The Search Signal

Google’s Universal Cart went live in the US on October 15, putting one shopping cart across Search, AI Mode, and the Gemini app. Michael spent time with it before recording, saving products from different stores and following them to checkout to see where it works and where it breaks. He covers whether this counts as agentic shopping, why Google wants the experience to be seamless, what Google reads when it compares your products, and how to get set up before Black Friday.

In this episode:

• What the cart does, from price-drop alerts to the two ways it handles checkout
• Why Google puts the cart on its shopper “confidence and control” track, and what ChatGPT’s checkout results say about trust
• Who it matters for, including Shopify stores that were enrolled by default
• What Google sees in the cart that your analytics no longer does
• The product data Google reads, including Merchant Center’s new conversational attributes
• A Black Friday setup plan and a 10-minute test you can run today
• Six predictions for where the cart goes next

Chapters:
[00:44] Intro
[01:29] News: Google serves altered results to rank trackers
[03:39] News: ChatGPT visits landing as direct traffic
[05:31] News: Google tests ads in AI Mode for connected apps
[07:06] News: The AI Mode sidebar shows up on regular search
[07:47] Google’s Universal Cart goes live
[08:56] What launched
[12:13] Is this agentic shopping?
[17:23] Who Universal Cart matters for
[20:35] Why Google wants the cart to be seamless
[23:11] What Google reads when it compares products
[26:37] How to set up before Black Friday
[29:58] Test it the way a shopper would
[30:49] Six predictions
[33:50] The takeaway

The transcript and links to all resources can be found on the episode page: https://victorious.com/podcast/universal-cart/

Sources:
Google, An intelligent new shopping cart (Universal Cart launch), October 15, 2026: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/shopping/universal-cart-launch/
Retail Brew, Google set to launch a Universal Cart (I/O 2026 preview): https://www.retailbrew.com/stories/google-takes-agentic-shopping-to-youtube-set-to-launch-a-universal-cart
PPC Land, Google feeds rank trackers swapped results on 8% of pages, Nozzle finds: https://ppc.land/google-feeds-rank-trackers-swapped-results-on-8-of-pages-nozzle-finds/
Search Engine Roundtable, OpenAI drops UTM parameters from ChatGPT results (GPT-6): https://seroundtable.com/utm-parameters-missing-chatgpt-42299.html
Search Engine Roundtable, Google ads now in AI Mode with Personal Intelligence: https://seroundtable.com/google-ads-ai-mode-personal-intelligence-42320.html
Google tests AI Mode left sidebar on main search results: https://seroundtable.com/google-ai-mode-left-sidebar-42298.html
Nick Fox on what AI search agents and Universal Cart mean for marketers: https://ppc.land/nick-fox-on-what-ai-search-agents-and-universal-cart-mean-for-marketers/
Search Engine Land, Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted worse than its website: https://searchengineland.com/walmart-chatgpt-checkout-converted-worse-472071
What went wrong with ChatGPT's Instant Checkout: https://www.modernretail.co/technology/what-went-wrong-with-chatgpts-instant-checkout/
Inside the Worldpay agentic commerce report: https://www.worldpay.com/insights/articles/inside-worldpay-agentic-commerce-report
Search Engine Journal, Google's Universal Cart is live: how carts get to your store: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-universal-cart-store-handoff/593145/
PPC Land, 8 Google Merchant Center attributes your feed needs for AI Mode: https://ppc.land/8-google-merchant-center-attributes-your-feed-needs-for-ai-mode/

Anthropic updated its usage policy on October 8 to ban using Claude to build networks of fake sources that sway search results and AI answers. The rule takes effect November 12 and reaches every product built on Claude, which means a vendor running that playbook on your behalf puts your whole account at risk. Michael walks through why he reads this as good news, how the case that prompted it got caught, where faking still works, and what to build instead.

