Google introduced two AI-powered features: AI summaries in Discover and a Sports feed in Search.
Google Discover. Users will now see AI-generated previews of trending topics they follow. The summaries cite multiple publishers and can be expanded to view more details and linked articles.
The feature is available in the U.S., South Korea, and India, after earlier testing in the U.S. this summer.
A Google spokesperson seemed to confirm the Discover AI summaries “officially” launched in the U.S. in July. At that time, the Discover AI summaries appeared on iOS and Android for trending lifestyle topics (e.g., sports, entertainment). TechCrunch reported this, but there was no official announcement from Google.
What’s new. In Search, a new What’s new button will soon appear when users look up teams or players on mobile.
This feature opens a feed of trending updates and articles about the topic.
This is rolling out in the U.S. over the coming weeks.
Why we care. Discover has been a reliable traffic source for many publishers. Google says the new tools help people explore more of the web, not less, but publishers should watch whether this shift to AI-generated summaries reduces the need for users to click through to read stories. This could result in a similar negative impact on traffic as AI Overviews have had for many websites in Google Search.
Google Ads is testing a new “View-Through Conversion Optimization” feature in its Demand Gen campaigns.
What’s new. This test was spotted last week. It adds a setting allowing advertisers to include view-through conversions (VTCs) in their bidding models.
How it works. This applies to YouTube (Image + Video) traffic.
More channels are “coming soon,” per the early beta.
The feature could improve early-stage efficiency where clicks are scarce but influence is high.
Why we care. View-through conversions reveal what happens when people see your ad, skip the click, but come back to buy. You can turn it on early to train algorithms faster, boost brand lift, and stretch your creative dollars. This is especially important on YouTube because conversions often trail views by days or weeks.
Zoom out. The move underscores Google’s push to make Demand Gen more competitive with Meta’s Advantage+ and TikTok’s Smart Performance offerings, which both leverage impression-driven optimization signals.
What’s next. Expect broader rollout and performance data as Google fine-tunes how view-through data interacts with its automated bidding systems.
First seen. This update was first spotted by Thomas Eccel, Google Ads specialist at JvM IMPACT.
Citations in AI search assistants reveal how authority is evolving online.
Analyzing results across 11 major sectors shows which domains are most often referenced and what that says about credibility in an AI-driven landscape.
As assistants condense answers and surface fewer links, being cited has become a powerful signal of trust and influence.
Based on Semrush data from more than 800 websites, the findings highlight how AI reshapes visibility across industries.
AI citation trends across industries
The analysis surfaced several clear patterns in how authority is distributed across industries.
Universal authorities
Some domains appeared in the top 50 cited URLs across nearly all 11 sectors, with four domains appearing in every one:
reddit.com (~66,000 AI mentions across 11 sectors)
en.wikipedia.org (~25,000, 11 sectors)
youtube.com (~19,000, 11 sectors)
forbes.com (~10,000, 11 sectors)
linkedin.com (~9,000, 10 sectors)
quora.com (~8,000, 10 sectors)
Other domains are sector-strong but globally influential:
amazon.com (ecommerce and five other sectors).
nerdwallet.com (finance-focused).
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (health and academic citations).
Concentration and diversity by sector
Citation concentration varies by sector.
Most concentrated: Computers and electronics, entertainment, education.
Most diverse: Telecom, food and beverage, healthcare, finance, travel and tourism.
This means some sectors rely on a handful of go-to sources, while others distribute authority across a broader field.
Relationships between visibility and SEO metrics
AI visibility and AI mentions are strongly correlated (0.87).
Organic keywords correlate more strongly with AI visibility (0.41) than backlinks (0.37).
Keywords and backlinks themselves correlate at 0.79.
By sector, the coupling between AI visibility and backlinks is strongest in computers and electronics, automotive, entertainment, finance, and education.
In these sectors, the scale of authority clearly helps drive AI references.
Sector breakdowns
Finance
Media brands such as Forbes and Business Insider dominate citations, reflecting the importance of timely commentary and market analysis.
However, NerdWallet shows that specialized finance experts can achieve high AI visibility by building deep evergreen guides and comparison content.
This sector also shows one of the strongest correlations between AI visibility and backlink scale, suggesting that authority signals remain highly influential.
Healthcare
Academic and government domains are heavily cited.
The dominance of PubMed Central (PMC), CDC, and national health portals underlines the central role of trusted peer-reviewed or official information.
Wikipedia also appears consistently, often serving as a layperson-friendly entry point.
Diversity is lower here compared with consumer-facing sectors, reflecting the need for evidence-based references.
