AI is in the search box now. Fascinating, a little scary, mostly fascinating.
Hey,
Google is putting AI in the search box. The one that hadn't changed in 25 years.
Think about that for a second.
Google has been testing, iterating, collecting feedback on AI in search for years now. AI Overviews came out, got adjusted. AI Mode appeared, felt a bit separate, then didn't. And at Google I/O last week they blended the two, right into the core search experience. The interface that billions of people have typed into every day since the late nineties. That one.
This isn't "AI is coming." This is Google saying: we've tested this enough, users find it useful enough, and we're committing. That's a meaningful vote of confidence. Not a trial balloon. A structural decision.
And honestly? I find it fascinating to be watching this happen. A little bit terrifying too, I won't lie. But mostly fascinating.
So what actually changed
The way I'd frame it: Google is no longer purely a search engine. It's becoming an action platform. The Gemini agents announced at I/O can call businesses, shop across the internet, build custom little apps in response to a query. The search box now produces artefacts, not just links. Liz Reed, Google's Search lead, put it plainly: they'll send vastly less traffic to publishers, but what does arrive will be higher quality, people who are ready to do something, not just looking around.
The deal that held the web together for twenty years (you make content, Google sends you traffic) is being renegotiated. Not ended dramatically, but quietly repriced.
For most businesses doing good work, honestly? The foundations still hold. Useful content, genuine expertise, real intent to serve your audience. That's not a consolation prize. It's still the only strategy that works across surfaces you can't fully predict. But it does mean that content existing purely as an information delivery mechanism, the kind AI can produce faster than you can type, has a shorter shelf life than it did.
The measurement problem
One consequence of this transformation is that our measurement layer is shifting. Clicks and impressions made sense when search was ten blue links. When search creates its own artefacts, personalises per user, and routes across platforms before a single click happens, what counts as visibility? What's a conversion when the journey starts in ChatGPT, passes through a Reddit thread, and ends on your contact page two weeks later?
The KPIs aren't wrong. They're just incomplete. And rebuilding measurement around what actually serves your customers, real outcomes and real signals, is the unglamorous work that separates the next few years.
The international layer
Personal Intelligence is going live in 200 countries. Two people submitting the same query at the same moment in the same city can get substantially different answers. That's not a glitch — it's the product. And we already know that Google ranking and LLM citation are two independently optimised systems. Being visible in one doesn't guarantee the other. The language someone prompts in rewires which domains get cited entirely.
Nobody is winning the AI search wars yet. I'm not picking a winner. But meeting your customer where they are is no longer a metaphor. It's a technical requirement across platforms, languages, and AI systems that each behave a little differently.
What you can actually do this week
Build the thing that couldn't have been generated: the opinion, the first-hand experience, the specific observation from inside your industry. Get your technical foundations solid. Look hard at what you're measuring and ask whether it still reflects what you actually care about. And if you're operating across markets, make sure your approach is genuinely local rather than just translated.
If you're working through any of this and want a thinking partner, I have availability for new projects in Q3.
From my desk
(and I've been busy!)
My Lipton Teas & Infusions case study is now live! It takes you through the way multi-market SEO works in practice across a complex international portfolio. → Download the case study here
The International GEO Checklist is still on Gumroad. It's the practical starting point for AI visibility across markets, built international-first. → Buy the International GEO Checklist here
I now offer an SEO Strategy Session format: a brief, a diagnostic, 30-minutes to talk though your next action steps and a written recap within 48 hours. -> Book your Strategy Session here
Last thing: I'm thinking about what to build next for this community. Something focused, worth paying for, useful immediately. If there's a problem you keep running into that you can't find a good answer to, hit reply. I'm genuinely asking.
See you very soon! 🍓
Alizée BAUDEZ
Work with me
If what I write resonates with where you're navigating right now, the best way forward is a conversation to see whether it makes sense.
This was originally sent as an issue of Beyond Organic, my newsletter on international SEO and AI search, on 27 May 2026. If you'd rather get the next one in your inbox than find it here later, subscribe here.
