Google AI Mode: Why You Should Suddenly Give a Stuff About Your Customers

Jeremy Beckett2026-05-26T18:24:37+10:00Categories: GEO - Generative Engine Optimisation|Tags: AI Overviews, AI Search, Content Strategy, Customer Experience, Digital Marketing, GEO, Google AI Mode, Google I/O, search strategy, SEO|

Google has renamed Search to Ask. AI Mode picks one business to recommend, not ten to rank. It bases that recommendation on how well your information satisfies the customer's decision process, including concerns they haven't voiced. Different search pathways recommend different businesses for the same query. The shift is gradual but the direction is clear. Understand your customers, give them what they need, and the AI will recommend you. Ignore them, and it will recommend someone who didn't.

Google’s AI Search Guide, the Ahrefs Schema Study, and the AI Content Panic: What’s Actually Worth Your Attention

Jeremy Beckett2026-05-25T16:10:25+10:00Categories: Content Strategy & Creation, Digital Marketing & Strategy, GEO - Generative Engine Optimisation, SEO, Technology & Development, Virtual Chief Digital Officer, Virtual Chief Marketing Officer|Tags: AI Content, AI Overviews, AI Search, Google Updates, Schema, search strategy, Structured Data|

Google's AI optimisation guide and the Ahrefs schema study both dropped this week, triggering the usual tribal warfare. Before you pick a side, read a 20-year SEO veteran's breakdown of what the evidence actually supports, what's commercially motivated, and the contradiction in Google's advice that nobody is talking about.