Travel and tourism
Citations are spread across government advisories (for example, gov.uk travel advice), booking platforms, forums, and user-generated communities.
This diversity reflects the mix of practical (visa, safety), inspirational (guides, blogs), and transactional (booking) content users need.
The sector’s Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) score is low, suggesting no single authority dominates, and visibility is earned by serving very specific user needs.
Entertainment
User-generated platforms dominate.
Reddit, YouTube, and Quora all appear near the top of cited domains, alongside reference sources such as Wikipedia and IMDb.
This highlights how conversational, community-driven content is central to how AI assistants explain and contextualize entertainment.
In this space, backlink counts are less predictive than breadth of coverage.
Education
Citations concentrate around reference authorities including Wikipedia, university portals, and open-courseware providers.
Specialist learning platforms and forums also feature, but the dominance of well-known academic sources creates a more concentrated citation environment.
Here, AI assistants lean heavily on authoritative, structured content.
Computers and electronics
Technology news and review sites dominate, with CNET, The Verge, and Tom’s Guide appearing prominently.
Wikipedia is again present, but the sector is notable for its concentration, with citations clustering around a few highly recognizable review hubs.
This sector also shows one of the highest correlations between AI visibility and backlink scale, underlining the competitive role of authority signals.
Automotive
A mix of consumer guides (for example, Autotrader, AutoZone) and publisher content.
Insurance and financing providers also receive citations, reflecting user queries that span from buying cars to managing ownership.
Citations are somewhat more evenly distributed, but AI assistants lean on a balance of transactional and informational sources.
Beauty and cosmetics
Influencer-led platforms and community discussion spaces are frequently cited alongside brand websites and review hubs.
The combination of user-generated content and brand authority makes this sector more diverse than average.
Here, social-driven citations compete with established publishing brands.
Food and beverage
Recipe hubs, nutrition authorities, and community cooking sites dominate.
Wikipedia also features, especially for ingredient-level explanations.
The sector has one of the lowest HHI values, meaning a wide diversity of domains are being cited.
Backlink totals are less correlated with visibility here. Instead, topical coverage breadth seems to matter more.
Telecoms
Citations are relatively diverse, ranging from provider help portals to tech media and consumer advocacy sites.
Forums like Reddit often feature in troubleshooting contexts.
The sector’s low HHI suggests no single authority dominates, but users’ practical questions drive AI systems to reference customer-support-style material.
Real estate
Cited domains include large listing platforms (for example, Zillow-type sites), financial services tied to mortgages, and government portals for regulation and housing data.
While concentrated, the sector also pulls from news sources when market conditions are being explained.
The patterns in AI citations carry direct lessons for brands and SEOs, highlighting:
How authority is built.
What types of assets AI prefers to reference.
Why traditional SEO levers now interact differently with visibility.
Reference assets matter
Evergreen guides, standards, and explainers attract citations from both search engines and AI models.
To compete with Wikipedia or government sites, brands need to publish authoritative, fact-checked material that others can comfortably reference.
Breadth of coverage drives visibility
Domains with a wide organic keyword footprint consistently show stronger AI visibility.
This means that covering an entire topic area comprehensively – not just optimizing for a handful of high-volume keywords – positions a brand as a reliable reference source.
Sector rules differ
Each sector rewards different authority signals. In healthcare, peer-reviewed or government-backed resources dominate.
In entertainment, community-driven and UGC platforms rise to the top. In finance, explainers and calculators from expert brands are frequently cited.
Brands need to adapt their content strategy to the trust model of their sector.
Fewer links, higher stakes
AI assistants often cite only a handful of sources per response.
Being included delivers disproportionate visibility.
Conversely, being absent means competitors capture nearly all of the exposure.
This concentration raises the bar for what counts as a reference-worthy asset.
Backlinks still matter, but less directly
While backlink scale correlates with AI visibility, the correlation is weaker than for organic keyword breadth.
This suggests backlinks remain an authority signal, but the breadth and relevance of content may be more critical in an AI-driven environment.
User intent alignment
AI assistants pull from sources that best align with the specific intent behind a query.
Brands that anticipate user needs – whether transactional, informational, or troubleshooting – stand a better chance of being cited.
Creating layered content (guides, FAQs, tools) that matches different intents strengthens visibility.
Becoming a referenced brand
Citations in AI search results reveal the trust networks that underpin the next wave of search.
Wikipedia, Reddit, and YouTube are universal reference points, but sector-specific authorities also matter.
For brands, the lesson is clear: to win visibility in AI-driven search, you need to be the page that others cite.
