Google I/O SEO predictions
This could be one of the most impactful events ever
This week’s newsletter is sponsored by North Star Inbound and Promptwatch
I will be attending Google I/O, MAU, and Affiliate Summit East. Please let me know if you will be at any of these events!
Next week is Google’s flagship developer conference, where they will announce some of the biggest things they are working on and prototypes of products they might eventually launch.
While it seems like forever, Google’s AI Overviews only came out of labs a year ago at I/0 2024. Since then, we have seen many things that I never expected to happen, such as the launch of AI Overviews worldwide, embedded links within results, and people finding this a helpful feature 😀.
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I am fortunate to be able to attend I/O in person this year and will post thoughts and pictures from the event live on LinkedIn. In the meantime, I want to share my predictions of what I expect to see launched.
AI mode
If you haven’t tried AI Mode in Search Labs yet, you might still think Google’s playing catch-up to ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude with its Gemini chatbot. AI Mode is about to flip that narrative on its head.
AI Mode is Google’s big swing at making Search a new experience. It is a marriage of Google Search's massive reach, used by billions every day, with AI's conversational smarts and multimodal magic (Gemini). This isn’t about sprinkling AI on top of Search; it’s about turning Search into a dynamic, back-and-forth exploration.
Right now, AI Mode is a labs-only feature, but expect this to get showcased and rolled out to more people who have not opted in.
This could be the long-awaited apocalypse for SEO.
Google says AI Mode takes AI Overviews to the next level with “more advanced reasoning, thinking, and ways of interacting” (precisely how they talked about Bard and then Gemini), but now it’s not a separate product: it is search. You can throw questions at it via text, voice, or even images, get rich AI-driven answers, and keep digging with follow-ups while it remembers your thread through AI Mode History.
Clicks from search are already dropping; this could be devastating.
Google's real power is pushing this powerful AI into the Search bar everyone already uses without downloading a new app or going to a new URL. It’s familiar, but next-level; it sends Google’s AI adoption through the roof. It could redefine what we expect from a search engine and keep its dominance forever.
Google Astra
Last year, Google teased Project Astra, and I’ve already written about why I think it’s a big deal. Astra could be your go-to helper in real life. It’s built to process text, speech, live video, and images, picking up on tone, context, and maybe even facial expressions to understand you better than any AI before.
The demos from last year were dystopian: Astra can chat in real time, keep track of past conversations, and stay on topic. Point your phone at something and ask about it, or let Astra spot something in your surroundings and give you the details. Google might even reveal some prototype AR glasses that make Astra even more practical.
Right now, AI is useful to some and a part of daily life for even fewer, but Google needs to get everyone using its AI to keep its market share. Astra is a way to make this happen, and we might see some big Astra announcements.
Notebook LM
NotebookLM is one of the most underrated products. You upload PDFs, Google Docs, web links, YouTube transcripts, and it turns into a custom AI expert on YOUR content. You can ask questions, get summaries, brainstorm ideas, or even have it create an audio “podcast” based on the materials.
It’s great for studying, research, journaling, planning, or streamlining tasks, but I’m betting Google will reveal a bigger vision, like tighter integration with Google Workspace for team collaboration or smarter analytics to summarize and dig into and compare information in deeper ways.
To me, its killer feature for search is the ability to understand a variety of source material, which speaks to Google’s ability to index podcasts, movies, handwritten notes, and so much more as they aspire to achieve their mission of organizing all of the world’s information.
I think Google will announce new features around NotebookLM to encourage more people to use this AI tool regularly. I plan to dedicate a full newsletter to this product soon!
Revised reporting
Just like SEO managers get stuck in a loop of reporting on rankings and traffic, only to be on the hook for those metrics when they are less relevant, the same is happening to Google. For years, Google reported on search query volume as a metric showing its dominance in search, but with AI, the number of searches will decrease as the need for a repeat query declines.
When AI can answer your question right on the search page or guide you through a task in a chat-like interface, the old-school “search and click” model starts to fade.
Google will need to invent a new number to show its dominance, so I expect a new metric, not just search query volume, to be used many times throughout the event.
Listen closely and hear how they explain their future with this new metric.
Ads
Google’s ads are its lifeblood. AI Overviews and AI Mode, which can answer questions without sending you to ad-heavy sites (many supported by Google Ads), threaten to upset Google’s revenues. The need to monetize has held Google back, but I think Google’s cracked the code and will use I/O to show how ads can thrive in this AI era.
We’ve already seen “Sponsored” bits in or below AI Overviews, tied to Search and Shopping campaigns, and tailored to your query. For AI Mode, I have heard they’re testing ways to weave ads in, and new tools like “AI Max for Search campaigns” are using AI to boost ad reach and polish creatives.
I’m expecting demos of ads that feel like part of the conversation and have high value for advertisers. The goal is to make ads add value, not just dollars, and Google will sell this new future.
Stay tuned
I am sure there will be other huge announcements for all Google products. Since Google is currently a search and ads company, most of what they announce will somehow relate to both of those businesses.
For many years, I/O was exciting but not necessarily groundbreaking because Google didn’t have any competitors on the horizon. Times have changed, and Google has to show that it is as relevant as ever.
A great event will drive lots of positive attention to Google, while if they don’t announce anything significant, expect lots of murmuring about how Google is not the company of the future. I am hoping to see the former.
Monitor social media AND the stock price to see how the public perceives Google’s future and if you are in Mountain View next week, come say hi!
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