Barry Schwartz on Why AI Mode Is the Confirmed Future of Google Search (Whether You Like It or Not) | Local Marketing Secrets with Dan Leibrandt

Meta Description: Barry Schwartz reveals Google's timeline for AI mode dominance, why keyword optimization is dead, and the branding strategy that saves you when clicks disappear.

I just had an incredible conversation with Barry Schwartz, and what he confirmed about Google's future completely changes the SEO game. Barry is one of the top names in all of SEO, founder and editor of Search Engine Roundtable, longtime contributor to Search Engine Land, and the guy who's been covering every Google update for over 20 years. He's published tens of thousands of articles, interviewed Google's top search executives, and helped shape the SEO conversation around the globe. He's also the founder of Rusty Brick, a successful web development agency he started over 30 years ago. When Barry told me that Liz Reid, the head of Google Search, announced on stage at Google I/O that AI mode is the future of Google search, I realized every business owner needs to understand what's coming.

Barry started Rusty Brick in high school with his twin brother Ronnie, a software geek who loved building web stuff. Ronnie named it after his initials (RBS - Rusty Brick Software), and Barry started selling software to companies. They built everything from restaurant websites to emergency room hospital software and even pest control software. They do tons of mobile applications and custom software to make companies more efficient.

A client recommended Barry to someone who wanted to rank well on AltaVista in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Barry got addicted to the search marketing industry and forums. He started covering conversations people were writing and kept a blog as a notebook. He'd find great nuggets in detailed threads that were off-topic and people couldn't find. He created Search Engine Roundtable to cover those conversations and has been doing it for over 20 years.

Why Barry Is the Person Everyone Turns to When Google Goes Dark

I wanted to personally commend Barry because he covers SEO news better than anyone else, and it's not even close. He took a two-day break (I think for Shavuot), and Rand Fishkin was like "Barry, where are you?" Everyone was looking to him for news. I asked Barry if he feels a personal calling to cover the news or why he does it.

His answer was simple. He's very consistent. Once he starts something, he doesn't like to stop doing it. He just keeps adding more onto his plate. He doesn't consider this a job. It's definitely a hobby. He loves the search community, and this is his way of giving back. Hopefully some people appreciate it and some people don't, but he enjoys doing it.

I told him personally I really appreciate it. When I asked how he's pulling all this news, Barry explained he does a lot of research on his own, following discussions across social media and forums. He has tools and tons of RSS feeds he tracks. He watches Google interviews, announcements, and events. The community is very gracious about sharing stuff with him, like when a button turns from red to blue. He decides whether to cover it or just put it in the newsletter.

Barry misses a lot obviously, but he tries to cover what he can. He also tries not to cover too much. He doesn't post more than six times a day on Search Engine Roundtable because it could be overwhelming. Sometimes he'll post a bit more depending on what's going on, and other times he'll hold off on stories to cover the next day so he doesn't overwhelm people.

The Google I/O Announcement That Confirms AI Mode Is Inevitable

Google's I/O presentation gave a huge keynote about tons of changes with AI mode. Barry explained that Google I/O events historically focused on Android, but the past two or three years they've gone back to their roots, leading with search as the most important thing.

Their focus was AI in search. They rolled out Google AI mode to all US searchers without opt-in. AI overviews (already in many countries) expanded to more regions and languages. They announced new lab features in AI mode like charting and deep search.

Liz Reid, the head of Google Search, announced on stage that this is the future of Google search, meaning AI mode. This gets people concerned, especially those doing SEO for a long time who are used to search results as they are. Change is hard, but this is probably the most drastic change to Google search since day one.

I asked Barry how certain he is that Google will eventually switch to AI mode. There's no timeline. Google wouldn't announce it and they usually don't announce when things will be released. They only announce when it's out there. Barry honestly doesn't know if AI mode is fully rolled out. John Mueller said search console data for AI mode won't be separated but will be in Google Search Console mixed with everything else once AI mode is fully rolled out in the US, so maybe it hasn't fully rolled out yet.

They announced it's rolling out that day to everybody. It's hard to know because Barry has a Workspace account and a Gmail account, and the Gmail account is opted into AI mode. Google doesn't give timelines. They're not saying AI mode will roll out in the UK or India on this date. They never do that anymore. They announce features like charting or deep search will roll out in the next month or by end of year. They just rolled out the charting feature last week (announced Friday but people didn't start seeing it until Monday), but Google rarely pre-announces rollouts around search features.