That means authoritative content, breadth of coverage, and assets designed to be referenced.
Analysis methodology
The analysis drew from AI citation data spanning 11 sectors and more than 800 domains, using responses from Google AI Mode, Perplexity, and ChatGPT search.
Two primary metrics were calculated:
AI visibility score: The average share of responses in which a domain was cited across Google AI Mode, Perplexity, and ChatGPT search.
AI mentions: The total number of times a domain was cited across those engines in a given sector.
These metrics were then enriched with:
Organic keywords (Semrush): The number of keywords for which a domain ranks in organic search.
Backlinks (Semrush): The total backlinks pointing to a domain.
Spearman correlation
To measure the degree of correlation between metrics, I used the Spearman correlation coefficient.
Unlike Pearson correlation, which assumes linear relationships, Spearman looks at whether the ranking of one metric moves in step with another.
In simple terms, if domains with higher keyword counts also tend to rank higher for AI visibility, the Spearman value will be high even if the relationship is not a perfectly straight line.
A value near +1 means the two rise together consistently, near -1 means one rises as the other falls, and near 0 means no clear pattern.
Concentration of the HHI
I then measured citation concentration using the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, a metric borrowed from economics.
It is calculated by summing the squares of market shares, in this case, each domain’s share of AI mentions in a sector.
An HHI closer to 1 means a sector is dominated by just a few domains, while values closer to 0 indicate citations are spread more evenly.
For example, an HHI of 0.05 suggests a concentrated landscape, whereas 0.02 points to greater diversity.
By combining AI visibility, citation counts, SEO scale (keywords and backlinks from Semrush), Spearman correlations, and HHI concentration, I built a cross-sector picture of who holds authority in AI-driven search.
Let’s get one thing straight before the industry turns “GEO” into yet another three-letter source of confusion.
Generative engine optimization isn’t SEO with a new hat and a LinkedIn carousel. It’s a fundamentally different game.
If you’re still debating whether to swap the “S” for a “G,” you’ve already missed the point.
At its core, GEO is brand marketing expressed through generative interfaces.
Treat it like a technical tweak, and you’ll get technical-tweak results: plenty of noise, very little growth.
CMOs, this is where you step in.
SEOs, this is where you either evolve or get automated into irrelevance.
The question isn’t what GEO is – that’s been done to death.
It’s how to tell if your GEO is actually working.
The North Star: Share of search (not ‘share of voice,’ not ‘topical authority’)
The primary metric for GEO is the same one that should already anchor any brand-led growth program: share of search.
Les Binet didn’t coin a vanity metric for dashboards.
Share of search is a leading indicator of future market share because it reflects relative demand – your brand versus competitors.
If your share is rising, someone else’s is falling, and the future tilts your way.
If it’s declining, you’re mortgaging tomorrow’s revenue. That’s the unglamorous magic of it.
It isn’t perfect. But across category after category, share of search predicts brand outcomes with a level of accuracy that should make “awards case studies” blush.
And yes, GEO affects it, often through PR.
When an LLM recommends your brand (linked or not), some users still open a new tab and Google you.
Recommendation sparks curiosity. Curiosity drives search. Search is the signal.
Expect branded search volume to rise as generative usage grows, because people back-check what they see in AI results.
It’s messy human behavior, but it’s consistent.
Your first diagnostic: plot your brand’s share of search against your closest competitors.
Use Google Trends or My Telescope for branded demand, and triangulate with Semrush.
Watch the trend, not the weekly wobbles.
And do not confuse share of search with share of voice.
Different metric. Different lineage. Different purpose.
The two halves of the signal: Brand demand and buyer intent
Share of search has two practical layers for GEO diagnostics:
Brand search: The purest signal of salience. Are more people looking for you than last quarter, relative to the category? That’s how you know your brand availability is increasing inside generative engines and the culture around them.
Buyer-intent traffic: The money end. Of your non-branded search clicks, how much is clearly commercial or buyer-intent versus informational fluff? And how does your share of that buyer-intent traffic compare to competitors?
You won’t know a rival’s exact click-through rates – and you don’t need to.
Use Semrush to estimate non-branded commercial demand at the topic level for you and them, then compare proportions.
Export everything and segment aggressively by intent.
Where tool estimates diverge from your actuals, you’ll learn something about the noise in third-party data and the real shape of your market.
If your brand search is flat but buyer-intent share is rising, congratulations – you’re harvesting demand but not creating enough of it.
If brand search is rising but buyer-intent share isn’t, you have a conversion or content problem – your GEO is sparking curiosity, but your site and assets aren’t turning that into qualified traffic.
