, the link is in the show notes, just FYI.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: But step two now is what happens after AI chooses you?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: Can it evaluate your product?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Can it understand your pricing?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Does it know what's available?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Can it compare your offering accurately against someone else's?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, can an AI agent actually do business with you?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's the conversation around agenda commerce that I don't think marketers are having nearly enough yet.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't mean that every business listening to this needs to drop everything this afternoon and start building an agenda commerce strategy.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: We are not there across every industry.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I do think marketers need to start understanding that the customer journey itself is changing.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: We've spent a lot of time talking about zero-click search because people can get an answer now without ever visiting your website.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: But if those experiences continue moving in the direction that Google is clearly trying to show us, we're not only talking about an answer happening without a website visit, we're now also talking about more of the buying journey potentially happening without one.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Research can happen there, comparisons can happen there, product evaluation can happen there, price monitoring can happen there, and in some cases, now the transactions happen there.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: That really does change what visibility means.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: And it changes who needs to be involved in the strategy.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Your content and SEO teams can do a lot to help AI engines understand what your brand does and when it should be recommended.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: PR, social, community, and other teams, they can all help build the third-party and authority signals that support those recommendations.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: But once we're talking about an AI agent needing reliable pricing, inventory availability, product data, booking capabilities, or even the ability to actually complete a transaction, this becomes a much bigger cross-functional conversation.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about marketing, yes, but we're also potentially talking about e-commerce, product, engineering, operations, data, and whoever else owns the infrastructure an agent needs to interact with your business.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what I want you to take away from this week's news.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Don't stop thinking about AI search visibility.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: We are certainly not done with AEO.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: You're really just at the beginning.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: But start looking one step beyond it.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: Ask what happens after an AI engine recommends your brand.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: If the answer is right now, well, then hopefully they click through to our website.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's still a lot of how these journeys work.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's really the first step.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: But start thinking about what would be needed to be true about your business if that next step eventually happens inside the AI experience instead.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because AEO asks whether an AI engine can find, understand, trust, and recommend your brand.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the next question is whether an AI engine can not an engine, an agent, whether an AI agent can actually do something with it.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And based on what Google is building and what the Google Deep Mind VP is telling us it's building forward, I think we're going to be talking about that second question a whole lot more.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'll put the links to everything I talked about today in the show notes.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to keep up with where all of this is going, make sure you're subscribed to the visibility report.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Every Friday I dig into what's changing across AI search, the research, and the experiments that you really need to pay attention to, and what I think marketers should actually do with it.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Especially as we start moving from AI visibility into things like Agentic Commerce, there's gonna be a whole lot of things we need to keep up with.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: You can subscribe at the link in the show notes or over on CassieClarkMarketing.com.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, one quick programming update before I go.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: I am taking a little Labor Day break.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So there won't be a Tuesday episode next week.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be back with a new news episode on the following Thursday.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you are in the US, have a great Labor Day weekend.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you are not in the US, I hope you have a great weekend anyway.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: I will see you next week.