Barry's not sure when AI mode will launch internationally, but yeah, it is the future. They'll be testing it big time in the US and seeing how it goes. As they get more confident, they'll release it in more places.

The Great Decoupling: Why Your Impressions Stay Flat While Clicks Crater

I asked Barry how we can optimize for AI mode. He said there's nothing really to do for AI mode specifically. It's basically about building content. You could do really well getting your content into AI mode and then just not get traffic.

As you see with AI overviews and now in AI mode, Google has a lot of content in there. It could be a paragraph or a whole long essay with many sources, anywhere from a few links to 50, 60, 70-plus links to different websites and pages on the web. That all counts as being position number one because that's the first result in that AI overview.

How do you optimize for that? Sure, Google could use your content in the AI overview and AI mode, and the chances of getting a click from that is very slim because that's just the interface. People are calling this the great decoupling.

If you look at your Google Search Console report, especially as AI overviews continue to expand, you'll see your impressions are about the same (meaning getting the same amount of impressions). Sometimes that's going up because AI overviews are now position number one. You might get more impressions even though you were ranking on page two. Now you're ranking in the AI review, so you're position number one. You'll see impressions either flat or going up.

Then you'll see clicks drastically going down. You're getting the same amount of impressions from Google search. Why are clicks going down? Because people are clicking less.

The optimization techniques are the same in terms of making sure you have great content that Google wants to index and use in Google search, AI overviews, and AI mode. But the clicks are getting less. People are saying you have to think about two new things.

One is branding. Make sure your brand is mentioned in the AI overview. Make sure your brand's mentioned in AI mode. So somebody's asking for SEO advice, maybe they'll say "Danny is an expert in this field and he says this, this, and this" and make sure to learn about his company.

The second thing is agentic services or AI agents. If you have an e-commerce store or home service business and you want to get a booking, maybe AI answers will let you book a plumber, roofer, or pest control company. Here are three options. That's called an agentic integration where you're building services that integrate with AI on the backend to let people book.

There's not much you can do with that right now. ChatGPT is releasing some services and Perplexity and Google are announcing stuff, but it's super early. Those are the two mechanisms: branding and agentic stuff.

Why Small Businesses Might Actually Get Crushed by AI Mode

I asked Barry about advertising. Ads are being rolled out and tested in AI overviews. They always had them on top and bottom, but now Google says they're also in the middle. They just announced they're not just in the mobile version but also being rolled out on desktop. That's new from I/O. You should see more ads in AI overviews.

In AI mode, Google said they'll be testing ads but they're not doing anything more than testing. Barry hasn't seen any tests yet, but hopefully he'll see them soon. If that's the future of Google search, they have to make sure to get ads in there and make sure those ads are clickable. About 80-something percent of their revenue comes from search ads. They need to make sure their revenue doesn't get impacted by putting ads where people don't click. They have to figure that out from a revenue perspective to make sure earnings don't drop.

Barry explained ads will look like little card widgets labeled "sponsored." They look like normal ads in AI mode. Little cards you'd see at the top or middle of answers, showing clickable links to not just organic results but also sponsored results. It works well with shopping listings. If you're looking for bed bug spray, it'll show a product listing of different sprays you can use and you can carousel through shopping ads.

I asked Barry where he sees the LLM market going. Do you see Gemini taking over ChatGPT? Barry explained there's search and there's LLMs. Some are doing a mix like Perplexity. Google Gemini is separate from Google search and AI mode.

The leader right now in terms of branding when you think AI is ChatGPT, and Google's Sundar says they want to be the brand for that too. They don't just want to be the verb for search, they want to be the verb for AI. But right now ChatGPT from OpenAI is leading.

There's ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok from Elon Musk, Microsoft Copilot, and Anthropic (which Google has huge ownership in). Tons of players in the AI space. Everybody Barry speaks to uses ChatGPT. Early data shows ChatGPT is really winning right now.

I asked Barry directly: are bigger companies going to have more of an advantage now? I talk to a lot of small pest control owners and small local business owners worried about losing their business because organic results are showing up less.

Barry asked that question directly to a bunch of Google executives. How are smaller businesses going to compete if they're not getting clicks like they used to, if their brand might not get mentioned in the actual answer, and with agentic stuff? If you're booking a flight, Google will probably work directly with airlines or maybe bigger players like Expedia and Travel Velocity, but they're not going to work with every single mom and pop travel agency.

