Google AI Mode Is Here And It Just Killed SEO

Google’s AI Mode is here — and it’s not just an update, it’s a complete overhaul of how people search online. If your business depends on Google traffic, this episode could save you thousands.

In this episode of Marketing Alpha, I break down exactly what AI Mode is, how it’s already reshaping user behavior, and why small business websites are losing clicks even as impressions go up. You’ll hear how AI answers are replacing traditional search results, what’s working now for SEO, and how your business can stay ahead of the curve — before your competitors even know what hit them.

You’ll learn:

• What AI Mode does and how it works
• Why even top-ranking websites are seeing 30–70% click-through drops
• How Google’s changes are affecting local businesses and small publishers
• Real traffic trends we’re seeing across WolfPack clients
• The new SEO playbook to survive and thrive in AI-driven search
• 5 actionable steps to future-proof your strategy today

Whether you're a marketing pro or a small business owner trying to understand why your traffic tanked last month, this is the episode you can’t afford to miss.

🎧 Listen now — and get ready to lead the pack.

https://wolfpackadvising.com/

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Stay tuned for our next episode, and keep pushing forward with Alpha Marketing!

Transcript

00:00 Hello and welcome back to Marketing Alpha. Today we have an absolute banger of a podcast, and that's because Google AI mode is here.
00:16 And, uh, quite frankly, the SEO world, the advertising world, the digital marketing world is going nuts over it. So let's talk about what it means, what it is, what you need to be doing, and talk about some final key takeaways of what you should do right now.
00:32 To kind of give you an overview, Google's new AI mode is not just a simple Google update, it's a complete overhaul to how people are searching on Google.
00:43 It's a limited thing right now. The way that you access it right now is actually through a personal Gmail account.
00:49 Uh, you cannot access it using, like, a Google Workspace account, so it has to be a personal Gmail, and then you have to actually toggle on AI mode, and right now, as it appears on search, it's almost just like an LLM or a chatbot, like a, like a chat GBT, or a rock, or similar.
01:08 So, if your business depends on Google traffic, this episode could save you thousands of dollars. I'm diving deep into what AI mode is, how it's changing user behavior, why small business websites are losing clicks despite higher impressions, and how you can adapt before your competition does.
01:25 So let's listen now to future-proof your marketing strategy, and first off, let's give an outline into how this launched. It was launched in May of 2025, and it's now launching to all devices.
01:36 It's powered by Gemini 2.0, and it doesn't just rank results, it answers questions, um, that you might particularly have, and then it provides footnotes, or little links.
01:49 So it'll have little footnotes in the actual paragraph text, like it answers like an AI chatbot, and on the right-hand side, you can actually see all the details on desktop.
01:57 On mobile, it's a little bit different. So it's a conversation-driven conversational AI layer in Google Search. It's not just like the 10 links that appear, and right now there's no advertising that appears within it.
02:08 Um, it's more of like a conversational answer with a bunch of different links built within that. Uh, it replaces traditional SEO, um, services for many search types, so instead, we're not worried too much about the ranking.
02:23 Because previously it was all about the ranking of one through 10, and now it's just a conversation with a bunch of footnotes to different links, and with that, you kind of can't rely on ranking too much.
02:36 Because if you're number 10, like, it just means that you're 10 in the conversation, not 10 in the ranking for a particular keyword or search.
02:45 We'll get into more of that, but we'll talk about how it- effects like deep surge, complex analysis, um, some things that are coming later on with this with agentic capabilities, um, how it knows personal context as well.
02:58 And I want to go into some key metrics as well. But first, let's talk about some key SEO implications implications and what's happening right now.
03:07 Currently, and with Wolfpack customers right now, we're seeing a- significant drop in click-through rates, meaning the number of clicks you're getting from Google search.
03:17 We're seeing across the board and Google search console accounts, what's happening is clicks are dropping, impressions are increasing. So why is that happening?
03:26 Well, if people are chatting with AI mode, they have a conversation and they're not clicking on links to go to a particular site.
03:35 So you are featured in a f footnote, hence the impression, but people, less people are clicking. Now, what Google says about this is they claim that these AI summaries are actually increasing diversity of sources.
