<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/02/google-search-court-1920.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Google Search court" decoding="async" fetchpriority="high" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/02/google-search-court-1920.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/02/google-search-court-1920-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/02/google-search-court-1920-1536x864.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Required search changes could affect how comparison sites, travel platforms and shopping services appear across high-value queries.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/02/google-search-court-1920.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Google Search court" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/02/google-search-court-1920.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/02/google-search-court-1920-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/02/google-search-court-1920-1536x864.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p>EU regulators are expected to rule that Google illegally favored its own shopping, travel, and other specialized services over rivals in search results.</p>



<p>The European Commission is expected to issue the decision next week under the Digital Markets Act, according to <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/c5a880f1-aa6a-4336-b499-3ab95cf37857" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the Financial Times</a> (subscription required), citing people familiar with the matter and internal Commission documents.</p>



<p><strong>Google search changes possible</strong>. The case focuses on how Google displays its own vertical services in search results compared with competing services. Google owns some of the most valuable commercial search real estate. An order requiring changes could affect visibility for comparison sites, travel platforms, shopping services, and other businesses competing for organic traffic.</p>



<p><strong>Why we care. </strong>Google&#8217;s treatment of its own services influences which businesses users see first in high-intent searches. Required changes could create new visibility opportunities in competitive commercial categories.</p>



<p><strong>Fines add pressure</strong>. The Commission is expected to fine Google hundreds of millions of euros across two DMA decisions. Google could also face daily penalties if it fails to comply with parts of the orders within 60 days.</p>



<p><strong>Search data access</strong>. The Commission is also expected to decide whether Google must give third-party search engines access to search data, including ranking, query, click, and view data. <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-elizabeth-reid-affidavit-antitrust-467838">Google argues</a> that sharing the data would threaten user privacy and exceed the Commission&#8217;s authority.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>The Commission is also considering whether Google must give third-party AI providers access to the same features available to Gemini.</li>
</ul>


EU regulators are expected to rule that Google illegally favored its own shopping, travel, and other specialized services over rivals in search results.
The European Commission is expected to issue the decision next week under the Digital Markets Act, according to the Financial Times (subscription required), citing people familiar with the matter and internal Commission documents.
Google search changes possible. The case focuses on how Google displays its own vertical services in search results compared with competing services. Google owns some of the most valuable commercial search real estate. An order requiring changes could affect visibility for comparison sites, travel platforms, shopping services, and other businesses competing for organic traffic.
Why we care. Google’s treatment of its own services influences which businesses users see first in high-intent searches. Required changes could create new visibility opportunities in competitive commercial categories.
Fines add pressure. The Commission is expected to fine Google hundreds of millions of euros across two DMA decisions. Google could also face daily penalties if it fails to comply with parts of the orders within 60 days.
Search data access. The Commission is also expected to decide whether Google must give third-party search engines access to search data, including ranking, query, click, and view data. Google argues that sharing the data would threaten user privacy and exceed the Commission’s authority.
The Commission is also considering whether Google must give third-party AI providers access to the same features available to Gemini.

Required search changes could affect how comparison sites, travel platforms and shopping services appear across high-value queries.

EU expected to rule Google favored its own services in search

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-ads.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Google AI Mode ads" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-ads.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-ads-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-ads-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-ads-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>High CPC searches were far likelier to show AI text ads, while paid placements rarely boosted citations or organic rankings.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-ads.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Google AI Mode ads" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-ads.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-ads-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-ads-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-ads-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p>Google’s AI Mode showed text ads on 29.45% of commercial queries in a new SE Ranking study, less than a year after ads began appearing in AI-generated search answers.</p>



<p>Ads appeared on 14,733 queries in the study, which analyzed U.S. commercial searches where text ads could appear, excluding product carousels.</p>



<p><strong>AI Mode ad adoption accelerated</strong>.<strong> </strong>SE Ranking said ads began appearing in AI Mode responses in late 2025. By mid-2026, nearly one in three commercial queries in its data set showed a text ad. SE Ranking said the real ad rate may be higher because AI Mode results are inconsistent across sessions.</p>



<p><strong>Two advertisers often appeared together</strong>. Most AI Mode ad blocks included more than one advertiser. SE Ranking found that 71.1% of ad-triggering queries showed two ads in the same AI Mode response, while 28.9% showed only one.</p>



<p><strong>CPC best predicted ad visibility.</strong> Higher-cost keywords were much more likely to trigger AI Mode ads.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Ad presence was 24.33% for keywords with CPCs below $2. </li>



<li>It rose to 32.45% for keywords between $2 and $10, then jumped to 53.56% for keywords at $10 or more.</li>



<li>SE Ranking said search volume and keyword difficulty did not show the same relationship with ad frequency.</li>
</ul>



<p><strong>Ad presence varied across categories</strong>. Pets had the highest rate, with ads appearing on 72.38% of analyzed keywords. Healthcare had the lowest, at 2.64%.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Higher-ad categories were typically lead-generation markets with clear paths to paid conversions. </li>



<li>Lower-ad categories were more likely to involve informational or YMYL intent, where commercial demand may be lower or Google may be more cautious.</li>
</ul>



<p><strong>Advertisers were rarely cited</strong>. Buying an AI Mode ad didn&#8217;t make advertisers more likely to be cited as a source in the same response. Only 11.53% of advertiser domains appeared among the cited sources for the keywords they advertised on. At the URL level, overlap fell to 1.95%.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>This held true even after comparing advertisers with similar non-advertising domains based on domain strength, backlinks, referring domains, and organic visibility, SE Ranking said.</li>
</ul>



<p><strong>Organic overlap was limited.</strong> Advertisers also rarely ranked organically for the same keywords. Only 2.32% of advertised URLs ranked organically for the queries where their ads appeared. At the domain level, overlap increased to 15.35%.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>About 85% of advertisers didn&#8217;t appear in organic results for the same keywords where they showed AI Mode ads, according to the study.</li>
</ul>



<p><strong>Why we care.</strong> Buying visibility in AI Mode doesn&#8217;t increase your chances of being cited or ranking organically. Treat AI Mode ads, cited sources, and organic rankings as separate visibility channels.</p>



<p><strong>About the data. </strong>SE Ranking analyzed 50,032 commercial keywords across 20 niches, averaging about 2,500 keywords per niche. The data reflects U.S. AI Mode results collected on June 30. SE Ranking noted that ad behavior may change as Google expands AI-specific formats.</p>



<p><strong>The study. </strong><a href="https://seranking.com/blog/google-ai-mode-ads/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">AI Mode now shows ads on nearly 1 in 3 commercial queries</a>


Google’s AI Mode showed text ads on 29.45% of commercial queries in a new SE Ranking study, less than a year after ads began appearing in AI-generated search answers.
Ads appeared on 14,733 queries in the study, which analyzed U.S. commercial searches where text ads could appear, excluding product carousels.
AI Mode ad adoption accelerated. SE Ranking said ads began appearing in AI Mode responses in late 2025. By mid-2026, nearly one in three commercial queries in its data set showed a text ad. SE Ranking said the real ad rate may be higher because AI Mode results are inconsistent across sessions.
Two advertisers often appeared together. Most AI Mode ad blocks included more than one advertiser. SE Ranking found that 71.1% of ad-triggering queries showed two ads in the same AI Mode response, while 28.9% showed only one.
CPC best predicted ad visibility. Higher-cost keywords were much more likely to trigger AI Mode ads.
Ad presence was 24.33% for keywords with CPCs below $2. 
It rose to 32.45% for keywords between $2 and $10, then jumped to 53.56% for keywords at $10 or more.
SE Ranking said search volume and keyword difficulty did not show the same relationship with ad frequency.
Ad presence varied across categories. Pets had the highest rate, with ads appearing on 72.38% of analyzed keywords. Healthcare had the lowest, at 2.64%.
Higher-ad categories were typically lead-generation markets with clear paths to paid conversions. 
Lower-ad categories were more likely to involve informational or YMYL intent, where commercial demand may be lower or Google may be more cautious.
Advertisers were rarely cited. Buying an AI Mode ad didn’t make advertisers more likely to be cited as a source in the same response. Only 11.53% of advertiser domains appeared among the cited sources for the keywords they advertised on. At the URL level, overlap fell to 1.95%.
This held true even after comparing advertisers with similar non-advertising domains based on domain strength, backlinks, referring domains, and organic visibility, SE Ranking said.
Organic overlap was limited. Advertisers also rarely ranked organically for the same keywords. Only 2.32% of advertised URLs ranked organically for the queries where their ads appeared. At the domain level, overlap increased to 15.35%.
About 85% of advertisers didn’t appear in organic results for the same keywords where they showed AI Mode ads, according to the study.
Why we care. Buying visibility in AI Mode doesn’t increase your chances of being cited or ranking organically. Treat AI Mode ads, cited sources, and organic rankings as separate visibility channels.
About the data. SE Ranking analyzed 50,032 commercial keywords across 20 niches, averaging about 2,500 keywords per niche. The data reflects U.S. AI Mode results collected on June 30. SE Ranking noted that ad behavior may change as Google expands AI-specific formats.
The study. AI Mode now shows ads on nearly 1 in 3 commercial queries

High CPC searches were far likelier to show AI text ads, while paid placements rarely boosted citations or organic rankings.

