• Please Advise
  • Posts
  • Google upgrades search: what you need to know inside

Google upgrades search: what you need to know inside

Plus - the free tool you should be using monthly

May 27, 2026

Chris Long, co-founder of Nectiv, joined the show to chat SEO, AEO, the changing search engine landscape and why you have to adapt your strategies. He shared insights on leveraging AI for data analysis and content creation, while keeping the human touch in check. Don’t miss this one.

Google shared a guide, so we read it for you and here are some of the highlights on optimizing your content for generative AI search features like AI Overviews and AI Mode, straight from the source.

  • Yes, it’s still SEO. AEO and GEO are components. Google’s generative AI features are built on top of the same core Search ranking and quality systems.

  • People-first content rules. Be unique and ensure your site is crawlable and indexable with a clean technical structure. Use high-quality images and video.

  • Skip the tactics. There is no need to include llms.txt files, do content chunking, rewrite copy specifically for AI or chase inauthentic mentions.

  • Write relevant content. Advice, guidance, suggestions, opinions, stories, personal POVS, and thought leadership pieces will do well. Write about the problems you help solve for your customers/clients. Go beyond common knowledge. Pages rank, not just websites. Create page-specific content.

  • Use the products. Merchant Center and Google Business Profiles help you come up in organic and AI search results.

Upcoming: Look into agentic experiences. These emerging technologies allow AI agents to interact with your site. Know how they work and how you can best prepare your site.

Google Search Console

If pages rank (not just sites), you need to know which of yours actually are.

Google Search Console shows your page-level performance in Search, including AI Overview appearances, flags indexing issues, potential security problems, and it’s completely free. If you're not checking it monthly, start now.

See Which AI Prompts Are Actually Surfacing Your Site in Google
Google won’t give you a clean “AI queries” filter in Search Console, but there’s a workaround that gets you close. Since AI Overviews and AI Mode pull from conversational, prompt-style searches (often 10+ words), you can isolate them by filtering your query report by word count.

  1. Open Google Search Console, then click Performance > Search Results

  2. Set your date range to the last 12 months

  3. Click + New, choose Query, then switch the dropdown from “Queries containing” to Custom (regex)

  4. Paste in this regex: ^(?:\S+\s+){9,}\S+$

  5. Hit Apply. You’ll now see only queries that are 10 words or longer

  6. Sort by Impressions, descending. Strong impressions but a low click-through shows content most likely pulled by AI Overview

Look for those long, prompt-style questions. Fill the content gaps, create pages AI can pull from and create FAQs.