If both are up, pour fuel.
If both are down, stop fiddling with prompts and fix your positioning, advertising, and PR.
Competitors are winning in AI answers. Take back share of voice.
Benchmark your presence across LLMs, spot gaps, and get prioritized actions.
Compare share of voice and sentiment in seconds.
Category entry points: The prompts behind the prompts
GEO lives or dies on category entry points (CEPs) – Ehrenberg-Bass’ useful term for the situations, needs, and triggers that put buyers into the category.
CEPs are how real people think.
“I just left the gym and I’m thirsty.” That’s why there’s a Coke fridge by the exit.
“I’ve just come out of a show near Covent Garden and need food now.” That’s why certain restaurants cluster and advertise there.
These are not keywords. They’re human contexts that later materialize as words.
Translating that to GEO: your customers’ prompts in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and AI Mode reflect their CEPs.
Newly appointed marketing manager under pressure to fix organic? That’s a CEP.
Fed up with a current tool because the price doubled and support disappeared? Another CEP.
Map the CEPs first, then outline the prompt families that those CEPs produce.
The wording will vary, but the thematic spine stays consistent: a role, a pain, a job to be done, a timeframe.
Once you’ve mapped CEPs to prompt families, you can evaluate your prompt visibility – how often and in what context generative engines surface you as a credible option.
This is a brand job as much as a content job.
LLMs don’t “decide” like humans. They triangulate across signals and citations to reduce uncertainty.
Distinctive brand assets, third-party coverage (PR), credible reviews, and consistent evidence of capability all raise your odds of being recommended.
Notice I didn’t say “more blog posts.” We’ll come back to that.
Once you’ve outlined your prompt families, test visibility systematically.
Run qualitative checks in the major models. Log the sources they cite and the types of evidence they appear to weight.
Are you visible when the CEP is “newly promoted CMO, six-month plan to grow organic pipeline”?
Are you visible when it’s “VP of ecommerce losing non-brand traffic to marketplace competitors, needs an alternative”?
If you’re absent, don’t complain about model bias – earn your spot with PR, credible case studies, and assets that reinforce what the engines are trying to prove about you.
Next, switch to the quantitative side.
In GSC, build regex filters for conversational queries – the long, natural-language strings (4 to 10 words, often more) that resemble prompts with the serial numbers filed off.
We don’t yet know how much of this traffic comes from bots, LLM scaffolding, or humans typing into AI-powered SERPs, but we do know it’s there.
Track impressions, clicks, and the proportion that are clearly buyer-intent versus informational.
If your conversational query clicks are growing and skewing commercial, that’s a strong signal your GEO is turning curiosity into consideration.
The two-second rule: Why informational content won’t save you
Here’s a hard truth for the SEO content mills: informational traffic is about to become even less valuable.
Most AI citations offer only fleeting exposure.
Brand recall takes more than a glance – in both lab and field data, you get roughly two seconds of attention to make anything stick.
Most sidebar mentions and AI Overview snippets don’t deliver that, and the memory fades fast anyway.
If your GSC export shows that 70% or more of your clicks come from “how-to” mush with no buyer intent, your GEO isn’t working.
It’s subsidizing the LLMs that will summarize you out of existence.
Fix the mix – shift your asset portfolio toward category entry points that actually precede purchase.
Here’s your weekly CMO/SEO standup. Four lines, no fluff.
1. Share of search (brand)
Your brand’s share versus your top three competitors, trended over 13 weeks.
Up is good. Flat is a warning. Down means it’s time to get comms and PR moving.
2. Share of buyer-intent traffic
Your estimated share of non-brand commercial clicks versus competitors (from tool triangulation), plus your actual buyer-intent clicks from GSC.
The gap between the two is your reality check.
3. Prompt visibility index
For each priority CEP, how often are you recommended by major models, and with what supporting evidence?
Track monthly.
Celebrate gains.
Fix absences with PR and proof.
4. Conversational query conversion
Impressions and clicks on 4–10+ word natural-language queries, segmented by intent.
Are the commercial ones rising as a share of total? If not, your GEO is a content cost center, not a growth driver.
How to read the scoreboard
If those four lines are improving together, your GEO is working.
If only one is improving, you’re playing tactics without strategy.
If none are improving, stop thinking you can “Wikipedia” your way to growth with topical-authority fluff.
The levers that actually move GEO
What moves the dial? Not more “SEO content.” GEO responds to the levers of brand availability:
PR that builds credible third-party evidence: Reviews, analyst notes, earned features, and founder or expert commentary with substance. LLMs love corroboration.