03:49 And they're claiming that it's actually going to drive more clicks to link pages, which I don't necessarily believe. But what I think it's actually going to apply to specifically is the clicks that you.
04:01 Do receive are going to be higher value. Because when people are actually clicking on that particular footnote or that particular link, it's, they want to read more about what you have to say, not what Google has to say about a particular topic.
04:14 Some SEO experts, um, like, ones on, on Twitter, um, argue that it's not applying to small publishers or, or, or local businesses.
04:23 It's really going after. Bigger companies, higher informational keywords, general search curries, but in terms of local searches for businesses, it's not necessarily going to impact.
04:34 I think it is going to change the game a little bit. Um, but we'll go into some strategies on how to adapt a little bit later as well.
04:42 So, first small businesses, what does it mean? What is, what does all this entail? How is this impacting anything? Well, you first off, you could lose clicks on educational content.
04:53 So if you're writing any particular content or informational content, such as blog posts, you could lose clicks on those. So if you're writing a blog topic on like pest control stuff, on home inspection stuff, on plumbing stuff, whatever it is, expect to lose the amount of clicks that you're receiving
05:08 because more people are going to these particular chatbots to get their particular answer. So, um, the other thing is, is like, you're going to see more impressions on Google Search Console from those same articles but less clicks because it's viewed more when it, it's kind of just presented with an 
05:27 AI overview. Now, some opportunities that this presents is actually, when you people do click on it, it's much higher intent and, And there's some cool features coming out here soon.
05:42 And the big one is agentic actions. So agentic actions are actions where the AI model does whatever you want it to.
05:53 So, the way that it's rolling out initially is actually in this summer, this year of 2025, it's going to be able to book flights and hotels using, Google's tools of flights and hotels.
06:04 And so in the future, we could see an increase of conversions directly from search with certain integrations and certain capabilities.
06:14 Or perhaps there's an agentic, um, AI that attaches to a browser as like an extension and it automatically goes to your website and schedules or submits a contact form.
06:25 That's a huge opportunity because it lowers the barrier for a user to actually have to fill out everything and click to your website.
06:32 It seems small, but it- it'll actually increase conversions quite a bit. Now, the- the other thing to note in terms of an opportunity is being featured in these AI citations or these footnotes.
06:46 You might not think it's a particular opportunity, but for the right search- Which is, for the right key terms and right context, it's very important and a lot more valuable.
06:56 So, how do you go about actually ranking in these? Well, it's all the same stuff that we've talked about before, actually.
07:04 You're writing in-depth content around common customer pain points. You're using case studies, testimonials, and reward examples to stand out. You're getting mentioned on th- third party or directory sites such as, uh, yelp, Yahoo Local, Bing Places, all those directories and citations.
07:21 Open AI has one. Amazon Alexa has one. You're doubling down on your Google Business Profile and getting a lot of reviews.
07:29 But the SEO strategy and the whole picture stays the same. The core value is the same. The core strategy of what we're d- doing stays the same.
07:39 Now, if you're partnering, I can't speak to other agencies. I can only speak to what Wolfpack is doing. For Wolfpack, we've changed a lot of our internal processes in order to be more efficient and effective in terms of the offering that we're doing because we have to, to remain competitive.
07:54 But the core product, the core service that we're offering is quite frankly almost the same. And that's what you should look for in a particular agency is.
08:01 Nothing's changed. The way that the ranking happens and what users want has stayed the same. Users just want the answers to the particular question in a most fast and efficient way, the most authoritative.
08:14 And if they actually want something for you, or want to read more information from you, they will go and they will inquire about it, which you should be able to present.
08:22 And that's what the AI models are looking for as well. So when you're thinking about running com- content and everything else, you still want to apply the same kind of expertise, the same kind of trust, the same kind of thoroughness that you would typically go about in your current SEO strategy.
