This week, a client forwarded me a dramatically worded sales pitch they’d received about AI. And SEO. And how everything we knew was just “blown up”.

I could go on about my disdain for dramatic sales pitches disguised as service or how much I loathe “______ is dead” social posts, but I’m going to spare you all that. If you read my emails most weeks, you probably are with me there anyway.

I rarely go into marketing or AI specifics here, but I always want my clients and subscribers to feel like they are keeping up or at least not falling behind. So this edition is dedicated to giving you a little insight you can use with your teams if you happen to be involved in marketing for your company.

So what happened? Two things.

1. This week, ChatGPT users started seeing a new option to download a Chrome extension that would then default any searches to go through ChatGPT vs. Google. It looked like this for me:

2. Whether using the extension or not, ChatGPT started testing a roll out of map results for searches that it makes sense for. Like “Reputable electricians near me”

So is Google search (and Ads) as we know it dead? (I hate that I wrote that.)

No - search is fragmenting, not disappearing. Expect a dual-channel world where Google and AI agents coexist for at least the next 24 months.

AI is using the sources we should already be investing in - see my loom about this here.

Watch the Loom

Things to know (co-authored with ChatGPT)

Early AEO (AI Experience Optimization) is a competitive edge.

It’s estimated that 80% of what LLMs will likely use is based on existing SEO tactics - structured data, good content, being in local listings and maps (not just Google). Checking on these and ensuring you are generating LLM-friendly content will position you to capture share as the shifts happen.

– Brands with clean schema, authoritative content, and consistent local data will influence answer boxes and map pilots.

– Laggards risk losing “recommendation real estate” even if they still rank in Google.

– Think “Answer Share.” Add a quarterly KPI: % of priority queries in ChatGPT that cite or display our assets. Manual today, but priceless for spotting gaps.

– Structured data is now table stakes. Budget developer hours soon to harden or add JSON-LD across all high-value pages before the next model refresh.

Things to not do

• Panic

• Stop Ads

  • instead start monitoring for impact (see Things to do)

  • ring-fence 10% of search spend for experimentation in conversational ad formats

  • consider testing similar campaigns in Bing for both investment diversity and data insights

Things to do

• Check on your SEO strategy and effectiveness

• Add structured data to your site asap if you haven’t already

• Have your team set up reporting in Analytics to monitor traffic from referral sources - in most cases, chatGPT is adding
  “?utm_source=chatgpt.com” to the links in their results. Similarly, I was able to see one of my clients was getting Perplexity traffic as well.

Are you ahead of the game already? Any other tips you would share? Want a little help thinking it through for your company? Just email us back!

Until next week,

Rebecca and the Advisory 9 team