Customer-centered case studies: Framed around CEPs, not your product roadmap. “Marketing manager replaces X to cut acquisition costs in 90 days” beats “New feature launch.”
Tighter copy: Precise, functional language matched to CEPs and prompt families. Kill the poetry.
Experience signals: Your site must resolve buyer intent fast. The conversation from AI should land on pages that continue – not restart – the dialogue.
Content still matters, but only as support for these levers.
Most of your old blog inventory was never going to build memory or distinctiveness, and in an AI-summarized world, it certainly won’t.
Scrap the vanity spreadsheets. Build assets that make both engines and humans more certain you’re the right choice in buying situations.
Yes, content marketing is back in a big way – but that’s another article.
GEO isn’t just SEO
When AI modes become the default interaction layer, and they will – whether through chat, answers, or blended SERPs – the game rewards brands that are easy for machines to recommend in buying moments.
That is GEO’s beating heart: increasing AI availability.
Think of it like free paid search.
If you’re still obsessing over informational traffic and topical hamster wheels, you’ll be caught with the lights on and no clothes. Some of you already are.
SEOs who make the leap become organic-search strategists.
You’ll speak CEPs, buyer intent, and brand effects.
You’ll partner with PR, product marketing, and sales enablement.
You’ll still use the tools – Semrush and GSC – but you’ll use them to evidence strategy, not to justify content churn.
The rest of you? You’ll be replaced by an agentic workflow that writes better filler faster than you ever could.
The humbling truth about GEO
Marketing rewards humility.
You are not the consumer, and you are certainly not the model.
Stop guessing. Measure the four lines.
Map the category entry points.
Build the assets that make you easy to recommend.
Cross-reference tool estimates with your own data and let the differences teach you.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/How-to-know-if-your-GEO-is-working-AFtR26.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=110801920http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-10-14 12:00:002025-10-14 12:00:00How to know if your GEO is working
Google Lens now supports the Nano Banana, the image generation feature from the Gemini app, within Google Search. Google said, “we’re bringing Nano Banana to Google Search.”
Open the Google Lens feature in the Google app for Android or iOS. Then you can tap on Create mode to make an image. You can then transform an image into your ideas directly from Google Lens.
What it looks like. Here is a video of it in action:
Here are some screenshots:
Why we care. AI search features are moving fast and these fun and creative features might help win over consumer loyalty. OpenAI, Microsoft, Perplexity and other are all trying to compete with AI and Search. Who will win in the future is yet to be determined.
Google launched this in English in the U.S. and India, with more countries and languages coming soon, the company said.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/google-banana-1920-cK2kOm.jpg?fit=1920%2C1097&ssl=110971920http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-10-13 16:54:052025-10-13 16:54:05Google Search gets Nano Banana in Google Lens
Google will roll out ads within AI Overviews beyond the U.S. to select English-speaking markets by the end of 2025, the company confirmed during its Google Access event last week.
Why we care. As AI-generated answers become a central part of Search, this expansion could reshape how advertisers reach users – with ads appearing directly alongside AI summaries rather than traditional text results.
Catch up. Ads in AI Overviews were first unveiled at Google Marketing Live 2025, allowing brands to appear within generative responses when users ask complex, multi-part queries.
What’s next. Google’s gradual rollout will give advertisers and users time to adapt to new ad placements and formats – and could provide early insights into how generative AI changes ad visibility, performance, and measurement across Search.
Bottom line. For advertisers, AI Overviews represent both an opportunity and a challenge – blending paid placements into AI-generated answers could drive richer engagement but may also require rethinking how to optimize for discovery and intent in a more conversational search environment.
First seen. This update was shared on LinkedIn by CEO of Profitmetrics.io Frederik Boysen, after hearing it announced Google Access meeting he attended last week.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Screenshot-2025-10-13-at-15.42.54-YTBQ8r.webp?fit=524%2C276&ssl=1276524http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-10-13 16:27:572025-10-13 16:27:57Google to expand ads in AI Overviews to more markets
Google is globally launching a new “Sponsored results” label across desktop and mobile, grouping text and Shopping ads under a clearer header.
The update marks one of Google’s most visible ad labeling changes in years. It allows users to hide groups of ads directly on the search results page.
How it works. Text ads will now appear under a larger Sponsored results header.
The same label will apply to other formats, like Shopping ads.
Users can choose to hide entire groups of sponsored results for a more personalized browsing experience.
Why we care. Clearer ad labeling and the option for users to hide sponsored results could influence ad visibility and click-through rates – meaning brands will need to focus even more on ad relevance and creative quality to attract engaged users who actively choose to view their content.