Google AI Mode ads reach nearly 30% of queries: Study

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/04/6-mistakes-that-hurt-ecommerce-campaigns-on-Google-Ads.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="6 mistakes that hurt ecommerce campaigns on Google Ads" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/04/6-mistakes-that-hurt-ecommerce-campaigns-on-Google-Ads.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/04/6-mistakes-that-hurt-ecommerce-campaigns-on-Google-Ads-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/04/6-mistakes-that-hurt-ecommerce-campaigns-on-Google-Ads-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/04/6-mistakes-that-hurt-ecommerce-campaigns-on-Google-Ads-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Google is testing new PMax controls that let advertisers control ads showing on Search Partners and the Google Display Network.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/04/6-mistakes-that-hurt-ecommerce-campaigns-on-Google-Ads.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="6 mistakes that hurt ecommerce campaigns on Google Ads" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/04/6-mistakes-that-hurt-ecommerce-campaigns-on-Google-Ads.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/04/6-mistakes-that-hurt-ecommerce-campaigns-on-Google-Ads-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/04/6-mistakes-that-hurt-ecommerce-campaigns-on-Google-Ads-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/04/6-mistakes-that-hurt-ecommerce-campaigns-on-Google-Ads-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p>Google is testing a new Partners (Alpha) setting in Performance Max that gives advertisers the ability to opt in or out of Search Partners and the Google Display Network—a level of control that hasn&#8217;t previously existed in the automated campaign type.</p>



<p><strong>What&#8217;s happening</strong>. Some advertisers are seeing a new Partners (Alpha) setting within Performance Max campaigns that lets them choose whether to include:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Search Partners</strong></li>



<li><strong>Google Display Network (GDN)</strong></li>
</ul>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="800" height="479" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pmax-Partner-Setting.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-482470" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pmax-Partner-Setting.jpeg 800w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pmax-Partner-Setting-768x460.jpeg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" /></figure>



<p>Until now, both networks were automatically included in Performance Max with no option to exclude them.</p>



<p><strong>Why we care</strong>. The update gives advertisers greater control over where Performance Max ads appear, making it easier to align inventory with campaign objectives. Those focused on efficiency metrics such as ROAS or CPA can now test whether excluding certain networks improves performance.</p>



<p><strong>What we&#8217;re watching</strong>. The feature is currently labelled Alpha, indicating it is only available to a limited number of advertisers. Google has not announced when—or if—it plans to roll the setting out more broadly.</p>



<p><strong>The bottom line</strong>. Google&#8217;s new Partners (Alpha) setting could give Performance Max advertisers one of their most requested controls: the ability to decide whether campaigns run across Search Partners and the Display Network, rather than relying entirely on Google&#8217;s automation.</p>



<p><strong>Spotted</strong>. This update was spotted by PPC Growth Strategist Saquib Syed, who shared spotting it on LinkedIn. </p>


Google is testing a new Partners (Alpha) setting in Performance Max that gives advertisers the ability to opt in or out of Search Partners and the Google Display Network—a level of control that hasn’t previously existed in the automated campaign type.
What’s happening. Some advertisers are seeing a new Partners (Alpha) setting within Performance Max campaigns that lets them choose whether to include:
Search Partners
Google Display Network (GDN)




Until now, both networks were automatically included in Performance Max with no option to exclude them.
Why we care. The update gives advertisers greater control over where Performance Max ads appear, making it easier to align inventory with campaign objectives. Those focused on efficiency metrics such as ROAS or CPA can now test whether excluding certain networks improves performance.
What we’re watching. The feature is currently labelled Alpha, indicating it is only available to a limited number of advertisers. Google has not announced when—or if—it plans to roll the setting out more broadly.
The bottom line. Google’s new Partners (Alpha) setting could give Performance Max advertisers one of their most requested controls: the ability to decide whether campaigns run across Search Partners and the Display Network, rather than relying entirely on Google’s automation.
Spotted. This update was spotted by PPC Growth Strategist Saquib Syed, who shared spotting it on LinkedIn.

Google is testing new PMax controls that let advertisers control ads showing on Search Partners and the Google Display Network.

Google tests Performance Max network controls with new Partners (Alpha) setting

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Google AI Mode cites Google" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Google-owned business and product cards are taking a bigger role in AI Mode, especially for local and shopping searches.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Google AI Mode cites Google" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-ai-mode-cites-itself-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p>Google’s AI Mode increased citations to google.com by 8.4x in about two months, making it the No. 2 cited domain in Profound’s tracking.</p>



<p>The increase came almost entirely from Google Business Profiles and Product Knowledge Panels, according to Profound. Those Google-hosted cards now appear within AI Mode answers for many local and product searches.</p>



<p><strong>Google cards moved up. </strong>AI Mode now surfaces Google Business Profiles as inline panels for local-intent queries.</p>



<p>These panels can display a business’s hours, photos, location, and reviews before users reach the company’s website. Profound said the shift makes the Google-hosted profile the first page many users see.</p>



<p><strong>Local categories led. </strong>The change was strongest in industries where local intent drives revenue, including:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Hospitality and travel</li>



<li>Home services</li>



<li>Restaurants and dining</li>



<li>Real estate</li>



<li>Healthcare</li>
</ul>



<p id="h-product-panels-gained-ground"><strong>Product panels gained ground</strong>. Product searches also shifted toward Google-hosted results. Queries about comparisons, compatibility, or specifications increasingly surfaced Product Knowledge Panels instead of direct links to ecommerce or brand websites, Profound said.</p>



<p id="h-product-panels-gained-ground"><strong>Why we care. </strong>Your Google-hosted profile may shape a user’s first impression before they ever reach your website. Missing hours, outdated photos, incomplete information, or poor reviews can cost you the click before users visit your site.</p>



<p id="h-product-panels-gained-ground"><strong>About the data. </strong>Profound tracked AI Mode citation share from April 15 through June 30, analyzing more than 32 million google.com/searchviewer instances.</p>



<p><strong>The report. </strong><a href="https://www.tryprofound.com/blog/google-com-is-now-ai-mode-s-2-cited-domain">Google AI Mode&#8217;s shift to citing itself</a>


Google’s AI Mode increased citations to google.com by 8.4x in about two months, making it the No. 2 cited domain in Profound’s tracking.
The increase came almost entirely from Google Business Profiles and Product Knowledge Panels, according to Profound. Those Google-hosted cards now appear within AI Mode answers for many local and product searches.
Google cards moved up. AI Mode now surfaces Google Business Profiles as inline panels for local-intent queries.
These panels can display a business’s hours, photos, location, and reviews before users reach the company’s website. Profound said the shift makes the Google-hosted profile the first page many users see.
Local categories led. The change was strongest in industries where local intent drives revenue, including:
Hospitality and travel
Home services
Restaurants and dining
Real estate
Healthcare
Product panels gained ground. Product searches also shifted toward Google-hosted results. Queries about comparisons, compatibility, or specifications increasingly surfaced Product Knowledge Panels instead of direct links to ecommerce or brand websites, Profound said.
Why we care. Your Google-hosted profile may shape a user’s first impression before they ever reach your website. Missing hours, outdated photos, incomplete information, or poor reviews can cost you the click before users visit your site.
About the data. Profound tracked AI Mode citation share from April 15 through June 30, analyzing more than 32 million google.com/searchviewer instances.
The report. Google AI Mode’s shift to citing itself

Google-owned business and product cards are taking a bigger role in AI Mode, especially for local and shopping searches.

Google is AI Mode’s No. 2 most-cited domain: Report

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Where-AI-agents-get-stuck-on-your-site-featured-image.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Where AI agents get stuck on your site" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Where-AI-agents-get-stuck-on-your-site-featured-image.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Where-AI-agents-get-stuck-on-your-site-featured-image-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Where-AI-agents-get-stuck-on-your-site-featured-image-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Where-AI-agents-get-stuck-on-your-site-featured-image-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>AI agents retrieve most B2B website content, but pricing often sends them to third-party sources. Learn why and how to fix it.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Where-AI-agents-get-stuck-on-your-site-featured-image.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Where AI agents get stuck on your site" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Where-AI-agents-get-stuck-on-your-site-featured-image.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Where-AI-agents-get-stuck-on-your-site-featured-image-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Where-AI-agents-get-stuck-on-your-site-featured-image-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Where-AI-agents-get-stuck-on-your-site-featured-image-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p>The next mass frontier of AI is agentic:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Google introduced agentic tasks in Search.</li>



<li>The <a href="https://radar.cloudflare.com/traffic#bot-vs-human" target="_blank" rel="noopener">web gets more visits from bots than humans</a> now.</li>



<li>Salesforce found 20% of sales coming from agents marks a signpost.</li>



<li>60% of companies use agents live in production, and <a href="https://learn.g2.com/g2-2025-ai-agent-insight-report" target="_blank" rel="noopener">3 out of 4 companies</a> invest in AI agents.</li>
</ul>



<p>To figure out how ready B2B sites are for agentic visitors, I teamed up with David Kaufman, founder of <a href="https://siteline.ai/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Siteline</a>, and I analyzed how agents scan websites and where they get stuck. The answer: most sites are agent-ready, but there is one critical breaking point.</p>



<p>Agents don’t read websites like humans. They receive a task, search the web, fetch pages, extract facts, and cite the sources they used. A page can persuade a human and still fail an agent if the facts are hard to find (opacity), hard to fetch (machine-readability), or hard to cite (access friction).&nbsp;</p>



<p>AI agents turn websites from showrooms into barcodes.</p>



<p>How we looked at agent behavior:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>The agent had to find the official site itself. We did not provide starting links, eg to homepages.</li>



<li>We gave agents three buyer-related tasks for 100 B2B products: find pricing/features, integrations, and security/compliance. We ran each task five times to measure the impact of the probabilistic nature of LLMs.</li>



<li>We weren’t comparing whether or not the information existed somewhere on the web; instead, we measured whether the agent could reliably answer from the vendor’s own site.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



<p><a href="https://www.growth-memo.com/embed?transparent=1" rel="noopener noreferrer">View embedded content</a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-1-pricing-breaks-first-party-sites">1. Pricing breaks first-party sites</h2>



<p>The moment a prospect looks at pricing, they stop browsing and start comparing. High buyer intent, bottom of the funnel. That makes pricing the hardest and most important test of whether a vendor site can serve agents directly.</p>



<p>Pricing also sits in a triangle of 3 “wants” that good pricing pages need to satisfy:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Companies want to control pricing disclosure.</li>



<li>Buyers want fast comparison.</li>



<li>Agents need clear, fetchable, citable facts.</li>
</ul>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2048" height="1159" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pricing-breaks-first-party-sites.png" alt="Pricing breaks first-party sites" class="wp-image-482352" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pricing-breaks-first-party-sites.png 2048w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pricing-breaks-first-party-sites-768x435.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pricing-breaks-first-party-sites-1536x869.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px" /></figure>
</div>


<p>When AI agents try to retrieve pricing, they get stuck much more than for security or integrations.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Pricing/features: 79% first-party answer rate, 84% first-party citation share.</li>



<li>Integrations: 93% and 99%.</li>



<li>Security: 92% and 99%.</li>



<li>Pricing/features produced 77% of all third-party citations.</li>
</ul>



<p>If you wonder whether that’s because some B2B companies don’t publicly show pricing, you’re only half right.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-2-hidden-pricing-is-only-part-of-it">2. Hidden pricing is only part of it</h2>



<p>Hiding prices forces agents to look elsewhere, but published prices do not fully solve the problem. Among pricing prompt runs where the vendor did not disclose a real price, 45% cited at least one third-party source. The other 55% stayed on first-party citations, usually by saying the vendor required contact sales or did not publish a concrete price.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2048" height="1159" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Hidden-pricing-is-only-part-of-it.png" alt="Hidden pricing is only part of it" class="wp-image-482353" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Hidden-pricing-is-only-part-of-it.png 2048w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Hidden-pricing-is-only-part-of-it-768x435.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Hidden-pricing-is-only-part-of-it-1536x869.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px" /></figure>
</div>


<p>Even when the vendor showed a numeric public price, agents still cited at least one third-party source in 18% of runs, suggesting price can be on the page but still be hard for the agent to extract, trust, or cite cleanly.</p>



