Google launches Gemini 3.1 Pro with adjustable reasoning tiers, LinkedIn abandons traditional SEO after a 60% B2B traffic drop, and new research reveals why AI search drives far less referral traffic than Google — plus Microsoft's new GEO playbook for brand visibility.

In this episode:

• Google releases Gemini 3.1 Pro with a three-tier adjustable reasoning system (low / medium / high), doubling abstract reasoning benchmark scores over its predecessor

• LinkedIn reports a 60% drop in non-brand B2B traffic from AI-powered search and pivots to GEO-focused metrics: mentions, citations, and AI answer presence

• ChatGPT processes billions of prompts daily but generates far less referral traffic than Google — prompting Google to redesign AI Overview links for publishers

• Microsoft publishes a GEO playbook emphasizing entity authority and structured data for brand recommendations in AI search

• Alibaba's Qwen 3.5 emerges as a frontier-class open-weight model that runs on commodity hardware