In this episode:

• What the new usage policy section on deceptive campaigns prohibits, and who it applies to
• The 70-site fake local news network that got caught by its hosting, registration dates, and publishing timing
• Why more automation makes a network easier to spot, not harder
• How you'd find out if a platform discounted sites that mention you (short answer: you probably wouldn't)
• Where faking still works, and why data voids are the real exposure for small and new companies
• Four things to do this quarter, including the questions to ask any AI visibility vendor

Chapters:
[00:45] Intro
[01:57] Why Michael is happy about this
[03:20] How AI answers get built, and why corroboration is the target
[04:57] What changed in Anthropic's usage policy
[09:46] The 70-site network and how it got caught
[12:43] Platforms closing in from both sides
[15:31] How you'd even know your brand was affected
[18:15] Where faking still works: NewsGuard, Harvard, and Cornell Tech
[22:06] What a durable presence looks like
[24:27] Four things to do now
[31:25] The November 12 deadline
[33:06] Outro

Find a complete list of linked sources at https://victorious.com/podcast/anthropic-bans-fake-sources/

Sources:

Anthropic, 2026 Usage Policy update: https://www.anthropic.com/news/2026-usage-policy-update
Anthropic, Usage Policy: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/aup
Anthropic, Detecting and countering misuse of AI, September 2026: https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-september-2026
OpenAI, Disrupting AI-enabled false front operations: https://openai.com/index/disrupting-ai-enabled-false-front-operations/
Google Search spam policies: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies
Google Search ranking updates: https://developers.google.com/search/updates/ranking
Google, Using generative AI content: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/using-gen-ai-content
Google, Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content
Google, AI features and your website: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features
Reddit bot labeling and human verification (TechCrunch): https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/25/reddit-bots-new-human-verification-requirements/
NewsGuard, Pravda network audit: https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/moscow-based-global-news-network-infected-western-artificial-intelligence-russian-propaganda/
Alyukov et al., HKS Misinformation Review: https://misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/alyukov_chatbots_kremlin_disinformation_20251015.pdf
Zhang, Triedman, Shmatikov, Cornell Tech (preprint): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2605.24245
FTC final rule on fake reviews: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-rule-banning-fake-reviews-testimonials
Shared ChatGPT conversations in Search Console (GSQI): https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/chatgpt-links-in-google-search-console/

AI assistants decide whether to name your company based mostly on what other websites say about you. This week Michael lays out the three programs Victorious runs to get more of those websites talking, and the two things that have to be in place first.

In this episode:

* The three programs, broadest to most targeted: mention building, link building, citation outreach

* Why mentions beat links for AI visibility, per Ahrefs's 75,000-brand study

* The two foundations: an in-house expertise program, and co-occurrence

* Michael's case for paid placements, and the one word in Google's guidance it rests on

* How citation outreach starts: 20 to 50 buyer prompts and a monthly list of 50 pages

Find all the sources referenced in this episode on the Victorious website: https://victorious.com/podcast/mention-building-program/

Chapter Headings

0:00 Intro

1:32 News: Google says to review AI content before publishing

3:45 Google is paying some publishers for AI answers

4:56 AI Overviews on most branded searches

6:32 The three programs, defined

8:24 Why mentions beat links

9:18 Foundation one: an expertise program

13:07 Foundation two: co-occurrence

15:44 Mention building: nine ways to get on other sites

18:37 Press releases

20:53 The case for paid placements

23:25 Link building: the four-level review

26:07 Citation outreach

27:28 Four kinds of citations

28:45 Working the top 50 pages every month

Sources

Google Search Central, "Guidance on using generative AI content," updated October 1, 2026, https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/using-gen-ai-content

Search Engine Roundtable, "Google: Manually Factcheck & Review AI-Generated Content For Accuracy," October 1, 2026, https://www.seroundtable.com/google-updates-ai-content-guidelines-factcheck-review-42217.html

Search Engine Roundtable, "Google Paying ~100 Publishers 0.1% Of Ad Revenue In AI Contribution Pilot" (citing The Information, September 29, 2026), September 29, 2026, https://www.seroundtable.com/google-ai-contribution-pilot-01-percent-42188.html

DemandSphere, "AI Overviews on branded queries tripled in September," October 1, 2026, https://www.demandsphere.com/blog/branded-ai-overviews-september-2026/

Ahrefs, "AI Overviews Currently Appear for 83% of Branded Searches," October 2, 2026, https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-on-branded-searches/