<p>You can try to hide your pricing, but you better make sure no one else knows and writes about it. Once it’s “out there”, it’s too late. If you have complex pricing methodology, the best way is to explain it clearly and make it accessible to agents.</p>



<p>Some pricing pages are visible to humans but not reliable enough for agents to parse and cite. You can’t always trust your eyes.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-3-agents-fail-for-three-reasons">3. Agents fail for three reasons</h2>



<p>Agents fail to retrieve pricing from a brand for 3 reasons: opacity, machine-readability, and access friction.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="965" height="546" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/image-141.png" alt="" class="wp-image-482346" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/image-141.png 965w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/image-141-768x435.png 768w" sizes="(max-width: 965px) 100vw, 965px" /></figure>
</div>


<p>Example of an agent struggling to retrieve Zendesk’s pricing and pivoting to third-party sources.</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Pricing opacity </strong>simply means the brand doesn’t publicly disclose the price, or it’s vaguely packaged. Opacity explains elevated fallback, meaning agents have to rely on third parties for information.</li>



<li><strong>Machine-readability</strong> describes the situation when prices exist, but agents still do not confidently extract them. Machine-readability explains fallback despite disclosed pricing. Machine-readability fails when the price is hard to extract because of page structure, JavaScript, calculators, toggles, screenshots, PDFs, or ambiguous tables.</li>



<li><strong>Access friction</strong> is what most people expect to be the problem with agents.&nbsp;The agent hits fetch failures, rate limits, blocking, or unreachable pages, making agent runs more costly.</li>
</ul>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2048" height="1159" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Agents-miss-pricing-at-three-gates.png" alt="Agents miss pricing at three gates" class="wp-image-482355" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Agents-miss-pricing-at-three-gates.png 2048w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Agents-miss-pricing-at-three-gates-768x435.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Agents-miss-pricing-at-three-gates-1536x869.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px" /></figure>
</div>


<p>Access errors were not the main reason agents left first-party sources, but when they happened, they were severe. They appeared in only 7% of all runs. In pricing runs, access errors pushed third-party fallback to 77%, compared to 17% without access errors.</p>



<p>The impact of errors on agent run cost (tokens, web searches, fetches, retrieves, time) is significant when comparing the 90th with the 10th percentile in our study:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Cost:</strong> 4.4x</li>



<li><strong>Token:</strong> 4.7x</li>



<li><strong>Time:</strong> 2.0x</li>
</ul>



<p>Brands don’t pay that bill directly, but it is a useful proxy for friction. The harder your site is to retrieve, the more work an agent has to do before it can answer from your page. If your pricing page is blocked, slow, hard to fetch, or hard to parse, the agent has two choices: spend more work on your site… or get the answer somewhere else.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-4-the-fallback-web-is-messy">4. The fallback web is messy</h2>



<p>Fallback occurs when agents have to rely on third-party sources rather than first-party sources as a result of the three failure modes. This is the biggest risk because third-party information is spotty and beyond your control.</p>



<p>Agents do not fall back to one clean source category. They reconstruct pricing from a mixed web of explainers, directories, app stores, partner pages, and low-trust aggregators.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2048" height="1159" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pricing-fallback-is-not-one-source.png" alt="Pricing fallback is not one source" class="wp-image-482356" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pricing-fallback-is-not-one-source.png 2048w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pricing-fallback-is-not-one-source-768x435.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Pricing-fallback-is-not-one-source-1536x869.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px" /></figure>
</div>


<p>Key stats from the 580 pricing third-party citations:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>52% were editorial</strong> (blogs, media articles, comparison guides, explainers, and other article-style pages).</li>



<li><strong>46% fell into the directory category</strong> (review, procurement, and software-listing sites such as G2, Capterra, Vendr, Tekpon, and similar domains).</li>



<li><strong>2% from broader ecosystem pages</strong> (app stores, marketplaces, partner pages, and integration directories tied to another platform).</li>
</ul>



<p>The examples show the risk of missing pricing transparency and agent stumbling blocks on your site.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2048" height="1213" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/image-143.png" alt="" class="wp-image-482348" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/image-143.png 2048w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/image-143-768x455.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/image-143-1536x910.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px" /></figure>
</div>


<p>Example journey:</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2048" height="1213" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Example-journey.png" alt="Example journey" class="wp-image-482359" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Example-journey.png 2048w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Example-journey-768x455.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Example-journey-1536x910.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px" /></figure>
</div>


<p>Here, failure mode indicates the reason the agent failed to obtain on-site / first-party pricing information.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-5-how-to-make-your-site-agent-proof">5. How to make your site agent-proof</h2>



<p>An agent-proof pricing page is how you keep the agent quoting you instead of a directory like Vendr. The fixes map to the three failure modes.</p>



<p><strong>Disclose the fact (opacity)</strong>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Publish real prices in text for every self-serve tier. If a tier is genuinely custom, say what drives the number instead of &#8220;contact sales.&#8221;</li>



<li>Keep plan names, prices, limits, and features on one canonical pricing URL, and point every other mention back to it.</li>



<li>Mark legacy plans clearly so third-party content can&#8217;t keep stale tiers alive.</li>
</ul>



<p><strong>Make the fact extractable (machine-readability)</strong>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Put prices in crawlable HTML. Many agent fetches never run JavaScript, so a price rendered client-side is invisible. In testing, prices in server HTML got read in under a second; a JavaScript-only price got missed.</li>



<li>Add schema.org Product and Offer markup with price and priceCurrency. This single lever moved a page from 73 to 93 in the readiness test.</li>



<li>Explain usage-based pricing in text, not a calculator-only widget.</li>
</ul>



<p><strong>Let the agent in (access friction)</strong>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Allow AI crawlers in robots.txt (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended). Check you aren&#8217;t allowing Googlebot while blocking them.</li>



<li>Don&#8217;t block server-side AI fetches on pricing pages. Access errors hit only 7% of runs, but they push fallback from 17% to 77% when they do.</li>



<li>Keep the price early in the DOM and the page light. A 1 MB pricing page taxes every agent and pushes cheap runs to route around you.</li>
</ul>



<p>Fix opacity and machine-readability first; they drive most of the fallback. Then run the query yourself, &#8220;Find all pricing and features for [product],” and measure it with the skill below.</p>



<p><em>This post first appeared on the author’s website and is republished here with permission.</em>


The next mass frontier of AI is agentic:
Google introduced agentic tasks in Search.
The web gets more visits from bots than humans now.
Salesforce found 20% of sales coming from agents marks a signpost.
60% of companies use agents live in production, and 3 out of 4 companies invest in AI agents.
To figure out how ready B2B sites are for agentic visitors, I teamed up with David Kaufman, founder of Siteline, and I analyzed how agents scan websites and where they get stuck. The answer: most sites are agent-ready, but there is one critical breaking point.
Agents don’t read websites like humans. They receive a task, search the web, fetch pages, extract facts, and cite the sources they used. A page can persuade a human and still fail an agent if the facts are hard to find (opacity), hard to fetch (machine-readability), or hard to cite (access friction). 
AI agents turn websites from showrooms into barcodes.
How we looked at agent behavior:
The agent had to find the official site itself. We did not provide starting links, eg to homepages.
We gave agents three buyer-related tasks for 100 B2B products: find pricing/features, integrations, and security/compliance. We ran each task five times to measure the impact of the probabilistic nature of LLMs.
We weren’t comparing whether or not the information existed somewhere on the web; instead, we measured whether the agent could reliably answer from the vendor’s own site. 
View embedded content



1. Pricing breaks first-party sites
The moment a prospect looks at pricing, they stop browsing and start comparing. High buyer intent, bottom of the funnel. That makes pricing the hardest and most important test of whether a vendor site can serve agents directly.
Pricing also sits in a triangle of 3 “wants” that good pricing pages need to satisfy:
Companies want to control pricing disclosure.
Buyers want fast comparison.
Agents need clear, fetchable, citable facts.




When AI agents try to retrieve pricing, they get stuck much more than for security or integrations.
Pricing/features: 79% first-party answer rate, 84% first-party citation share.
Integrations: 93% and 99%.
Security: 92% and 99%.
Pricing/features produced 77% of all third-party citations.
If you wonder whether that’s because some B2B companies don’t publicly show pricing, you’re only half right.
2. Hidden pricing is only part of it
Hiding prices forces agents to look elsewhere, but published prices do not fully solve the problem. Among pricing prompt runs where the vendor did not disclose a real price, 45% cited at least one third-party source. The other 55% stayed on first-party citations, usually by saying the vendor required contact sales or did not publish a concrete price.




Even when the vendor showed a numeric public price, agents still cited at least one third-party source in 18% of runs, suggesting price can be on the page but still be hard for the agent to extract, trust, or cite cleanly.
You can try to hide your pricing, but you better make sure no one else knows and writes about it. Once it’s “out there”, it’s too late. If you have complex pricing methodology, the best way is to explain it clearly and make it accessible to agents.
Some pricing pages are visible to humans but not reliable enough for agents to parse and cite. You can’t always trust your eyes.
3. Agents fail for three reasons
Agents fail to retrieve pricing from a brand for 3 reasons: opacity, machine-readability, and access friction.




Example of an agent struggling to retrieve Zendesk’s pricing and pivoting to third-party sources.
Pricing opacity simply means the brand doesn’t publicly disclose the price, or it’s vaguely packaged. Opacity explains elevated fallback, meaning agents have to rely on third parties for information.
Machine-readability describes the situation when prices exist, but agents still do not confidently extract them. Machine-readability explains fallback despite disclosed pricing. Machine-readability fails when the price is hard to extract because of page structure, JavaScript, calculators, toggles, screenshots, PDFs, or ambiguous tables.
Access friction is what most people expect to be the problem with agents. The agent hits fetch failures, rate limits, blocking, or unreachable pages, making agent runs more costly.




Access errors were not the main reason agents left first-party sources, but when they happened, they were severe. They appeared in only 7% of all runs. In pricing runs, access errors pushed third-party fallback to 77%, compared to 17% without access errors.
The impact of errors on agent run cost (tokens, web searches, fetches, retrieves, time) is significant when comparing the 90th with the 10th percentile in our study:
Cost: 4.4x
Token: 4.7x
Time: 2.0x
Brands don’t pay that bill directly, but it is a useful proxy for friction. The harder your site is to retrieve, the more work an agent has to do before it can answer from your page. If your pricing page is blocked, slow, hard to fetch, or hard to parse, the agent has two choices: spend more work on your site… or get the answer somewhere else.
4. The fallback web is messy
Fallback occurs when agents have to rely on third-party sources rather than first-party sources as a result of the three failure modes. This is the biggest risk because third-party information is spotty and beyond your control.
Agents do not fall back to one clean source category. They reconstruct pricing from a mixed web of explainers, directories, app stores, partner pages, and low-trust aggregators.