Google's response was "it's so early we don't really have a comment on that." Barry doesn't know. It's a big concern. It's very early. What you need to do as an SEO or someone in marketing is keep playing with these features because they're changing very quickly. Google's constantly adapting them, ChatGPT is releasing new models and interfaces. Keep playing with this stuff so you see how they work and hopefully you'll find some avenue where you can leverage it to get traffic to your website and get calls and transactions.

There's no specific answer. It's so early, things are changing, and hopefully there'll be a way. They'll open up some mechanism, some structured data or APIs that you could be one of the first to leverage. Even a small brand can be the first to implement something.

Barry's sure Google will reach out to big players to build mechanisms. Maybe if you have contacts at Google and you're really good at one specific area, you can reach out about building integrations. It reminds him of when Google came out with Google Glass, where they worked with developers early on to integrate stuff, like Apple does with Vision Pro and Facebook with Meta glasses.

But when Barry asks Google about this, they're like "it's too early to say, we're still experimenting." Which is true. They haven't really implemented any agentic stuff in AI mode or AI search yet.

Why Keyword Optimization Is Officially Dead (And What to Do Instead)

I asked Barry about keywords because classically people think of SEO as optimizing for keywords. How do I rank on this keyword? It seems like that's going away. Do we still need keyword optimization?

Barry said he never really thought about keyword optimization. He knows that's a big SEO thing, but when he writes content, he writes based on what he thinks people want to read. He doesn't think about keywords. He knows SEOs do that and he doesn't want to say that's good or bad, but ever since AI like BERT and early AI technologies from Google, there was really no reason to do it that way.

Barry doesn't think looking at keywords is important. Look at what your customers are saying. You have tons of phone records and customer service calls. See what questions they're asking. When you do a search in Google for the past several years, Google was expanding that search to many variations of those keywords, thinking they know better what the searcher is asking, trying to give them a better answer, matching that to resemblance words, and showing content that may not have those words on those pages.

It used to be simple. Your keyword has to match your content on the page and the title tag. Now for the past several years that wasn't the case, and now with query fan-out stuff with AI mode, Google's expanding your query into multiple avenues.

Barry doesn't think you need to worry about keywords. You just have to think about: is the piece of content I'm writing answering the question my customer is asking? Take it from a customer-centric approach. What are my customers asking me? How do I solve that with content on the website? How do I solve that with a video? How do I solve that with maybe a tool you might build on your website? Build stuff like that as opposed to thinking about keywords and how to optimize for keywords.

When I asked what exactly should you optimize for, Barry said it's all about quality. If you're writing content, what is that person there to solve? Why are you writing that content? Is it something a customer asked about? Is there a reason people are looking for that?

When Barry writes content, it's something either new that people want more information about, or it's something broken, or something the community is interested in. Some people go really long-winded, some people want the answer right away. It's really about why am I writing this content and is that content on target? Not about keywords.

It might be a one-word answer (rarely), but it could be a paragraph or two or a whole book. It depends on what you're trying to answer. Maybe it's multiple pieces of content, maybe it's one long piece. How does this customer want to read this answer? Is it a video? Bunch of images? Bullet points? You have to think about that as opposed to keyword optimization.

Content quality is not about some tool looking at your content and saying is this high quality. It's about is it solving the customer's question? You might have a high bounce rate on that page or the page speed is slow. That means absolutely nothing in terms of high-quality content. It could be the person got their answer and left after reading it for five seconds and that solved that customer experience. Or they might have to click more links to get more details so they can expand on whether they need this product or that product.

It's not as simple as a couple metrics on the page. It depends on the query, the customer, the content.

My Main Takeaway

1. Liz Reid, the head of Google Search, announced on stage at Google I/O that AI mode is the confirmed future of Google search, with no timeline but inevitable rollout globally. Google I/O historically focused on Android, but the past two or three years they've gone back to their roots leading with search as the most important thing. They rolled out AI mode to all US searchers without opt-in, expanded AI overviews to more regions and languages, and announced new lab features like charting and deep search. This is the most drastic change to Google search since day one. Google won't give timelines (they never pre-announce rollouts), but John Mueller said Search Console data for AI mode will be mixed with everything else once fully rolled out, suggesting it may not be complete yet. They're testing big time in the US, and as they get more confident they'll release in more places. The charting feature just rolled out last week, announced Friday but not visible until Monday, showing Google's pattern of sudden releases without warning.