08:37 You don't want to do tons of AI posts, AI pages, artificial content, and just duplicate content. That isn't going to help your case.
08:48 If it does help your case- It's for the short term and not for the long term. So let's go back up to some of the things I mentioned before, which is some of the key features that are happening with Google search and how you could start leveraging them.
09:02 So deep search. Deep search was where people can actually just inquire more about their initial question. They might ask an initial question about how to get rid of ants.
09:13 And then- five steps later, they're really deep into one of your blog posts around how you get rid of ants, and in particular chemical or particular process, or the strategies that they can do at home.
09:24 They can do more complex analysis as well. So they can add charts, lists, and summaries, like a mini research paper on Google search, which is extremely beneficial.
09:34 And Google can now read those charts and understand that data. So if you have local data to present, this is a perfect opportunity to add it to your website about what is actually being shown in your local market.
09:47 There's also, as I mentioned, the agentic capabilities where people can book flights by tickets, schedule appointments right inside Google. That is happening this summer with flights and hotels, for example.
09:57 And I imagine as the years go on, it's going to be further and further to where people don't quite frankly.
10:02 They actually have to book anything. They kind of just tell their assistant to book it for them. And then, of course, personal context is it knows that hey, you've searched for this in the past and it knows this personal context about you and what you like.
10:15 So it knows to book these types of flights, book these types of hotels, or present you with this kind of information in this particular fashion.
10:24 Now, some key metrics right now that are- happening with AI mode, uh, in Google, and you can check- check this out for yourself, but over a billion people have already interacted with AI overviews.
10:35 User submit two to five times longer queries that's more complex. It's more specific. It's usually not a what we call a navigational search, meaning people aren't typing in Facebook to go to Facebook, right?
10:47 They usually do that in Google search itself, or they're- using just the- the crumb tab, obviously. But Google also reports AI users search more frequently and engage longer than a regular Google search, which makes sense, right?
11:01 It's changing to kind of like a chatbot conversation where they can get all the answers right there and see the footnotes and if they want to expand on it, they can.
11:12 Alright. So we talked a lot- About the latest developments, we talked a lot about some SEO implications, what this is currently doing, how you need to currently adjust your strategy.
11:22 Focus on that structured content, focus on the schema markup, all the normal stuff, focus on your- what we call eat or experience expertise, authoritativeness and trust- trustworthiness, just the basic stuff when you're writing content.
11:35 Focus on the expertise, your own authoritative look- stuff that you can add, your own expertise and what you can add, and then track everything like you have been as well.
11:46 A lot of the SEO tools right now are putting this stuff in beta in terms of tracking your performance on, like Chatsubitee or on Google's AI mode or Google Gemini.
11:58 They're starting to implement those things. I wouldn't imagine that a lot of the clear answers are- going to happen for another six months from now, um, or next year in terms of how people are actually going about tracking stuff, so it's going to take some time.
12:08 Um, but right now, core message is the same from the SEO world. Now we know also the small business impact and how this can affect, if you're writing tons of content right now, expect a traffic job.
12:22 Just expect expect that. But expect a lot of opportunity. Attunities as well to come from this as well with an increase of impressions.
12:30 Make sure your favicon on your website, and if you're not sure where the favicon is, it's essentially if you open up a Chrome window.
12:36 It's a little logo in the top left of that tab. Um, that is a favicon. Make sure your favicon is nice, clear, perfectly pictured, because that's going to be a representation of your brand in a lot of these footnotes.
12:48 So make sure you have a really good favicon. But let's talk about now the future. So we're moving from a keyword search-driven conversation, or like search, to this AI-assisted decision-making conversational, agentic-powered search engine, right?
13:07 It's not a search engine anymore. It's a conversation. It knows your personal context, and can run the actions for- or you.
13:16 Google doesn't just help you find an answer, and wants to be the answer right now. I think there's a lot of power to that, and obviously we could be hugely concerned about what's going on in the power that Google has over us.