Key stats from the 580 pricing third-party citations:
52% were editorial (blogs, media articles, comparison guides, explainers, and other article-style pages).
46% fell into the directory category (review, procurement, and software-listing sites such as G2, Capterra, Vendr, Tekpon, and similar domains).
2% from broader ecosystem pages (app stores, marketplaces, partner pages, and integration directories tied to another platform).
The examples show the risk of missing pricing transparency and agent stumbling blocks on your site.




Example journey:




Here, failure mode indicates the reason the agent failed to obtain on-site / first-party pricing information.
5. How to make your site agent-proof
An agent-proof pricing page is how you keep the agent quoting you instead of a directory like Vendr. The fixes map to the three failure modes.
Disclose the fact (opacity)




Publish real prices in text for every self-serve tier. If a tier is genuinely custom, say what drives the number instead of “contact sales.”
Keep plan names, prices, limits, and features on one canonical pricing URL, and point every other mention back to it.
Mark legacy plans clearly so third-party content can’t keep stale tiers alive.
Make the fact extractable (machine-readability)




Put prices in crawlable HTML. Many agent fetches never run JavaScript, so a price rendered client-side is invisible. In testing, prices in server HTML got read in under a second; a JavaScript-only price got missed.
Add schema.org Product and Offer markup with price and priceCurrency. This single lever moved a page from 73 to 93 in the readiness test.
Explain usage-based pricing in text, not a calculator-only widget.
Let the agent in (access friction)




Allow AI crawlers in robots.txt (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended). Check you aren’t allowing Googlebot while blocking them.
Don’t block server-side AI fetches on pricing pages. Access errors hit only 7% of runs, but they push fallback from 17% to 77% when they do.
Keep the price early in the DOM and the page light. A 1 MB pricing page taxes every agent and pushes cheap runs to route around you.
Fix opacity and machine-readability first; they drive most of the fallback. Then run the query yourself, “Find all pricing and features for [product],” and measure it with the skill below.
This post first appeared on the author’s website and is republished here with permission.

AI agents retrieve most B2B website content, but pricing often sends them to third-party sources. Learn why and how to fix it.

Where AI agents get stuck on your site

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Why-CPC-inflation-starts-before-the-auction.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Why CPC inflation starts before the auction" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Why-CPC-inflation-starts-before-the-auction.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Why-CPC-inflation-starts-before-the-auction-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Why-CPC-inflation-starts-before-the-auction-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Why-CPC-inflation-starts-before-the-auction-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Rising CPCs start before the auction. Learn how brand, reach, and post-click experience shape paid search performance.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Why-CPC-inflation-starts-before-the-auction.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Why CPC inflation starts before the auction" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Why-CPC-inflation-starts-before-the-auction.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Why-CPC-inflation-starts-before-the-auction-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Why-CPC-inflation-starts-before-the-auction-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Why-CPC-inflation-starts-before-the-auction-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p>Rising CPCs aren&#8217;t just the result of more competition inside search auctions. They&#8217;re increasingly the result of what happens before anyone places a bid.</p>



<p><a href="https://searchengineland.com/guide/google-ai-overviews">AI Overviews</a>, shrinking organic click volume, and stronger brands competing for a smaller pool of commercial traffic have changed the economics of paid search. Improving bids and ad copy still matter, but the biggest opportunities now sit outside the auction itself.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-why-paid-search-keeps-getting-more-expensive">Why paid search keeps getting more expensive</h2>



<p>Paid search costs are climbing across almost every category. The cross-industry average CPC is <a href="https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-costs-keep-rising-but-conversion-rates-improved-in-2025-477927">$5.42</a>, per the latest WordStream benchmarks, more than double what it was a decade ago.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Stackmatix has Google Search <a href="https://www.stackmatix.com/blog/rising-cpc-strategies-what-to-do" target="_blank" rel="noopener">up 14-18%</a> year over year. LinkedIn is up 18 to 22%. Some accounts are seeing <a href="https://digiday.com/media-buying/cpc-pain-is-real-one-year-on-googles-ai-max-has-pushed-up-search-budgets-and-costs/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">25% inflation</a> in their primary commercial keywords.</p>



<p>For most of the last decade, organic search helped offset PPC costs. Today, AI Overviews absorb the clicks that used to keep your paid search efficient.&nbsp;</p>



<p>The <a href="https://sparktoro.com/blog/in-2026-less-than-one-third-of-google-searches-still-send-a-click/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">latest zero-click study from Sparktoro</a> shows an 8% reduction in clicks through from search engines vs. 2025, further impacting brands whose users now get information from AI summaries.&nbsp;</p>



<p><a href="https://digiday.com/marketing/digiday-research-marketers-optimize-geo-strategies-amid-the-effects-of-zero-click-search/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Digiday&#8217;s research with brand and agency professionals</a> shows 37% of respondents have already seen informational search traffic decline, which mirrors what we’re seeing across our client base, putting more pressure on navigational and transactional traffic to hold steady.</p>



<p>The number of advertisers participating in search auctions <a href="https://ppc.land/adthenas-29m-query-report-reveals-whats-actually-working-in-ai-search-ads/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">has risen 35% year over year</a> because AI creative tools have lowered the barrier to entry for new bidders. In its first year, AI Max for Search has expanded query space for advertisers willing to use it, but also concentrated competition into a narrower set of commercial queries.</p>



<p>Fewer organic clicks reaching your site means more pressure to make up the gap in paid auctions. More advertisers fighting for those auctions means higher CPCs. And the auctions that still resolve to a click are increasingly the only ones where a user has exited the AI summary and chosen to scroll past it.</p>



<p><strong><em>Dig deeper: </em></strong><a href="https://searchengineland.com/authority-ai-search-469466"><strong><em>The authority era: How AI is reshaping what ranks in search</em></strong></a>


<a href="https://www.semrush.com/analytics/traffic/paid-search?utm_campaign=ic_sel_0101ppc&#038;utm_source=searchengineland.com&#038;utm_medium=overlay&#038;onboarding=off" target="_blank">
  <div>
    
    <div>
      
      <div id="semrush-one-headline" class="headline-responsive">
        See exactly how <span>your competitors win</span>.
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        Uncover the keywords, ads, landing pages, and strategies driving your competitors&#8217; paid search success—and find your next opportunity to outperform them.
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      <span id="semrush-one-cta">Analyze your competitors</span>
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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-3-levers-that-matter-more-than-the-auction">3 levers that matter more than the auction</h2>



<p>Paid search performance in 2026 is decided across three layers. The auction itself now offers the least opportunity to improve results.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2048" height="1014" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Brand_Reach_Experience.png" alt="" class="wp-image-482383" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Brand_Reach_Experience.png 2048w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Brand_Reach_Experience-768x380.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Brand_Reach_Experience-1536x761.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px" /></figure>
</div>


<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-1-brand-upstream-of-the-click">1. Brand: Upstream of the click</h3>



<p>This layer determines whether a click is generated or absorbed before any auction begins. It&#8217;s influenced by authority signals, brand mentions, AI Overview inclusion, LLM citations, and visibility in the publications and communities AI systems use to build their answers.</p>



<p>Most CPC inflation starts here. When AI Overviews answer more queries directly, the pool of clicks available to advertisers shrinks. The auction doesn&#8217;t get cheaper as a result. It gets more expensive because the same number of advertisers compete for fewer clicks.</p>



<p>As CPCs continue to rise, the brands protecting their margins are <a href="https://searchengineland.com/beyond-google-how-to-put-a-total-search-strategy-together-453443">building visibility across multiple platforms</a>. A stronger organic presence lets them rely less on paid search while remaining visible throughout the buying journey.</p>



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			<p class="text-center mb-0"><a class="nl-terms" href="https://searchengineland.com/termsofuse" target="_blank" aria-label="opens in a new tab">See terms.</a>
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<hr class="wp-block-separator has-text-color has-cyan-bluish-gray-color has-css-opacity has-cyan-bluish-gray-background-color has-background"/>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-2-reach-at-the-click">2. Reach: At the click</h3>



<p>The auction itself is influenced by ID strategy, match types, ad copy, automation, Smart Bidding configurations, and Performance Max guardrails.</p>



<p>This is where most paid teams still focus their efforts. It&#8217;s also the layer with the least leverage left because the size and quality of the click pool are determined upstream. The work still matters, but the opportunity to improve performance here is smaller than it used to be.</p>



<p><strong>Red ocean vs. blue ocean media</strong>



<p>The paid channels where most performance teams compete are becoming red oceans: saturated auctions where advertisers bid against one another for the same shrinking pool of commercial clicks.</p>



<p>Blue oceans are channels where buyer intent already exists, but advertiser competition hasn&#8217;t yet caught up.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-table"><table><thead><tr><th><strong>Red ocean (where competition is fiercest)</strong></th><th><strong>Blue ocean (where intent exists but competition is lower)</strong></th><th><strong>Why the shift works</strong></th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Google Search non-brand commercial keywords</td><td>Microsoft Advertising (Bing), including its growing share of AI Search ad surfaces</td><td>CPCs typically 20 to 40% lower, audience skews older and higher value, much less crowded</td></tr><tr><td>Standard LinkedIn Sponsored Content</td><td>LinkedIn Thought Leader Ads (peer-to-peer format from a real profile)</td><td>Around 1.7x higher CTR than company-page ads, lower effective CPC, better fit for considered purchases</td></tr><tr><td>Meta feed ads (broad demographic targeting)</td><td>Reddit Ads, community sponsorships, niche newsletter and Substack advertising</td><td>High-intent attention in environments LLMs cite, less saturated auction dynamics, more first-party engagement</td></tr><tr><td>Performance Max and Google display</td><td>Connected TV, BVOD, podcast advertising</td><td>Premium attention at the top of the funnel, fewer competing bidders, channel measurement is maturing fast</td></tr><tr><td>Branded search defense at any cost</td><td>AI Search and early ChatGPT ad inventory</td><td>First-movers are buying tomorrow&#8217;s primary discovery surface at today&#8217;s clearance prices</td></tr></tbody></table></figure>



<p>This isn&#8217;t an argument for abandoning Google Search. It&#8217;s a reminder not to overinvest your paid budget in the most competitive auctions. Instead, start shifting some of your existing budget into testing emerging channels and compare their performance with traditional search.</p>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-3-experience-after-the-click">3. Experience: After the click</h3>



<p>The post-click experience is an essential part of media economics, but most paid teams still treat it as something to hand off to another function.</p>



<p>Every other lever in this article governs what you pay to enter the auction. Experience determines what each click is worth after you&#8217;ve paid for it, and it&#8217;s the only one of the three layers you fully control.</p>



<p>In an inflating market, post-click conversion stops being a quarterly optimization exercise and becomes your primary defense against rising acquisition costs.</p>



