_{Day 96/100}

Hey - It's Tim.

I'm typing this with a triple-shot espresso in one hand and Google’s latest “AI Overview” dumpster-fire screenshots in the other.

Spoiler alert: SEO died again this week. (Pour one out. Again.)

For the eleventh time in my career “SEO is dead.”
This time the killer left fingerprints: AI Overviews and AI Mode.

The story of how Google killed SEO

Below is the full autopsy report.
No pay-wall.
No PDF.

You get everything right here because if Google’s going to summarise my stuff for free, I might as well beat them to it.

Long Boi Alert

Pick your poison - This is nearly 2,600 words long:

1. “Ctrl + F a snack, this one’s a roast dinner.”

2. “This scroll-bar is about to get a gym membership.”

3. “Hope your mouse wheel’s insured.”

4. “If length were a ranking factor, this would be #1.”

How we got here (90-second history)

What exactly is an AI Overview?

Picture a featured snippet that swallowed four blogs, a YouTube clip, Mayo Clinic, and your uncle’s Reddit post - then spit out a chatty paragraph with citations. That’s an AIO. It often sits above every organic result, sometimes above ads, and on mobile it hogs the whole first viewport.

• Citations: 94 % of AIOs pull at least one link from the top-10 organic results, but 52 % also quote URLs outside the top 50. Trust is queen, rank is a hand-maiden.

• Google self-love: 29 % of citations point back to Google properties (Maps, YouTube, Google Store). Coincidence? Sure.

• Monetisation: Ads now slip inside the answer flow; Search ad revenue actually rose 12 % YoY after rollout.

Who I listen to, and what I’m looking at

There is a lot of hype when Google changes things up.

Always has been.
Always will be.

I’ve learnt the hard way not to follow “guru’s”. And to wait a little bit to let the dust settle.

There are only a few people I check in with to see what their thoughts are because, well.

They are much smarter than me. And have proven to be right over and over again.
Because they run the numbers.

I’ll put all the links to the reports below. Here are the summaries and numbers to care about.

Kevin Indig’s heat-map smack-in-the-face

Kevin and Eric ran the first UX study with real users:

• Median user scrolls 30 % of the AIO then bails. If your brand isn’t in the first third, you’re toast.

• Desktop organic CTR drops from 28 % ➜ 7.4 %. Mobile: 38 % ➜ 19 %.

• Two-step click logic: Trust → Relevance. Users scan for a brand they recognise, then decide if the snippet seems helpful. 58 % clicked the familiar name first.

• Reddit, YouTube and forums hoover up the escape clicks - community wins when the answer feels sterile.

Lily Ray’s reality check

Lily cornered Googlers at the NYC Search Central Meetup:

• Everyone begged for AIO data in Search Console. Google said “not on the roadmap.”

• Google claims AIO “sends more clicks to a wider set of sites.” Independent data says clicks drop a third. Mmm-kay.

• Lily’s personal favourite: an AIO mistook her for her dog, declaring “Lily Ray is 9 years old and not a dog.” Perfectly accurate, zero helpful.

Takeaway: reputation + clarity on-page matter more than ever, because AI will remix you.

Ahrefs crunches 300 k keywords

Ryan Law & Beiji Guan compared March ’24 vs March ’25:

• Average CTR for the top organic result -34.5 % with an AIO present.

• 99 % of AIO queries were informational. E-com money terms are mostly safe - for now.

• Google Store appeared in 12 % of all AIOs, more than Samsung + Apple + Amazon combined.

Big G is looking out for #1; you should too.

And now, a rapid-fire roundup from SEO’s brightest (and spiciest)

Kevin, Lily, and Ahrefs gave us the big picture, but my research was 42 pages. Here’s the other good stuff.

Glenn Gabe’s data dump:

• Glenn tracked 20 sites closely. The findings? A massive swing between winners and losers. Health, finance, and travel took the hardest hits (no surprises there).

• Quote of the day: “Forget ranking number one. If you’re not in the AIO, you might as well be ranking on page three.”

Dr. Marie Haynes’ EEAT clinic:

• Marie flagged “Expertise” signals as the #1 lever to boost your chances in AI Overviews. AIO loves deep bios, expert references, credentials, and authoritative tone.

• Top tip: Build author schema into your content template yesterday. Your About page might finally have its day in the sun.

Aleyda Solis’ international SOS:

• Aleyda points out AI Mode is rolling out globally, fast. Spanish and German SERPs have started seeing massive shifts, even on transactional queries.

• She warns international sites: “Watch your CTR metrics obsessively - local search visibility just went from predictable to chaos.”

Cyrus Shepard’s test kitchen:

• Cyrus A/B tested hundreds of snippets. Takeaway: AI loves straightforward, skimmable answers. The fancy narrative intros that won Featured Snippets? Those are toast.

• Key finding: Format your answers as “this, then that” bullets. “Google’s AI still prefers spoon-fed clarity,” says Cyrus.

Mordy Oberstein’s volatility index:

• Mordy measured volatility across 10,000 keywords. His verdict? “It’s the wild west out there.” Keywords are seeing unprecedented churn. Stable rankings are rare commodities.

• Practical tip: Now’s the time for aggressive keyword pruning. Invest in your absolute best opportunities, because playing SEO Whac-a-mole just got expensive.

Rand Fishkin’s pessimism-as-a-service:

• Rand sees Google’s moves as pure revenue plays. “They want more on-SERP interactions, fewer outbound clicks. It’s that simple.”

• His prediction? Expect Google to progressively “starve organic,” pushing users into an ad-heavy, AI-powered experience.

• He doubles down on brand-building: “Your best SEO is building a brand users type directly into the search bar.”