13:29 I mean, chat GPT is the same. Grok is the same. All of this technology in the software is the same in terms of the data that they're collecting over us, right?
13:37 But the amount of help- that it's offering for consumers, we can't negate that either. So there are concerns. You know, for you people getting clicks, um, AI answers could still be inaccurate.
13:49 Um, smaller sites might get squeezed out if they're not cited properly, right? Um, but there is hope. Uh, there is hope with this to where you can actually still increase the amount of impressions.
14:01 You could partake in this mo- and hopefully get powered by agentic actions and people can run actions on your website.
14:10 And ultimately, the businesses that are gonna adapt and pay attention to this are gonna have a huge advantage in business in the next three to five years.
14:19 I think a lot is gonna change in the next six to twelve months in terms of AI search and how it's gonna happen.
14:24 I think more and more searches are gonna- happen in this AI mode than what's currently happening. So you need to be on top of it right now and kinda see what's actually changing.
14:33 Your strategy? Do the same thing that you have been doing if you're working with a reputable marketing agency, right? Umm, do the same thing you have been doing.
14:43 Make sure you're paying attention to all of those Google reviews, the directories, the citations, you're updating everything across the web and doing the- all of those things.
14:51 Umm, but some clear actionable takeaways you can start doing right now is build content with questions, answers, and clear structure.
14:59 Like I frequently ask questions thing. Really document everything about that's going on in your local market. Use your blog to be the expert in your local area about every particular topic.
15:11 So you can get cited as many times in these AI overviews when people are looking- for, let's say, Orlando specific stuff, San Diego related stuff, Nashville related stuff, because what's going to happen is people are going to look for specific things in their local market.
15:25 And you want to be that authority in your local market. If you're not familiar with schema markup, implement schema markup and test with Google's rich results tool, umm, which you can search as well if you're not familiar with that.
15:38 that I definitely recommend going to your marketing agency about that. Uh, refresh your website and your content, uh, because we've learned in previous podcasts that I've talked about that these AI models are actually scraping your website more and more than actually what Google search engine was doing
15:55 in the past. Make sure you're setting up Google search console and then tracking your impressions and your clicks. You should see that trend happening.
16:02 So that's it. And with getting more impressions and less clicks over time. And then you really, really, really, really, really, really need to look into alternative channels.
16:14 So you need to look into channels like YouTube, TikTok, email marketing, advertising. We need to diversify what you're doing. If you're solely relying right now and you're like, Hey, my entire strategy is built up.
16:27 Around my SEO. Now's the time to diversify. I'm not saying you need to throw out everything that you're doing, but you need to spread your basket a little bit, your eggs and your baskets a little bit, um, to make sure that you're not solely relying on something too much that is having a lot of volatility
16:42 right now. Cause it could highly pay off, like the stock market, right? It could highly pay off, but it's risky.
16:48 And in a business, if you're, uh, running. I don't want you to be too risky. So quick recap. AI mode is here.
16:58 It's already changing the way that people are searching with Google. We don't have 10 ranking factors anymore. And it's going to continue down this path.
17:08 The way that you need to execute or change is do the same things you have been doing. The right things being.
17:15 An expert in your local market and writing tons of content. Refreshing your website with tons of content, giving those Google reviews, doing all those citations and those directories on Yahoo!
17:24 Local being places, yelp. All those things. Adapting your marketing strategy as a whole to different channels, right? And just keeping an eye on it.
17:36 There's going to be a lot of change happening in the next 6 to 12 months. I'm... But imagine, within that time, we're going to see more of a clear direction into what's happening.
17:44 But right now, everything is still status quo. It's not really affecting how we're executing, Well, let me rephrase. It's affecting how we're executing, but the end result and what's- what we're producing is the same.
17:58 Anyway, this is the Marketing Alpha Podcast. If you like this one, leave a comment. Let me know. Yeah. Well, see you next time.
18:04 time.