<p><a href="https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1752122?hl=en-GB" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Google&#8217;s Ad Rank</a> is calculated using your bid, your Quality Score, and the expected impact of assets. Landing page experience is one of the three components of Quality Score.</p>



<p>A higher Quality Score directly offsets the need to bid more aggressively. A stronger landing page can help you outrank a better-funded competitor while paying less per click.</p>



<p>That said, most expensive clicks don&#8217;t convert on the first visit, especially in B2B, where buying cycles are longer and purchases are more considered. The job of the experience layer is to convert and capture. Think first-party data, a reason to return, and an entry point into nurture and CRM.</p>



<p>The advertisers protecting their margins through this transition will stop treating media and landing pages as separate disciplines. They&#8217;ll manage them as a single P&amp;L shared across paid media, CRO, UX, content, and lead nurture.</p>



<p><strong><em>Dig deeper: </em></strong><a href="https://searchengineland.com/seo-imperative-brand-building-453277"><strong><em>The new SEO imperative: Building your brand</em></strong></a>


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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-winning-paid-search-looks-like-now">What winning paid search looks like now</h2>



<p>Paid search accounts for a smaller share of where performance is earned, and it&#8217;s becoming a more expensive channel to operate if you haven&#8217;t built brand strength around it. Much of the work that makes paid search efficient now sits in disciplines paid search teams have historically considered someone else&#8217;s job.</p>



<p>The teams that protect their margins through this transition won&#8217;t be the ones with better targeting or bidding strategies. They&#8217;ll be the ones who&#8217;ve built enough visibility and authority outside the auction to win it when it matters.</p>

Rising CPCs aren’t just the result of more competition inside search auctions. They’re increasingly the result of what happens before anyone places a bid.
AI Overviews, shrinking organic click volume, and stronger brands competing for a smaller pool of commercial traffic have changed the economics of paid search. Improving bids and ad copy still matter, but the biggest opportunities now sit outside the auction itself.
Why paid search keeps getting more expensive
Paid search costs are climbing across almost every category. The cross-industry average CPC is $5.42, per the latest WordStream benchmarks, more than double what it was a decade ago. 
Stackmatix has Google Search up 14-18% year over year. LinkedIn is up 18 to 22%. Some accounts are seeing 25% inflation in their primary commercial keywords.
For most of the last decade, organic search helped offset PPC costs. Today, AI Overviews absorb the clicks that used to keep your paid search efficient. 
The latest zero-click study from Sparktoro shows an 8% reduction in clicks through from search engines vs. 2025, further impacting brands whose users now get information from AI summaries. 
Digiday’s research with brand and agency professionals shows 37% of respondents have already seen informational search traffic decline, which mirrors what we’re seeing across our client base, putting more pressure on navigational and transactional traffic to hold steady.
The number of advertisers participating in search auctions has risen 35% year over year because AI creative tools have lowered the barrier to entry for new bidders. In its first year, AI Max for Search has expanded query space for advertisers willing to use it, but also concentrated competition into a narrower set of commercial queries.
Fewer organic clicks reaching your site means more pressure to make up the gap in paid auctions. More advertisers fighting for those auctions means higher CPCs. And the auctions that still resolve to a click are increasingly the only ones where a user has exited the AI summary and chosen to scroll past it.
Dig deeper: The authority era: How AI is reshaping what ranks in search



  
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3 levers that matter more than the auction
Paid search performance in 2026 is decided across three layers. The auction itself now offers the least opportunity to improve results.




1. Brand: Upstream of the click
This layer determines whether a click is generated or absorbed before any auction begins. It’s influenced by authority signals, brand mentions, AI Overview inclusion, LLM citations, and visibility in the publications and communities AI systems use to build their answers.
Most CPC inflation starts here. When AI Overviews answer more queries directly, the pool of clicks available to advertisers shrinks. The auction doesn’t get cheaper as a result. It gets more expensive because the same number of advertisers compete for fewer clicks.
As CPCs continue to rise, the brands protecting their margins are building visibility across multiple platforms. A stronger organic presence lets them rely less on paid search while remaining visible throughout the buying journey.
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2. Reach: At the click
The auction itself is influenced by ID strategy, match types, ad copy, automation, Smart Bidding configurations, and Performance Max guardrails.
This is where most paid teams still focus their efforts. It’s also the layer with the least leverage left because the size and quality of the click pool are determined upstream. The work still matters, but the opportunity to improve performance here is smaller than it used to be.
Red ocean vs. blue ocean media



The paid channels where most performance teams compete are becoming red oceans: saturated auctions where advertisers bid against one another for the same shrinking pool of commercial clicks.
Blue oceans are channels where buyer intent already exists, but advertiser competition hasn’t yet caught up.

Red ocean (where competition is fiercest)Blue ocean (where intent exists but competition is lower)Why the shift works

Google Search non-brand commercial keywordsMicrosoft Advertising (Bing), including its growing share of AI Search ad surfacesCPCs typically 20 to 40% lower, audience skews older and higher value, much less crowded
Standard LinkedIn Sponsored ContentLinkedIn Thought Leader Ads (peer-to-peer format from a real profile)Around 1.7x higher CTR than company-page ads, lower effective CPC, better fit for considered purchases
Meta feed ads (broad demographic targeting)Reddit Ads, community sponsorships, niche newsletter and Substack advertisingHigh-intent attention in environments LLMs cite, less saturated auction dynamics, more first-party engagement
Performance Max and Google displayConnected TV, BVOD, podcast advertisingPremium attention at the top of the funnel, fewer competing bidders, channel measurement is maturing fast
Branded search defense at any costAI Search and early ChatGPT ad inventoryFirst-movers are buying tomorrow’s primary discovery surface at today’s clearance prices





This isn’t an argument for abandoning Google Search. It’s a reminder not to overinvest your paid budget in the most competitive auctions. Instead, start shifting some of your existing budget into testing emerging channels and compare their performance with traditional search.
3. Experience: After the click
The post-click experience is an essential part of media economics, but most paid teams still treat it as something to hand off to another function.
Every other lever in this article governs what you pay to enter the auction. Experience determines what each click is worth after you’ve paid for it, and it’s the only one of the three layers you fully control.
In an inflating market, post-click conversion stops being a quarterly optimization exercise and becomes your primary defense against rising acquisition costs.
Google’s Ad Rank is calculated using your bid, your Quality Score, and the expected impact of assets. Landing page experience is one of the three components of Quality Score.
A higher Quality Score directly offsets the need to bid more aggressively. A stronger landing page can help you outrank a better-funded competitor while paying less per click.
That said, most expensive clicks don’t convert on the first visit, especially in B2B, where buying cycles are longer and purchases are more considered. The job of the experience layer is to convert and capture. Think first-party data, a reason to return, and an entry point into nurture and CRM.
The advertisers protecting their margins through this transition will stop treating media and landing pages as separate disciplines. They’ll manage them as a single P&L shared across paid media, CRO, UX, content, and lead nurture.
Dig deeper: The new SEO imperative: Building your brand



  
a customer you lose.
      
See who’s stealing your traffic
    
What winning paid search looks like now
Paid search accounts for a smaller share of where performance is earned, and it’s becoming a more expensive channel to operate if you haven’t built brand strength around it. Much of the work that makes paid search efficient now sits in disciplines paid search teams have historically considered someone else’s job.
The teams that protect their margins through this transition won’t be the ones with better targeting or bidding strategies. They’ll be the ones who’ve built enough visibility and authority outside the auction to win it when it matters.

Rising CPCs start before the auction. Learn how brand, reach, and post-click experience shape paid search performance.

Why CPC inflation starts before the auction

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Why-the-SEO-vs.-PPC-debate-is-finally-over.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Why the SEO vs. PPC debate is finally over" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Why-the-SEO-vs.-PPC-debate-is-finally-over.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Why-the-SEO-vs.-PPC-debate-is-finally-over-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Why-the-SEO-vs.-PPC-debate-is-finally-over-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Why-the-SEO-vs.-PPC-debate-is-finally-over-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>AI shifted buying decisions beyond the click, making SEO and PPC complementary parts of the same strategy instead of competing choices.