Ahrefs, "An Analysis of AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors (75K Brands Studied)," https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overview-brand-correlation/

Victorious, Q2 2026 Quarterly Search Report, https://victorious.com/quarterly-search-report/

BrandMentions, 2026 AI visibility study (240 brands, 410,000 mentions), https://brandmentions.com/blog/?p=4770

Octolens, "How B2B SaaS Wins on Reddit: 522M Mention Analysis," 2026, https://octolens.com/reddit-b2b-saas-study

Muck Rack, "7 FAQs about the May 2026 update of 'What Is AI Reading?'," 2026, https://muckrack.com/blog/what-is-ai-reading-new-insights-may-faqs

Google Search Central, "Optimizing your website for generative AI features in Google Search," May 2026, https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide

When marketing leaders ask whether their technical SEO covers them for AI search, Michael's answer is mostly yes. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode run on Google's regular index, and most of a standard technical audit carries over to the other platforms. This week he sorts technical work into what to keep, what to start, and the short list of things to skip, including a training-bot decision that removes your own description of your company from what the next model learns.

In this episode

* Why indexability now means two things: a search index and a model's training data

* How OpenAI and Anthropic split their crawlers by job, and why blocking the training bot still costs you in answers that don't involve a search

* Which index each platform searches: Google's for AI Overviews and AI Mode, a mix led by OpenAI's own index for ChatGPT, Brave for Claude, and Bing for Copilot

* Two Google details teams miss: Google-Extended doesn't affect AI Overviews, and old nosnippet tags can keep pages out of them

* The six areas of a technical audit that carry over, and why schema facts also belong in visible text

* Why every important page should make sense as the only page an assistant reads

* How to block training narrowly by folder, and why robots.txt is a request your server may not enforce

* Why Michael recommends skipping LLMs.txt for most sites

* What could change: less live search, paid web search, agents that read pages visually, and agentic checkout

* The order to work through it with your team

Chapters

[00:00:00] Intro

[00:02:26] This week in search: Google's September 2026 spam update, Cloudflare's AI crawler defaults, Google's Web Search Service API docs disappear

[00:05:33] Does your technical SEO cover AI search?

[00:06:04] Keep, start, stop

[00:07:33] Crawlability and the two kinds of indexability

[00:09:31] Separate bots for training and search

[00:10:32] AI Overviews and AI Mode: Google-Extended and snippet controls

[00:12:11] ChatGPT's own search index

[00:14:13] Claude, Brave, and Copilot

[00:15:04] What to do for each platform

[00:17:00] Keep: the six areas of a technical audit

[00:17:54] Site architecture and internal linking

[00:20:16] What your server logs can tell you

[00:20:42] Rendering and page speed

[00:22:00] Structured data

[00:23:47] Start: make every page make sense on its own

[00:25:42] Start: make crawler decisions on purpose

[00:28:40] Blocking training narrowly

[00:29:12] Robots.txt is a request

[00:30:58] Stop: LLMs.txt

[00:33:46] Every black hat tactic was once white hat

[00:34:38] What could change

[00:39:13] Where to start with your team

Find all the resources from this episode on our website.

Sources

Search Engine Journal, "Google Rolls Out September 2026 Spam Update Globally," Sept. 2026, searchenginejournal.com/google-september-2026-spam-update/590828/

The Next Web, "Cloudflare gives AI crawlers a September deadline: pay publishers or get blocked," July 2, 2026, thenextweb.com/news/cloudflare-block-ai-crawlers-pay-publishers

Google Search Central, "AI features and your website," developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features

OpenAI, "Overview of OpenAI Crawlers," platform.openai.com/docs/bots

Peec AI, "ChatGPT built its own search index," Sept. 2026, peec.ai/blog/chatgpt-built-its-own-search-index

HasData, "AI Crawler Block Index," hasdata.com/blog/ai-crawler-block-index

Forrester, "What It Means That The Leader In 'Agentic Commerce' Just Pulled Back," March 2026, forrester.com/blogs/what-it-means-that-the-leader-in-agentic-commerce-just-pulled-back

For most of the last decade, brand was the marketing line item hardest to defend, because there's no click to track when a buyer arrives already knowing who you are. AI search changes that math. An assistant reads your website, your listings, your reviews, and every page that mentions you in passing, hands the buyer one summary, and decides whether to name you at all. This week Michael connects brand entity work to the brand building marketers already know how to do, then gets practical: settle what your company is best at, make every page you control say it, cut the content that says something else, and get other sites to repeat it.