The big picture. The change aims to make ad placements easier to identify while streamlining navigation, part of Google’s ongoing effort to balance user trust and advertiser visibility in Search.
Bottom line. For advertisers, clearer labeling could mean higher-quality clicks from users who better understand when they’re engaging with paid results.
https://i0.wp.com/dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/How-to-expand-from-paid-social-into-Google-Ads-MtHHWv.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=110801920http://dubadosolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dubado-logo-1.png2025-10-13 16:00:002025-10-13 16:00:00Google rolls out new global ‘Sponsored results’ ad label
AI hasn’t replaced traditional search – it’s expanding it, according to Robby Stein, Google’s VP of Product for Search, speaking in a new interview on Lenny’s Podcast.
Google is seeing more searches than ever as people ask harder, more conversational, and more visual questions powered by AI, Stein said:
“People come to search for just ridiculously wide set of things. … They want specific phone number. They want a price for something. They want to get directions. They want to find a payment web page for their taxes. Like every possible thing you can imagine.
“I think the vastness of that is underappreciated by many people. And what we see is that … AI hasn’t really changed those foundational needs in many ways. What we’re finding is that AI is expansionary.
“There’s actually just more and more questions being asked and curiosity that can be fulfilled now with AI. That’s where you get the growth. The core Google search isn’t really changing in my opinion, we’re not seeing that. But you’re getting this expansion moment.”
Stein pointed to Google Lens as proof: a 70 percent year-over-year surge in visual searches. “Billions and billions and billions of searching this way,” he said.
AI Mode and the future of search. Stein essentially called AI Mode a new layer of Search that gives searchers a “consistent, simple product experience,” where they don’t have to think about where they are asking a question:
“[AI Mode] creates an end-to-end frontier search experience on state-of-the-art models to really truly let you ask anything of Google Search. You can go back and forth. You can have a conversation. And it taps into and is specially designed for search.
“It’s able to understand all of this incredibly rich information that’s within Google. So there’s 50 billion products in the Google Shopping Graph, for instance. They’re updated 2 billion times an hour by merchants with live prices. You have 250 million places and maps. You have all of the finance information. Not to mention you have the entire context of the web and how to connect to it so that you can get context but then go deeper.
“And you kind of like put all of that into this brain that is effectively this way to talk to Google and get at this knowledge. That’s really what you can do now. You can ask anything on your mind and it’ll use all of this information to hopefully give you super high-quality and informed information, as best as we can.
“It’s also been integrated into our core experiences. You can get to it really easily. You can ask follow-up questions of AI Overviews right into AI Mode now. Same for the Lens stuff – take a picture takes you to AI Mode, you can ask follow-up questions and go there too. So it’s increasingly an integrated experience into the core part of the product.”
GEO and content advice. Stein was asked about the rise of AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) and what it means. The rules of showing up in AI answers haven’t changed as much as people think, Stein said, noting that Google’s AI still searches – just a lot faster and smarter.
“When our AI constructs a response, [it] does something called query fan-out, where the model uses Google search as a tool to do other querying. So, maybe you’re asking about specific shoes. It’ll add and append all these other queries, like maybe dozens of queries, and start searching in the background. And it’ll make requests to our data back end, so if it needs real-time information, it’ll go do that.
“And so, actually something’s searching. It’s not a person. But there’s searches happening. And then each search is paired with content.
Stein referenced Google’s quality rater guidelines and seemed to indicate that SEO best practices still apply in the evolving era of GEO/AEO:
“Do you satisfy the user intent of what they’re trying to get? Do you have sources? Do you cite your information? Is it original, or is it repeating things that have been repeated 500 times? And there’s these best practices that I think still do largely apply because it’s going to ultimately come down to an AI is doing research and finding information.
“And a lot of the core signals – is this a good piece of information for the question? – they’re still valid. They’re still extremely valid and extremely useful. And that will produce a response where you’re more likely to show up in those experiences.”
Stein’s advice for publishers and creators:
“Think about what people are using AI for. I mentioned this is an expansionary moment, right? Like seems to be that people are asking a lot more questions now, particularly around things like advice or how to or more complex needs versus more simple things. If I were a creator, I would be thinking, what kind of content is someone using AI for? And then how could my content be the best for that given set of needs now? And I think that’s a really tangible way of thinking about it.”
How Google AI search differs from competitors. AI Mode isn’t a chatbot – it’s designed and specially created for informational needs (planning, learning, verification), not therapy, productivity, or creativity, Stein said.