SEO vs. PPC? SEO vs. PPC vs. AI? SEO vs. PPC vs. AI vs. (everything else)? I’ve been covering this question and its ever-changing answer for nearly 20 years.
The answer? It’s the classic SEO and marketing response: it depends. 
It depends on the situation, goals, marketplace, keywords, year, location, SERP features, and myriad other variables, all working together to create utterly unique little marketing snowflakes.
When paid search is the better answer
I’ve run into this question with several clients over the last few months, and each had a different answer.
The first, an architect, ranked first for several seemingly important keywords. Their SEO agency celebrated the rankings, but they weren’t generating leads.
A quick look at the data explained why. They often ranked first organically, but only after four ads (many with sitelinks), a Find Results on Page feature, and four local listings, one of them paid. By the time users reached the organic results, they were about 20 links down the page.
Search Console told the rest of the story. These keywords generated roughly 300 searches a month with a click-through rate of about 1%. Three hundred searches. Three clicks. No wonder they weren’t seeing results.
With the data in front of us, the lack of leads wasn’t surprising. We shifted some budget from SEO to paid search, and performance improved quickly.
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When SEO is enough
The second client couldn’t have been more different. She’s a clinical psychologist specializing in childhood bereavement and trauma. She left an NHS post to build a private practice. 
She works a few days a week, her clients come weekly for months at a time, and she needs only two or three quality inquiries each week to stay busy. Quality matters more than volume here.
We rebuilt the website, dug into customer needs, refined the content, and finished with straightforward on-page and local SEO.
The budget left no room for ads. Instead, we focused on a well-optimized Google Business Profile, a website that clearly and warmly explained what she does and who she helps, a handful of local citations, and relevant vertical citations.
It worked. She gained visibility in Maps, localized organic search, and AI results. Leads now come from both prospective clients and private referrals, enough to keep the practice full.
What made this interesting wasn’t the lack of competition. It was the type of competition. The ads were dominated by large, impersonal therapy directories. Positioning her as a local, experienced psychologist who could genuinely help made her stand out. A relatively small amount of traffic generated more than enough business.
The wrong question
Two clients. Same year. Opposite answers.
Ask me, “SEO or PPC?” and those two examples show why the question doesn’t work.
I’ve revisited this debate several times over the years, and the answer always landed in the same place: a blended approach works best, with a big, fat “it depends” attached. It depends on your market, your margins, your competition, and your goals.
That answer is still technically correct. It’s just no longer sufficient.
In 2026, the question isn’t merely difficult to answer. It’s the wrong question, asked about a search results page that no longer exists, in a market where the click is no longer the thing you’re actually buying.
4 assumptions that no longer hold up
This debate has historically rested on a series of assumptions that I no longer think hold true.
1. The results page is a stable list of slots 
It isn’t. It’s a synthesis engine that assembles a different answer depending on the query, the device, and the model driving it. AI Overviews now appear on a large and growing share of queries, and Google swapped Gemini 3 in as the default model behind them in January.
2. The click is the unit of value
In the first four months of 2026, 68.01% of U.S. Google searches ended without a click anywhere. Not without a click to your site. Without a click anywhere. 
That’s up from 60.45% in 2024 and around 45% a decade ago. Clicks are still one measure of success, but influence matters more.
3. SEO and PPC are substitutes competing for the same visitor
That was the entire premise of the debate — one visitor, one click, two ways to win it. Pick your fighter.
The data now shows both channels being squeezed by the same force on the same page, while organic visibility measurably lifts paid performance. They’re not substitutes. They’re two parts of the same system.
4. Search happens on a search engine
SparkToro and Datos looked at 41 major platforms where search behavior actually occurs. Google accounted for 73.7% of desktop searches. Traditional search engines together made up around 80%. Commerce sites accounted for roughly 10%, social platforms 5.5%, and AI tools 3.2%. Amazon, Bing, and YouTube each handled more search activity than ChatGPT.
Search is a behavior, not a channel, and it’s happening everywhere (hence the increasingly popular shift toward “search everywhere optimization”).
The assumptions behind the debate
Assumptions are another problem with the whole SEO vs. PPC debate.
Often, a client comes to us asking for SEO (and now AEO, or whatever you want to call it). They have a hunch it’s the right answer, that SEO can plug the holes Google Ads is punching in their marketing budget, and that the magic SEO/GEO wand can fix everything.
Those assumptions are dangerous. They send people down the wrong path, often for a long time, throwing good money after bad. Many agencies and consultants don’t help. Instead of embracing the shift, they cling to old approaches, massage the data, and eke every last drop of budget from the very people they’re supposed to help.
Remove those assumptions and any channel bias, and it becomes clear there is no better channel. The whole model has, to some extent, imploded. 
AI: The new kid on the block
Historically, if traffic went to SEO or PPC, we could at least see how it was split between the two.
AI is different. It’s not chasing clicks. It’s shaping attention and influence.
Fortunately, correlation studies give us some visibility into what’s happening. Seer Interactive found that, across queries with AI Overviews, the average organic click-through rate for organic listings fell from 1.76% to 0.61%, a 61% decline.
That’s a grim number. Fewer than one in 100 impressions resulted in an organic click.
PPC, the big dog of search traffic, took an even bigger hit, falling about 68%, from 19.7% to 6.34%. Ouch.
It’s worth pausing to let that sink in.
AI Overviews did more damage to ads than organic results. They reduced clicks overall rather than redistributing them in the long-running battle between SEO and PPC.
For decades, the SEO vs. PPC debate has been a slow war of attrition, with PPC taking an ever-larger share while organic CTR declined year after year. AI changes that. Both paid and organic are now being squeezed as AI rapidly accelerates the rise of zero-click searches.
AI goes further still. It’s fundamentally changing the customer journey. SERP features like featured snippets chipped away at CTR, but AI means people often don’t need websites at all to get answers. 
A single prompt can produce a refined response without users piecing together information from multiple sources.
The point is that AI isn’t just a third player in the SEO vs. PPC debate. It’s fundamentally changing how we access and consume information, reshaping both channels in the process.
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Why AI citations matter
The Seer study also found that brands cited inside an AI Overview earned 35% more organic clicks than uncited brands and 91% more paid clicks.
That can be a little difficult to unpack, so it helps to think of it as a funnel.
The AI Overview dramatically reduces the total number of organic and paid clicks.
However, if you’re cited in the AI Overview and also have a paid or organic listing below it, you’re much more likely to earn the click. Typically, that click isn’t on the AI Overview itself, if it’s even linked. It goes to the paid or organic listing below.
The user reads, trusts, skims, and clicks.
The process looks something like this: The user reads the summary, sees your brand cited as a source, then scans the page. When they decide to click, they choose the name AI has already presented as credible. The AI citation isn’t functioning as a link. It’s functioning as an endorsement that primes the click elsewhere on the page, whether paid or organic.
The AI citation primes the click on your paid or organic listing and sends you a warm visitor, much like a personal referral arriving through a branded search.
SEO, PPC, and AI
In previous attempts to unpack the SEO vs. PPC debate, the best general answer I could give was that they worked well together. Some laser-targeted PPC paired with complementary SEO efforts, whether local, upper-funnel, or lower-funnel. In some cases, SEO alone worked. 
In others, PPC alone was enough. But if search was important to the business, a blended approach usually delivered the best results.
That was always general advice and always needed to be tailored to the situation. Today, though, I think we can make a much stronger case that the SEO vs. PPC debate is over. The conversation now is SEO, PPC, and AI.
To understand why, we have to look at how these channels intersect. A good example is Google’s new AI Max ad format. Think of it as an AI-powered evolution of Dynamic Search Ads. AI Max reads your website content and landing pages, expands your final URLs, and matches queries. 
The targeting inputs for your paid campaigns are now, quite literally, your SEO assets. Ads in AI Mode are already in testing in the U.S. AI-powered Shopping ads read your Merchant Center feed and use Gemini to generate a tailored explainer for each shopper.
Work that once belonged to SEO (and perhaps CRO) now directly supports AI and PPC. Clear pages, structured content, and a value proposition machines can understand now feed your organic rankings, Quality Score, AI Max query matching, AI Overview citations, and LLM visibility. One well-executed asset now supports multiple marketing surfaces.
Meanwhile, the paid search picture is more interesting than the doom-posting suggests. WordStream’s 2026 benchmarks put average search CPC at $5.42, more than double the 2016 figure. 
At the same time, conversion rates improved across 87% of industries, and cost per lead fell for the first time in five years. Paid search is becoming more expensive per click but more effective per outcome. That’s exactly what you’d expect when the click pool shrinks, and the remaining clicks carry higher intent.
Finally, I’m no conspiracy theorist, but if the book Supremacy is to be believed, Google developed an AI chatbot before OpenAI and ChatGPT brought the technology into the mainstream. The company reportedly held it back because of internal concerns about the impact on ad revenue, and perhaps accuracy. 
That also makes a business case for why Google must integrate AI into its ecosystem to protect its core revenue. I also think it’s more useful to align with where Google is headed than spend your time chasing algorithms.
The trend was already underway
While this may feel like a revolution, I think it’s really the next step in an evolution that’s been unfolding for years.
We were talking about zero-click searches long before AI. The trend has been remarkably consistent: roughly 45% in 2016, 49% in 2019, 60% in 2024, and 68% today. Google has spent a decade building features that keep people on Google, and AI Overviews simply accelerated a trend that was already underway.
AI Mode accounted for about one-third of 1% of searches from January through April. It’s growing fast, with more than a billion monthly users and queries reportedly more than doubling each quarter. But it isn’t what got us here. 
Google got us here, one SERP feature at a time, gradually transforming search from a list of signposts into a platform that provides answers. AI didn’t start that trend. It accelerated it.
Simply put, if you’re not on that list, you’re probably no longer in the running.
Why SEO still matters
The good news is that none of this makes SEO less important. It changes why it matters. SEO still matters because AI Overviews are grounded in Google’s index. Your search visibility still drives your AI visibility.
It’s not quite that simple, though. AI uses a process known as query fan-out to break a complex prompt into multiple smaller searches. It then combines those results, with the highest-ranking pages often receiving the most visibility in the AI summary. Rankings still matter across a broad range of topical subqueries in your space.
YouTube is a particularly strong opportunity because videos often rank for many of the subqueries that support those broader AI-generated answers. If your competitors haven’t invested there yet, they may be leaving visibility on the table.
Keywords aren’t what they once were. Topical visibility across search, both on your own site and across third-party platforms, remains highly important.
There is one caveat. This is still the Wild West. Studies from Ahrefs and BrightEdge reached slightly different conclusions, and measuring AI visibility remains challenging. 
Just like the early days of SEO, success comes from thinking, tinkering, and experimenting to maximize your visibility across a topic, whether on your own site or on third-party platforms like YouTube and Reddit.
Dig deeper: Why AI still runs on search – and SEO still runs the show



SEO vs. GEO vs. PPC
The “SEO is dead” crowd is trying to sell you GEO. The GEO crowd says it sends no traffic and tries to steer you back to SEO. The anti-PPC crowd points out that click prices have doubled while total clicks have fallen.
The traffic data is fairly clear. Google still drives nearly 90% of referral traffic, according to Cloudflare Radar. All AI chatbots combined account for less than 1%.
But that’s only part of the story. Google still drives most referral traffic, but AI increasingly shapes the decisions behind those clicks. That means SEO, GEO, and PPC aren’t competing strategies. They’re different parts of the same decision journey.
By the time someone reaches your website or clicks your ad, they’re often a warm prospect, and the business is yours to lose. That’s why AI-referred traffic converts several times better than traditional organic traffic, even when it lands on the homepage, something PPC practitioners have historically avoided. There’s no magic here. People arrive already familiar with your brand and closer to making a decision than asking a question.
SEO and PPC are no longer just acquisition channels. They’re the mechanisms that help you become the answer.
That reframes what SEO and PPC are for. They stop being two ways to do the same job and become two parts of the same sequence. Your organic footprint, including content, coverage, videos, reviews, and what others say about you, helps you become the answer across search and AI. Your ads help you get chosen once you are. One earns the recommendation. The other converts it.
That’s why you can no longer trade them off against each other. You can’t choose between the thing that gets you onto the shortlist and the thing that converts you once you’re there.
This isn’t a budget decision or an either-or choice. These are two parts of a single system that work together in sequence to maximize results. Integrate them, or you’ll lose ground to competitors that do.
customers won’t either.
      
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SEO vs. PPC: The debate is dead
Maybe this question had some merit in the past. Every time I tried to answer it, though, I ended up in the same place: for most businesses, an integrated approach worked best.
The real problem is that it was always the wrong question. It just happened to be a popular one because a simple question is easier to live with than a complicated one. “SEO or PPC?” is easy to answer in a meeting. “Where do my customers decide, and what would make them choose me?” takes real work.
Underneath it all, though, the fundamentals haven’t changed. Your customers still have problems to solve. They still build a shortlist. They still choose someone. The only thing that’s changed is who’s holding the pen when that shortlist gets written. Increasingly, it’s a machine reading everything the world has said about you.
I always come back to the restaurant example. Bob’s Burgers serves 100 customers a week. Ninety-nine leave happy. Every week, one customer, and there’s always one, leaves a bad review. Your job is to make sure the digital record reflects the experience of the other 99.
So get your own house in order first. Fix the offer. Fix the website. Fix the tracking. Then map the territory, choose your ground, and become genuinely, specifically, unsummarizably good at what you do. Then tell the world.
The SEO vs. PPC debate is dead. Long live integrated SEO, PPC, and AI.