In this episode:

* What a brand entity is: your company as a thing AI systems can identify, the facts attached to it, and the link between your brand and your subjects that gets you named
* Why brand work is easier to defend now, with Airbnb's 2020 marketing cut as the example
* How AI systems compress weeks of buyer research into one description, and what happens when a forgotten directory listing or a passing newspaper mention gets it wrong
* Using Jim Collins' hedgehog concept to pick the handful of subjects you want to be known for
* Why publishing outside those subjects confuses AI systems about what you do, and what happened to HubSpot's and ClickUp's off-subject traffic
* How to audit your site with Search Console and GA data, and why a human should tag every page on or off subject before anything gets deleted
* What the homepage, about page, case studies, and team page need to say, plus a brand block at the end of every post
* Organization schema, sameAs, and Wikidata, and why schema won't fix a page that doesn't say who you are
* Mention building versus link building, and the order Michael recommends: fix the profiles you own, claim the ones you don't have, then go after earned coverage
* How long changes take to show up on each platform, and why tracking should start the day the work does

Find all the sources referenced in this episode at http://victorious.com/podcast/brand-entity/

Chapters:
[00:00:00] This week in search: Comscore's AI assistant share data, Google tests AI Mode links in AI Overviews and Dive Deeper in Discover, GBP spam review alerts
[00:00:00] Brand was the hardest line item to defend
[00:00:00] Airbnb's 2020 marketing cut
[00:00:00] What a brand entity is: the who and the what
[00:00:00] Buyers now start with a chatbot
[00:00:00] How AI systems assemble one description of your company
[00:00:00] Wolf River Electric vs. Google
[00:00:00] The hedgehog concept and your short list of subjects
[00:00:00] The stop-doing list
[00:00:00] Off-subject content confuses AI systems: HubSpot and ClickUp
[00:00:00] Auditing your site: keep, combine, remove, improve
[00:00:00] Pruning risks: IBM and CNET
[00:00:00] Homepage, about page, case studies, team page
[00:00:00] A brand block on every post
[00:00:00] Organization schema, sameAs, and Wikidata
[00:00:00] Mention building and co-occurrence
[00:00:00] Fix what's wrong, claim what's missing, then earn coverage
[00:00:00] How long changes take to show up
[00:00:00] Pulling it together

Sources:
Ahrefs, "An Analysis of AI Overview Brand Visibility Factors (75K Brands Studied)," ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overview-brand-correlation/
Semrush, "How We Are Using Semrush to Drive LLM Visibility," Oct. 2025, semrush.com/blog/how-we-are-using-semrush-to-drive-llm-visibility/
Reason, "Large Libel Models: Small Business Sues Google, Claiming AI Overview in Searches Hallucinated Attorney General Lawsuit," June 11, 2025, reason.com/volokh/2025/06/11/large-libel-models-small-business-sues-google-claiming-ai-overview-in-searches-hallucinated-attorney-general-lawsuit/
Jim Collins, Good to Great (2001)

For 15 years, marketing measurement got more precise every year. AI search is moving the other way. An assistant's recommendation happens in a conversation you can't see, and no platform will tell you what was asked. Michael closes out our four-part series on building a full-funnel AI search strategy with the measurement layer: which numbers you can get, why share of voice reads like a poll, and how to report to leadership that wants more certainty than the channel can give.