Britney Muller’s AI optimism (thank god):

• Britney reminds us “Google’s LLM is imperfect - it’ll always need high-quality human sources.” Now’s the time to master prompt-engineering your content for inclusion.

• Her hack: Experiment with exact-match question headers and tight answers. She calls it “feeding the beast with a silver spoon.”

Google’s AI Mode: The Big Invisible Elephant in the Room

SEO has always been part data science, part detective work.
You chase keywords, you track clicks, and when Google yanks away your data, it feels like someone flipped off your headlights on a mountain road.

Enter Google’s new AI Mode: a conversational-style AI search interface, just launched publicly, and immediately branded "the definition of theft" by angry publishers everywhere.

Here’s the storm we’re entering:

First, the Big Problem: AI Mode Traffic is Invisible

Search Engine Land dropped a bombshell: Google's shiny new AI Mode isn't passing referral data.

Zero.
Zip.
Nada.

That means all those valuable clicks your site gets through AI Mode?

• They’re invisible in Google Analytics.

• They don’t show up in Google Search Console.

• They get lumped into the murky, maddening abyss of "Direct" or "Unknown" traffic.

Google says it’s a bug.. lololololol

Tom Critchlow, EVP at Raptive, sounded the alarm first on LinkedIn. Ahrefs’ Patrick Stox confirmed the nightmare with cold, technical precision:

• AI Mode clicks? Not tracked in Google Search Console.

• Visits? Tagged as "Direct."

• Links from AI Mode have a sneaky noreferrer attribute, obliterating any attribution clarity.

Basically, Google just resurrected the ghost of “Not Provided” and dressed it in AI clothing - Lily Ray even dubbed it “Not Provided 2.0.” Her theory: Google purposely obscures these numbers because transparent data would shatter their claim that "AI Overviews drive more traffic to more sites than ever."

When Google’s own John Mueller was asked if this would change, his reply was classic Google-speak:

Translation: Don't hold your breath.

But Wait, It Gets Worse: Publishers Call AI Mode "Theft"

Remember when Featured Snippets felt borderline unfair? Well, AI Mode takes it to another level. Google doesn’t just borrow snippets - it outright summarizes entire pages into chat-style paragraphs, often giving users no reason to click through to your meticulously crafted content.

The News/Media Alliance - the heavy-hitter trade group repping major publishers like The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Washington Post - declared AI Mode outright theft, saying:

At Google’s recent I/O event, AI Mode went public and full-throttle. Users now click an "AI Mode" tab atop search pages and interact with a GPT-like interface, entirely bypassing traditional search results.

No more blue links.
No more clicks.

And the outrage isn’t theoretical: legal docs leaked by Bloomberg revealed Google actively discussed - and dismissed - giving publishers control over their inclusion in AI-generated results.

Google called opting out of AI Mode a "hard red line," implying it was never seriously on the table. Publishers now have a grim choice: appear in AI Mode (giving away their content free) or vanish entirely from search results.

9to5Google’s take sums it up nicely:

Google insists that publishers still have "control" - but their definition of control means opting out of snippets entirely, effectively nuking your site's visibility in search altogether. Not exactly a winning choice.

So, What's Google's Official Line?

Google’s latest communication is a masterclass in vagueness: their blog suggests publishers should "stop focusing too much on clicks" and instead look at "overall value." Translation? They don’t plan to give clear data anytime soon, and your SEO reports just became guesswork again.

For marketers, that leaves two harsh realities:

• Analytics darkness: You'll have to infer AI Mode traffic indirectly - tracking mysterious bumps in "Direct" or "Unknown" sources.

• SEO guessing game: Without direct attribution, you'll have to track proxy metrics like branded searches, session duration, and secondary clicks.

The bottom line: Google built a powerful, user-friendly, revenue-generating AI interface, and publishers are footing the bill. We’ve shifted from clear data and attributable traffic to vague promises and untrackable visibility.

Google’s AI Mode is the iceberg hitting SEO’s Titanic - your choices are adapt, diversify, or drown.

OK Tim, what do we do?

1. Build obnoxious trust signals

Author bios with credentials, schema everywhere, expert quotes, .gov/.edu backlinks. Be the brand users recognise in that grey box.

2 Front-load answers for skimmers

First 50 words of every explainer should satisfy a sleepy goldfish - that’s the chunk the AI is most likely to lift.

3. Track Visibility, Not Just Clicks

Traffic data from AI Mode is invisible, lumped under "Direct."
Create new metrics around visibility: monitor branded searches, track "AIO citations," and aggressively tag links to spot hidden AI-driven visits. Your analytics now need detective-level skills.

4. Become AI-Unsummarizable

Produce interactive tools, original research, sharp POV pieces, multimedia experiences, and hyper-specific first-hand content.
If Google's AI can effortlessly summarise your page, it's obsolete overnight.
Make content so good (or so unique) that Google needs to cite you.

5. Aggressively Diversify Your Traffic

Relying solely on Google for visitors just became riskier than ever.
Build email lists, grow a YouTube channel, podcast, social platforms - anywhere you control the audience directly.
Your survival strategy is owning an audience that comes looking for you, rather than hoping Google decides to send traffic your way.

The epilogue nobody asked for

Google hasn’t killed SEO; it’s killed comfortable SEO.

If your strategy is “write 2 000 words and collect adSense,” yeah, R.I.P.

If your strategy is “become the most trusted, opinionated, multimedia answer on the internet,” congratulations - you’re already ahead of 90 % of marketers staring at their vanishing click reports.

We’re not optimising titles; we’re defending attention.

Game on.

✌️ Tim "SEO is dead, long live the SEO" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. Do you want the PDF of all the research? It’s 7,800 words long…

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