AI shifted buying decisions beyond the click, making SEO and PPC complementary parts of the same strategy instead of competing choices.

Why the SEO vs. PPC debate is finally over

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Your-next-customer-may-discover-your-brand-on-TikTok-before-Google.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Your next customer may discover your brand on TikTok before Google" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Your-next-customer-may-discover-your-brand-on-TikTok-before-Google.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Your-next-customer-may-discover-your-brand-on-TikTok-before-Google-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Your-next-customer-may-discover-your-brand-on-TikTok-before-Google-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Your-next-customer-may-discover-your-brand-on-TikTok-before-Google-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>The first decision is often emotional. Google increasingly becomes the place to validate it. Here's what that means for SEO.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Your-next-customer-may-discover-your-brand-on-TikTok-before-Google.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="Your next customer may discover your brand on TikTok before Google" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Your-next-customer-may-discover-your-brand-on-TikTok-before-Google.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Your-next-customer-may-discover-your-brand-on-TikTok-before-Google-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Your-next-customer-may-discover-your-brand-on-TikTok-before-Google-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/Your-next-customer-may-discover-your-brand-on-TikTok-before-Google-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p>You pick up your phone to reply to a message. A few taps later, you&#8217;re watching a <a href="https://searchengineland.com/tiktok-seo-the-ultimate-guide-439795">TikTok</a> about a restaurant in Sicily, a boutique hotel in Copenhagen, or a local business you hadn&#8217;t heard of before.</p>



<p>Maybe you Google it right away. Maybe you don&#8217;t. But days or weeks later, someone mentions it, and you search for it. Just like that, discovery becomes search.</p>



<p>That&#8217;s happening more often than many businesses realize. People increasingly discover brands before they actively look for them, making Google less of a starting point and more of a place to validate decisions. That shift has important implications for SEO, local visibility, and content strategy.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-recommendation-engines-change-the-rules">Recommendation engines change the rules</h2>



<p>TikTok&#8217;s recommendation engine is one of the most sophisticated consumer recommendation systems available today. Rather than waiting for users to type a query, it continuously learns from subtle behavioral signals, such as watch time, rewatches, pauses while scrolling, shares, and saves.</p>



<p>According to TikTok, recommendations are driven by a combination of user interactions, video information, and viewing behavior, not a single ranking signal.</p>



<p>If discovery increasingly happens before search, visibility strategies need to evolve.</p>



<p>The content that earns attention tends to share a few characteristics:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>A strong hook.</li>



<li>Storytelling that keeps people watching.</li>



<li>Fast-paced editing, visuals, and sound that feel native to the platform.</li>
</ul>



<p>The shift is significant enough that even Google has acknowledged it. Google&#8217;s SVP Prabhakar Raghavan revealed that almost 40% of young people looking for somewhere to eat turn to TikTok or Instagram instead of Google Search or Google Maps.</p>



<p>Recommendation engines don&#8217;t wait for users to express intent through a search. They predict what people may find interesting before they even think to look for it.</p>



<p><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/seo-video-source-material-462137">The SEO shift you can’t ignore: Video is becoming source material</a></em></strong>


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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-google-understands-intent-tiktok-understands-curiosity">Google understands intent. TikTok understands curiosity.</h2>



<p>TikTok analyzes spoken language, captions, and on-screen text to understand what a video is about before deciding who should see it. It also reads text that appears within the video, considers location signals, and rewards content that generates meaningful conversations in the comments.</p>



<p>Experienced creators deliberately craft seamless loops in which the final seconds of a video naturally connect back to the beginning. Viewers often replay the video without realizing it, increasing completion rates and sending stronger retention signals that encourage wider distribution. Videos that continue generating saves and engagement over time are also more likely to keep being recommended.</p>



<p>Comments can be used to create conversations. Instead of ending the interaction with a simple answer, encourage the original commenter, or someone else, to reply again, even if the question has already been asked. For businesses, it&#8217;s also an opportunity to naturally reinforce important keywords by mentioning your hotel, restaurant, location, or services in your replies.</p>



<p>Every conversation adds another layer of semantic relevance, helping both users and TikTok better understand what your content is about.</p>



<p><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/why-tiktok-deserves-seo-strategy-481345">Why TikTok deserves a place in your SEO strategy</a></em></strong>



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tiktok-as-a-local-discovery-engine">TikTok as a local discovery engine</h2>



<p>This behavioral shift is especially important for businesses where visual trust shapes purchasing decisions, including:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Restaurants.</li>



<li>Hotels.</li>



<li>Beauty.</li>



<li>Fitness.</li>



<li>Retail.</li>
</ul>



<p>Before visiting somewhere new, people increasingly want to experience it from their sofa. Short-form video makes that possible by instantly communicating atmosphere, context, and emotion.</p>



<p>More importantly, it dramatically reduces the cognitive effort required to make a decision. Instead of reading reviews, comparing ratings, opening photo galleries, and jumping between websites, people can evaluate an experience in seconds.</p>



<p>When planning your content strategy, ask yourself:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>What does the restaurant actually look like?</li>



<li>What&#8217;s the atmosphere like?</li>



<li>Does the food look as good as it tastes?</li>
</ul>



<p>Within the first few seconds, viewers have often answered many of those questions.</p>



<p>The first decision is emotional. The research comes afterward.</p>



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-discovery-first-verification-second">Discovery first, verification second</h2>



<p>Google continues to dominate high-intent searches, Maps, local business information, and transactional queries.</p>



<p>What&#8217;s changing is where the customer journey begins.</p>



<p>In travel, hospitality, and lifestyle, discovery increasingly happens on platforms like TikTok, while Google becomes the place to validate those decisions.</p>



<p>Today&#8217;s customer journey is an interconnected discovery ecosystem. Every platform plays a different role, and brands that understand how they work together will earn both attention and conversions.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-tiktok-as-a-market-research-tool">TikTok as a market research tool</h2>



<p>Recommendation platforms aren&#8217;t just changing how people discover brands. They&#8217;re also changing how brands discover customer demand.</p>



<p>One of the biggest mistakes brands still make is creating content around what they want to communicate instead of what their audience actually wants to know.</p>



<p>TikTok&#8217;s <a href="https://searchengineland.com/tiktok-creator-search-insights-content-opportunities-462520">Creator Search Insights</a> is becoming one of the most valuable market research tools available because it reveals rising searches, unanswered questions, and content gaps directly from user behavior.</p>



<p>These insights help identify:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Rising search topics.</li>



<li>Unanswered questions.</li>



<li>Seasonal demand.</li>



<li>Content gaps.</li>



<li>Emerging customer interests.</li>
</ul>



<p>The findings should shape your <a href="https://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo">SEO</a> strategy, local landing pages, editorial planning, FAQs, and even product positioning. The most valuable keyword research may no longer begin inside a keyword tool. It may begin inside TikTok.</p>


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</div>


<p><strong><em>Dig deeper: <a href="https://searchengineland.com/seo-video-source-material-462137">Why social search visibility is the next evolution of discoverability</a></em></strong>


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<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-search-starts-before-google">The search starts before Google</h2>



<p>As search becomes increasingly AI-driven, earning attention before someone types a query may become one of the strongest competitive advantages a business can have.</p>



<p>The brands that succeed won&#8217;t start with channels. They&#8217;ll start with customer behavior.</p>



<p>The same person may search Google for a marketing course, browse TikTok for vacation inspiration, and turn to Instagram before buying a skincare product. Discovery doesn&#8217;t happen in the same place for every customer or every decision. It depends on the intent behind the search.</p>



<p>As AI-powered search increasingly answers questions without requiring a click, visibility will depend on far more than rankings alone. Brands will need to earn attention before the search, build trust throughout the journey, and be present wherever their audience chooses to discover, validate, and decide.</p>



<p>The brands that win won&#8217;t create content for algorithms. They&#8217;ll create content people genuinely choose to watch.</p>



<p>Ultimately, the future of SEO isn&#8217;t just about ranking when someone searches. It&#8217;s about becoming visible before they ever think to search.</p>

You pick up your phone to reply to a message. A few taps later, you’re watching a TikTok about a restaurant in Sicily, a boutique hotel in Copenhagen, or a local business you hadn’t heard of before.
Maybe you Google it right away. Maybe you don’t. But days or weeks later, someone mentions it, and you search for it. Just like that, discovery becomes search.
That’s happening more often than many businesses realize. People increasingly discover brands before they actively look for them, making Google less of a starting point and more of a place to validate decisions. That shift has important implications for SEO, local visibility, and content strategy.
Recommendation engines change the rules
TikTok’s recommendation engine is one of the most sophisticated consumer recommendation systems available today. Rather than waiting for users to type a query, it continuously learns from subtle behavioral signals, such as watch time, rewatches, pauses while scrolling, shares, and saves.
According to TikTok, recommendations are driven by a combination of user interactions, video information, and viewing behavior, not a single ranking signal.
If discovery increasingly happens before search, visibility strategies need to evolve.
The content that earns attention tends to share a few characteristics:
A strong hook.
Storytelling that keeps people watching.
Fast-paced editing, visuals, and sound that feel native to the platform.
The shift is significant enough that even Google has acknowledged it. Google’s SVP Prabhakar Raghavan revealed that almost 40% of young people looking for somewhere to eat turn to TikTok or Instagram instead of Google Search or Google Maps.
Recommendation engines don’t wait for users to express intent through a search. They predict what people may find interesting before they even think to look for it.
Dig deeper: The SEO shift you can’t ignore: Video is becoming source material



  
customers find first.
      
Start your free trial
    
Google understands intent. TikTok understands curiosity.
TikTok analyzes spoken language, captions, and on-screen text to understand what a video is about before deciding who should see it. It also reads text that appears within the video, considers location signals, and rewards content that generates meaningful conversations in the comments.
Experienced creators deliberately craft seamless loops in which the final seconds of a video naturally connect back to the beginning. Viewers often replay the video without realizing it, increasing completion rates and sending stronger retention signals that encourage wider distribution. Videos that continue generating saves and engagement over time are also more likely to keep being recommended.
Comments can be used to create conversations. Instead of ending the interaction with a simple answer, encourage the original commenter, or someone else, to reply again, even if the question has already been asked. For businesses, it’s also an opportunity to naturally reinforce important keywords by mentioning your hotel, restaurant, location, or services in your replies.
Every conversation adds another layer of semantic relevance, helping both users and TikTok better understand what your content is about.
Dig deeper: Why TikTok deserves a place in your SEO strategy




	
	
Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.
 
				
				
			
See terms.
		