   
   

2. The great decoupling means your impressions stay flat or increase while clicks drastically drop because AI overviews count as position one but people don't click through. When you look at Google Search Console, you'll see impressions about the same or going up because AI overviews are now position number one. Even if you were ranking on page two, now you're ranking in the AI review so you're position one. But clicks are drastically going down because people are clicking less. Google could use your content in AI overview with anywhere from a few links to 50, 60, 70-plus links to different websites, and that all counts as position number one. The chances of getting a click are very slim because that's just the interface. The optimization techniques are the same (great content Google wants to index), but clicks are getting less. The two mechanisms to combat this are branding (make sure your brand is mentioned in AI overview and AI mode) and agentic services (building AI integrations on the backend that let people book plumbers, roofers, pest control companies directly).

   
   

3. Small businesses might get crushed because Google will likely work with airlines and big players like Expedia for agentic bookings rather than every mom and pop business. Barry asked Google executives directly how smaller businesses will compete if they're not getting clicks, their brand might not get mentioned in answers, and with agentic stuff where Google probably works directly with big players. Google's response was "it's so early we don't really have a comment on that." It's a big concern with no clear answer yet. What you need to do is keep playing with these features because they're changing very quickly. Google's constantly adapting, ChatGPT releasing new models. Hopefully you'll find some avenue to leverage traffic and get calls. They'll open up mechanisms, structured data, or APIs. Even small brands can be first to implement something. If you have contacts at Google and you're good at one specific area, reach out and say you're interested in building integrations. It reminds Barry of Google Glass where they worked with developers early, like Apple with Vision Pro and Facebook with Meta glasses.

   
   

4. Keyword optimization is officially dead because Google's been expanding searches to variations for years, and AI mode now does query fan-out to multiple avenues. Barry never really thought about keyword optimization. When he writes content, he writes based on what people want to read, not keywords. Ever since AI like BERT and early AI technologies from Google, there was really no reason to optimize for keywords. For the past several years, Google was expanding searches to many variations of keywords, thinking they know better what the searcher is asking, matching to resemblance words, and showing content that may not have those words on pages. It used to be simple where keywords had to match content on the page and title tag, but that hasn't been the case for years. Now with query fan-out in AI mode, Google expands your query into multiple avenues. Instead of keywords, take a customer-centric approach: what are customers asking you? Look at phone records and customer service calls. Build content, videos, or tools that solve those questions.

   
   

5. Content quality means solving the customer's question in the format they want, not hitting keyword targets or metric benchmarks like bounce rate or page speed. When Barry writes content, it's something new people want information about, something broken, or something the community is interested in. It's about why am I writing this content and is it on target, not about keywords. It might be a one-word answer, a paragraph, or a whole book depending on what you're trying to answer. How does the customer want to read this answer? Is it a video, images, bullet points? Content quality is not about some tool saying this is high quality. It's about solving the customer's question. High bounce rate or slow page speed means absolutely nothing for quality. The person might have gotten their answer and left after five seconds, which solved their customer experience. Or they might click more links to get details to decide which product they need. It's not as simple as metrics on the page. It depends on the query, the customer, the content. Barry's pieces are usually a couple paragraphs max, and people trust him without long content. Medical papers might need to be long for citations, but it depends on the reader and audience.

You can find Barry Schwartz at SearchEngineRoundtable.com where his newsletter is free (there's a big subscribe box on the top right). He doesn't make much money off it. You'll get a lot of different sources and thoughts daily. Barry is on basically every social platform except TikTok (he doesn't do TikTok dancing) under the nickname Rusty Brick. His services aren't really SEO, they're custom software. If you need web or mobile software development services to make your business more efficient, that's what Rusty Brick does. You can connect with Barry on X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Blue Sky, and Mastodon, all under the same handle: Rusty Brick. Barry publishes over 100 different things daily from different SEOs and publications. If you want to see what he reads every day, subscribe to his newsletter. There are tons of people he follows and sources from, not just a top five. His advice to SEOs and business owners: continue to create great content or have customers build great content, think about branding and agentic experiences, and whatever traffic you get now or in the future, make sure you have call-to-actions to capture people's information (email addresses, text numbers) so you can reach out to them when traffic goes away and you're diversified enough to build that relationship going forward.