In this episode:

• Why AI assistants don't report like Search Console: the conversations are private, there's no site boundary to measure inside, and most assistants have no ad revenue riding on your click
• Hold the channel to the word-of-mouth bar. You can influence it, but you can't listen in
• The leading indicators from a prompt tracker: share of voice, mention rate, citation rate, and sentiment, by funnel stage and platform
• Share of voice is a sample, not a census, so your CEO's "we weren't in the answer" is one response in a poll
• The lagging indicators already in your stack: GA4's AI Assistant channel, organic conversion rate, direct traffic, branded search, and the how-did-you-hear-about-us field
• The monthly one-pager and quarterly narrative, labeled leading and lagging, with a note on what the report can't show

Chapter Headings
[00:00:00] Intro
[00:02:08] This week in search: GSC AI position counting will change
[00:03:49] Similarweb on how much AI-influenced traffic analytics can see
[00:05:14] Google pays publishers for AI answers inside Search Console
[00:07:02] Measurement is getting less precise as the channel grows
[00:09:21] Why AI assistants don't give you reporting
[00:11:55] The word-of-mouth bar
[00:13:44] Two groups of numbers: leading and lagging indicators
[00:20:10] Share of voice is a poll, not a census
[00:22:24] Mention rate, citation rate, and sentiment, by funnel stage
[00:25:23] Track platforms separately
[00:27:51] Check how your tool matches your brand name
[00:29:36] Lagging indicators: GA4, Search Console, and Merchant Center
[00:33:05] Direct traffic, branded search, and conversion rate
[00:35:47] The monthly one-pager
[00:38:12] The quarterly narrative
[00:40:42] Answering the executive who wants full attribution
[00:44:42] Pulling the series together

You can find the transcript and all the resources on the episode page:
https://victorious.com/podcast/full-funnel-measurement/

Sources
Search Engine Roundtable, "Google: Google Search Console AI Position Reporting Will Evolve Over Time," September 16, 2026, seroundtable.com/google-search-console-ai-reporting-change-42099.html
Similarweb, "Being Recommended in AI Makes Users 2.5x More Likely to Visit Your Site," June 2026, similarweb.com/blog/insights/ai-news/ai-visibility-downstream-impact/
Digiday, "Google rolls out pay-per-value AI licensing program to publishers," September 14, 2026, digiday.com/media/google-rolls-out-pay-value-ai-licensing-program-to-publishers/
Forbes Business Council, "CMOs Say Teams Know How To Win AI Search, Few Have Proof," June 1, 2026, forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinesscouncil/2026/06/01/cmos-say-teams-know-how-to-win-ai-search-few-have-proof/
Victorious, Q2 2026 AI search research, victorious.com/quarterly-search-report/
The Search Signal, "Building an AI Search Strategy, Part 1: The Infrastructure," youtu.be/WW8qIH1XpQc
The Search Signal, "How To Build An AI Search Strategy, Part 2: Top-of-Funnel Content," victorious.com/podcast/full-funnel-tofu/
The Search Signal, "How To Build An AI Search Strategy, Part 3: Bottom-of-Funnel Mentions," victorious.com/podcast/full-funnel-bofu/

Ranking well and earning citations builds AI systems' trust in your company, but it doesn't get you recommended. This week Michael covers part three of our four-part series on building a full-funnel AI search strategy: what actually decides whether your company's name shows up when someone asks an AI system who to hire. According to Victorious's own research, it has little to do with your website's rankings or traffic. It comes down to how often the rest of the internet mentions your name.

What you'll hear in this episode:

• Why being a trusted authority, the job of part two's informational content, makes your company a candidate and not the pick, and how wide that gap actually is
• What predicts whether AI systems name your company: the number of other sites linking to and mentioning you, not your own search performance or your Knowledge Graph entry
• Two mention variables that barely move the needle: whether the mention includes a link, and how authoritative the mentioning site is
• Why co-occurrence, showing up on pages about your category, is what actually builds the association AI systems rely on
• How to build a bottom-of-funnel outreach list from the commercial and transactional prompts you're already tracking
• The four types of sites that mention companies in your category, and why the approach for reaching each one is different
• Five ways to ask for a mention, and why Michael thinks a paid placement counts the same as an earned one
• What your bottom-of-funnel web pages are for once the mention has already done the persuading