“We’re really focused on what people use Google for and making an AI for that so that you can come to Google, ask whatever you want, and get effortless information about that, and context and links to then also verify, dig in, and go to the authoritative sources ultimately that people want.”
So perhaps we should call it IEO (information engine optimization) instead of AEO, GEO, etc.?
Bottom line. Google Search isn’t shrinking – it’s expanding due to multimodal searches, according to Stein. It’s being rebuilt to be “the best at informational needs.” That means answering natural language questions, not making searchers speak “keyword-ese.”
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Journalists have been using the inverted pyramid writing style for ages. Using it, you put your most important information upfront. Don’t hedge. Don’t bury your key point halfway down the third paragraph. And don’t hold back; tell the complete story in the first paragraph. Even online, this writing style holds up pretty well for some types of articles. It even comes in handy now that web content is increasingly used to answer every type of question a searcher might have. Find out how!
The inverted pyramid writing style places crucial information at the beginning to engage readers quickly and effectively.
Writers should structure articles with core sentences that introduce key concepts to aid comprehension and improve scanning.
This style enhances SEO by making content clearer and easier to understand for both human readers and search engines.
While effective for many types of articles, the inverted pyramid may not suit creative writing forms like poetry or complex fiction.
To implement the inverted pyramid, identify key points, structure your content, and revise for clarity and focus.
What is the inverted pyramid?
Most readers don’t have the time or desire to carefully read an article, so journalists put the critical pieces of a story in the first paragraph to inform and draw in a reader. This paragraph is the meat and potatoes of a story, so to speak. This way, every reader can read the first paragraph, or the lead, and get a complete notion of what the story is about. It gives away the traditional W’s instantly: who, what, when, where, why, and, of course, how.
The introductory paragraph is followed by paragraphs that contain important details. After that, follows general information and whatever background the writers deem supportive of the narrative. This has several advantages:
It supports all readers, even those who skim
It improves comprehension; everything you need to understand the article is in that first paragraph
You need less time to get to the point
It gives writers a full paragraph to draw readers in
Done well, it encourages readers to scroll and read the rest of the article
It gives writers full control over the structure
It makes it easier to edit articles
An example
Here’s an example of such an intro. We wrote an article about writing meta descriptions in Yoast SEO that answers exactly that question in an easy-to-understand way. We show what it is and why it’s important immediately, while also triggering people to read the rest of the article. Here’s the intro:
“A strong meta description boosts CTR and signals relevance to search engines. This post shows how to craft descriptions that work, with practical tips and ready-to-use templates. You’ll learn the traits of good meta descriptions, common mistakes, and how Yoast SEO can help you get it right. Using these templates and guidelines can boost CTR, align reader expectations, and improve optimization for both users and Google.”
The inverted pyramid is just one of many techniques for presenting and structuring content. Like us, you can use it to write powerful news articles, press releases, product pages, blog posts, or explanatory articles.
This style of writing, however, is not suited for every piece of content. Maybe you write poetry, or long essays with a complete story arc, or just a piece of complex fiction. Critics are quick to add that the inverted pyramid style cripples their creativity. But, even then, you can learn from the techniques of the inverted pyramid that help you to draw a reader in and figure out a good way to structure a story. And, as we all know, a solid structure is key to getting people and search engines to understand your content. We wrote about that in our article on setting up a clear text structure.
The inverted pyramid
The power of paragraphs
Well-written paragraphs are incredibly powerful. These paragraphs can stand on their own. I always try to write in a modular way. That’s because I’m regularly moving paragraphs around if I think they fit better somewhere else in the article. It makes editing and changing the structure of a story so much easier.
Good writers give every paragraph a stand-out first sentence; these are known as core sentences. These sentences raise one question or concept per paragraph. So, someone who scans the article by reading the first sentence of every paragraph will get the gist of it and can choose to read the rest of the paragraph or not. Of course, the rest of the paragraph is spent answering or supporting that question or concept.
The pyramid, SEO, and AI
Front-loading the main point helps SEO perform in an AI era. Lead with the core result to give readers a fast, clear understanding and to signal relevance to search algorithms. Focusing on that idea makes snippets more likely and improves relevance while making the rest of the piece easier to scan, summarize, and reuse across channels. In practice, the inverted pyramid anchors the article in intent, guiding humans and machines toward the same destination: the core answer.
Answering questions
Something else is going on: a lot of content out there is written specifically to answer questions based on user intent. Today, Google answers a lot of questions and answers right away in the search results. That’s why it makes a lot of sense to structure your questions and answers in such a way that is easy to digest for both readers and search engines. This also supports the inverted pyramid theory. So, if you want to answer a specific question, do that right beneath that question. Don’t obfuscate it. Keep it upfront. You can answer supporting questions or give a more elaborate answer further down the text. If you have data supporting your answer, please present it.