TikTok as a local discovery engine
This behavioral shift is especially important for businesses where visual trust shapes purchasing decisions, including:
Restaurants.
Hotels.
Beauty.
Fitness.
Retail.
Before visiting somewhere new, people increasingly want to experience it from their sofa. Short-form video makes that possible by instantly communicating atmosphere, context, and emotion.
More importantly, it dramatically reduces the cognitive effort required to make a decision. Instead of reading reviews, comparing ratings, opening photo galleries, and jumping between websites, people can evaluate an experience in seconds.
When planning your content strategy, ask yourself:
What does the restaurant actually look like?
What’s the atmosphere like?
Does the food look as good as it tastes?
Within the first few seconds, viewers have often answered many of those questions.
The first decision is emotional. The research comes afterward.
Get the newsletter search marketers rely on.
 
				
				
			
See terms.
		
Discovery first, verification second
Google continues to dominate high-intent searches, Maps, local business information, and transactional queries.
What’s changing is where the customer journey begins.
In travel, hospitality, and lifestyle, discovery increasingly happens on platforms like TikTok, while Google becomes the place to validate those decisions.
Today’s customer journey is an interconnected discovery ecosystem. Every platform plays a different role, and brands that understand how they work together will earn both attention and conversions.
TikTok as a market research tool
Recommendation platforms aren’t just changing how people discover brands. They’re also changing how brands discover customer demand.
One of the biggest mistakes brands still make is creating content around what they want to communicate instead of what their audience actually wants to know.
TikTok’s Creator Search Insights is becoming one of the most valuable market research tools available because it reveals rising searches, unanswered questions, and content gaps directly from user behavior.
These insights help identify:
Rising search topics.
Unanswered questions.
Seasonal demand.
Content gaps.
Emerging customer interests.
The findings should shape your SEO strategy, local landing pages, editorial planning, FAQs, and even product positioning. The most valuable keyword research may no longer begin inside a keyword tool. It may begin inside TikTok.




Dig deeper: Why social search visibility is the next evolution of discoverability



  
before your competitors.
      
Start your free trial
    
The search starts before Google
As search becomes increasingly AI-driven, earning attention before someone types a query may become one of the strongest competitive advantages a business can have.
The brands that succeed won’t start with channels. They’ll start with customer behavior.
The same person may search Google for a marketing course, browse TikTok for vacation inspiration, and turn to Instagram before buying a skincare product. Discovery doesn’t happen in the same place for every customer or every decision. It depends on the intent behind the search.
As AI-powered search increasingly answers questions without requiring a click, visibility will depend on far more than rankings alone. Brands will need to earn attention before the search, build trust throughout the journey, and be present wherever their audience chooses to discover, validate, and decide.
The brands that win won’t create content for algorithms. They’ll create content people genuinely choose to watch.
Ultimately, the future of SEO isn’t just about ranking when someone searches. It’s about becoming visible before they ever think to search.

The first decision is often emotional. Google increasingly becomes the place to validate it. Here's what that means for SEO.

Your next customer may discover your brand on TikTok before Google

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/chatgpt-ads-revenue-target.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="ChatGPT Ads revenue target" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/chatgpt-ads-revenue-target.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/chatgpt-ads-revenue-target-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/chatgpt-ads-revenue-target-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/chatgpt-ads-revenue-target-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Emarketer sees the U.S. chatbot ad market reaching just $5.41 billion by 2030, far below OpenAI’s target for ChatGPT ads.

<div><img width="1920" height="1080" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/chatgpt-ads-revenue-target.png" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="ChatGPT Ads revenue target" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/chatgpt-ads-revenue-target.png 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/chatgpt-ads-revenue-target-768x432.png 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/chatgpt-ads-revenue-target-1536x864.png 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/chatgpt-ads-revenue-target-1200x675.png 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p>OpenAI’s ad revenue forecast is on pace to miss its 2030 target by 90%, according to Emarketer. </p>



<p>OpenAI projected $2.5 billion in ad revenue this year and $100 billion by 2030. Emarketer estimates the entire U.S. market for standalone chatbot ads will generate less than $1 billion this year and $5.41 billion by 2030.</p>



<p><strong>OpenAI’s target</strong>. <a href="https://searchengineland.com/openai-starts-testing-chatgpt-ads-468593">OpenAI began testing ChatGPT ads</a> in February. By April, the company projected that ad revenue <a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/04/09/openai-100-billion-in-ad-revenue">would grow to $100 billion</a> within five years. But that forecast is larger than Emarketer’s 2030 estimate for the full U.S. chatbot ad market.</p>



<p><strong>What Emarketer measured</strong>. Emarketer’s estimate covers standalone chatbots in the U.S., including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode and Amazon Alexa for Shopping, formerly Rufus. The research firm’s forecast puts the 2030 market ceiling at $5.41 billion, far below OpenAI’s target for its ad business alone.</p>



<p><strong>Why we care</strong>. Chatbot ads are still a small market, despite growing interest in AI search and shopping. The gap between OpenAI’s target and Emarketer&#8217;s forecast shows ChatGPT Ads have a long way to go.</p>



<p><strong>Assumptions vs. reality?</strong> OpenAI’s forecast assumes the company will capture search ad budgets at scale, dominate a mature chatbot ad market, and outperform every ad format in history, <a href="https://www.adweek.com/media/openais-ad-business-is-on-pace-to-miss-its-own-forecast-by-90-analyst-says/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Adweek</a> reported. Emarketer’s data points to a much smaller market.</p>


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OpenAI’s ad revenue forecast is on pace to miss its 2030 target by 90%, according to Emarketer. 
OpenAI projected $2.5 billion in ad revenue this year and $100 billion by 2030. Emarketer estimates the entire U.S. market for standalone chatbot ads will generate less than $1 billion this year and $5.41 billion by 2030.
OpenAI’s target. OpenAI began testing ChatGPT ads in February. By April, the company projected that ad revenue would grow to $100 billion within five years. But that forecast is larger than Emarketer’s 2030 estimate for the full U.S. chatbot ad market.
What Emarketer measured. Emarketer’s estimate covers standalone chatbots in the U.S., including ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode and Amazon Alexa for Shopping, formerly Rufus. The research firm’s forecast puts the 2030 market ceiling at $5.41 billion, far below OpenAI’s target for its ad business alone.
Why we care. Chatbot ads are still a small market, despite growing interest in AI search and shopping. The gap between OpenAI’s target and Emarketer’s forecast shows ChatGPT Ads have a long way to go.
Assumptions vs. reality? OpenAI’s forecast assumes the company will capture search ad budgets at scale, dominate a mature chatbot ad market, and outperform every ad format in history, Adweek reported. Emarketer’s data points to a much smaller market.
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Emarketer sees the U.S. chatbot ad market reaching just $5.41 billion by 2030, far below OpenAI’s target for ChatGPT ads.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT ads could miss $100 billion revenue target: Report

<div><img width="1920" height="1097" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-images-hero-1920.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-images-hero-1920.jpg 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-images-hero-1920-768x439.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-images-hero-1920-1536x878.jpg 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>Google Image Search has turned 25 years old and is now making its biggest change to its home page yet.

<div><img width="1920" height="1097" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-images-hero-1920.jpg" class="attachment-large size-large wp-post-image" alt="" decoding="async" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-images-hero-1920.jpg 1920w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-images-hero-1920-768x439.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-images-hero-1920-1536x878.jpg 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
<p>Google Image Search has turned 25 years old and with that, Google has decided to completely revamp the Google Image Search home page at <a href="https://images.google.com/">images.google.com</a> from a clean search box, to a gallery of image collections.</p>



<p>&#8220;Today, we&#8217;re introducing a brand new browseable home for Google Images, featuring a dynamic, immersive gallery of images from across the web — updated in real time and intelligently tailored to your unique interests,&#8221; Brad Kellet, Senior Engineering Director, Search <a href="https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/google-images-25th-anniversary">announced</a>.</p>



<p><strong>What it looks like. </strong>Here is a screenshot of the new Google Image Search homepage:</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2000" height="1125" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-image-home-redesign.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-482155" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-image-home-redesign.jpg 2000w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-image-home-redesign-768x432.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-image-home-redesign-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/google-image-home-redesign-1200x675.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px" /></figure>



<p>This is what the old Google Image Search home page looked like:</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="1942" height="972" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/old-google-image-search-home.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-482157" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/old-google-image-search-home.jpg 1942w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/old-google-image-search-home-768x384.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/old-google-image-search-home-1536x769.jpg 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 1942px) 100vw, 1942px" /></figure>



<p><strong>Features as well. </strong>Google is not only showing a gallery of images on its new image search home page but there are search features as well. The search box is at the top, where you can search by text, voice, by image and so forth. </p>



<p>You can also browse and save ideas to your collections on Google Image Search. Those images will appear as tabs above the main gallery, making it easy to jump back in and continue exploring based on what inspires you, Google explained. </p>



<p>Here are screenshots of how that works:</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2000" height="1125" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/New-Google-Images-2.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-482159" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/New-Google-Images-2.jpg 2000w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/New-Google-Images-2-768x432.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/New-Google-Images-2-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/New-Google-Images-2-1200x675.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px" /></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2000" height="1125" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/New-Google-Images-3.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-482160" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/New-Google-Images-3.jpg 2000w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/New-Google-Images-3-768x432.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/New-Google-Images-3-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/New-Google-Images-3-1200x675.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px" /></figure>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" width="2000" height="1125" src="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/New-Google-Images-4.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-482161" srcset="https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/New-Google-Images-4.jpg 2000w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/New-Google-Images-4-768x432.jpg 768w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/New-Google-Images-4-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/07/New-Google-Images-4-1200x675.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px" /></figure>



<p><strong>Availability. </strong>Google said this new Google Images home page will roll out over the coming weeks on desktop in the U.S. in English. You will need to sign in to your Google Account to try it out.</p>


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Google Image Search has turned 25 years old and with that, Google has decided to completely revamp the Google Image Search home page at images.google.com from a clean search box, to a gallery of image collections.
“Today, we’re introducing a brand new browseable home for Google Images, featuring a dynamic, immersive gallery of images from across the web — updated in real time and intelligently tailored to your unique interests,” Brad Kellet, Senior Engineering Director, Search announced.
What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of the new Google Image Search homepage:




This is what the old Google Image Search home page looked like:




Features as well. Google is not only showing a gallery of images on its new image search home page but there are search features as well. The search box is at the top, where you can search by text, voice, by image and so forth. 
You can also browse and save ideas to your collections on Google Image Search. Those images will appear as tabs above the main gallery, making it easy to jump back in and continue exploring based on what inspires you, Google explained. 
Here are screenshots of how that works:












Availability. Google said this new Google Images home page will roll out over the coming weeks on desktop in the U.S. in English. You will need to sign in to your Google Account to try it out.
customers find first.
      
Start your free trial

Google Image Search has turned 25 years old and is now making its biggest change to its home page yet.

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