Summaries vs. the pyramid
Front-loading the main point highlights the core idea clearly to both readers and search engines. The inverted pyramid delivers that headline idea first, then adds context and support. A summary condenses the piece into its essential takeaways, handy for meta descriptions, snippets, or quick recaps. Yoast AI Summarize can generate tight summaries from your content, giving you ready-to-use openings and meta descriptions that align with the pyramid and improve SEO performance.
How to write with the inverted pyramid in mind
The inverted pyramid forces you to think about your story: what is it, and which parts are key to understanding everything? Even if you don’t follow the structure to the letter, focusing on the essential parts of your story and deleting the fluff is always a good thing. In his seminal work The Elements of Style, William Strunk famously wrote:
“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell.”
In short, writing works like this:
Map it out: What are the most important points you want to make?
Filter: Which points are supportive, but not key?
Connect: How does everything fit together?
Structure: Use sub-headers to build an easy-to-understand structure for your article
Write: Start every paragraph with your core sentence and support/prove/disprove/etc in the coming sentences
Revise: Are the paragraphs in the correct order? Maybe you should move some around to enhance readability or understanding?
Edit: I.e., killing your darlings. Do you edit your own work, or can someone do it for you?
Publish: Add the article to WordPress and hit that Publish button
Like we said, not every type of content will benefit from the inverted pyramid. But the inverted pyramid has surely made its mark over the past century or more. Even now, as we mostly write content for the web, this type of thinking about a story or article makes us focus on the most important parts, and how we tell about those parts. It forces you to separate facts from fiction and fluff from real nuggets of content gold. So, try it out, and your next article might turn out to be the best yet.
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But engine numbers aren’t always the “source of truth.”
Sometimes they’re only directionally accurate. Other times, they barely correlate with actual performance.
Here’s the risk when you don’t define that source upfront: you build and present a solid report, only to have it derailed by, “I don’t think these numbers are right.”
A client questions whether Google Ads is inflating conversions, or a CFO insists revenue must come from the CRM.
Suddenly, the discussion shifts from strategy to data defense.
When stakeholders don’t trust the numbers, your report loses its power. You can’t drive action on data that no one believes.
So before building a report, clarify the source of truth.
A quick litmus test: if you said, “We generated $1 million in PPC revenue yesterday,” what system would leadership check to verify it?
Whatever they name is your source of truth.
You may never reconcile every dataset perfectly, but alignment matters most.
Pull numbers from that trusted system where possible, call out known gaps – like offline conversions lagging in Google Ads or modeled data in GA4 – and always identify data sources clearly.
Without one, visitors don’t know what to do next – and conversions drop.
Reports work the same way, only without a button to click.
That’s why I developed a framework I call “invisible CTAs.”
An invisible CTA is the intended outcome for each section of your report – the “conversion” you want your audience to experience.
It doesn’t appear in the report itself, but it guides how you build every chart, annotation, and insight.
There are three types of invisible CTAs:
Do: The next step they should take based on the data – fix a landing page, approve budget reallocation, or adjust strategy to defend against a competitor.
Know: What happened and why, even when there’s no immediate action – a holiday promo drove a 15% spike that won’t sustain, Apple’s privacy updates reduced match rates, or a tracking glitch underreported conversions.
Feel: The emotional response that drives urgency or confidence – concern that a competitor is outspending you, encouragement that a new strategy is working, or worry that rankings are slipping.
Don’t shy away from negative emotions.
When we hide problems to keep reports “positive,” stakeholders won’t commit the resources needed to fix them.
Think of it this way: which battery icon motivates you to get off the couch and grab your charger?
Not the full one.
Before building any section, ask:
What’s the one takeaway I want my audience to leave with?
Then design everything – your charts, metrics, headlines, and comparisons – around that invisible CTA.
When each section has a clear intent, your audience knows exactly what to do next, even without clicking a button.
The purpose of PPC reporting is simple – to help your audience understand what happened and what to do next.
If your reports don’t accomplish that, you’re not just wasting time. You’re leaving your readers without the clarity they need to act.
When you design reports around your audience’s needs, anchor them to a trusted source of truth, build invisible CTAs, apply conversion principles, and show results in context, you turn reporting into a decision-making tool.
Follow these steps, and your PPC report will stop being a monthly time-sink and start becoming a high-value asset that earns trust, drives action, and strengthens retention.
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