Chapter Headings

0:00 Intro
1:46 This week in search: Google's AI Mode bug

3:58 Google tests paid ads inside AI Mode

5:37 Google's EU search changes under the DMA

8:19 Catching up on part two, and today's question

9:57 Why being known and being recommended aren't the same

12:07 Citation rate vs. mention rate, defined

13:14 What actually predicts a brand mention

16:17 Co-occurrence: why context beats authority

17:46 Building your outreach list from tracked prompts

23:41 The four types of sites that mention your competitors

27:38 Five ways to ask for a mention

34:25 Five routes to raise your mention rate across the web

39:29 The case for paid placements

41:02 Finding more targets beyond your prompt audit

43:45 What your bottom-of-funnel pages are actually for

45:47 Pulling the series together

You'll find all the sources mentioned in this episode on our website:
https://victorious.com/podcast/full-funnel-bofu/

Sources
Search Engine Land, "Google to fix citation bug with Gemini 3.8 Flash in AI Mode," September 4, 2026, https://searchengineland.com/google-to-fix-citation-bug-with-gemini-3-8-flash-in-ai-mode-486892

Search Engine Land, "Google tests traditional Search campaigns in AI Mode," September 7, 2026, https://searchengineland.com/google-tests-traditional-search-campaigns-in-ai-mode-487199

Search Engine Land, "Google says DMA changes in EU resulted in worse degradation of search quality ever," September 8, 2026, https://searchengineland.com/google-says-dma-changes-in-eu-resulted-in-worse-degradation-of-search-quality-ever-487340 Victorious, Q2 2026 AI search research (150-brand study on citation and mention rates), https://victorious.com/quarterly-search-report/

The Search Signal, "How To Build An AI Search Strategy, Part 2: Top-of-Funnel Content," https://victorious.com/podcast/full-funnel-tofu/

The Search Signal, "How To Future-Proof Your Search Strategy For AI Mode" (AI-referred traffic conversion data, "the perfect click"), https://victorious.com/podcast/ai-mode/

For most of the history of SEO, the deal was simple: write a page, rank it, get the click. Today about two-thirds of Google searches end without one. This week, Michael argues informational content still has a job to do, just not the one it used to, and lays out how to write it for two readers: the human and the AI system reading right alongside them.

In this episode:

• Informational content now has two readers: humans, who still drive the majority of site traffic, and AI systems, which pull pages into their training corpus and into live retrieval whenever someone asks a question
• Why mass-producing AI content backfires: real cases from National Today, Business Insider, and Deloitte, and what all three have in common
• Adding real, verified statistics to a page improves its odds of being cited in an AI answer by up to 40%, per the Princeton GEO study
• Victorious’s quality bar for informational content: N-E-E-A-T-T, which adds notability and transparency to Google’s E-E-A-T
• Use AI to plan, structure, and draft, but it can’t supply your first-party data, your expertise, or accountability for what publishes under your name
• The order of operations before writing anything new: entity and prompt strategy, a content audit against it, a reoptimization list, then a content brief

Find all the sources referenced in this episode on the Victorious website: https://victorious.com/podcast/full-funnel-tofu/

[00:01:54] This week in search: Reddit's ChatGPT citations collapse
[00:03:37] Google's third spam update of 2026
[00:05:15] ChatGPT expands paid advertising
[00:07:18] Catching up from part one: entities, anchor pages, and infrastructure
[00:09:33] Why informational content still matters when clicks are disappearing
[00:14:05] What happens when companies publish AI content at scale
[00:19:08] How AI systems read your content: chunked retrieval and the NEEATT framework
[00:26:23] What AI can't do: the human layer
[00:28:12] A framework for auditing and building content that earns citations
[00:40:34] Building today's authority for tomorrow's pipeline

Search Engine Land, “Reddit’s ChatGPT Search citations fell 86% in four days: Report,” August 19, 2026, https://searchengineland.com/reddit-chatgpt-search-citations-fall-report-485473

Search Engine Land, “Google August 2026 spam update done rolling out,” August 21, 2026, https://searchengineland.com/google-august-2026-spam-update-done-rolling-out-485471

Search Engine Land, “ChatGPT Ads are expanding to 31 European countries,” August 19, 2026, https://searchengineland.com/chatgpt-ads-are-expanding-to-31-european-countries-485468

Search Engine Land, “ChatGPT Ads adds automated bidding, platform targeting,” August 24, 2026, https://searchengineland.com/chatgpt-ads-adds-automated-bidding-platform-targeting-485707

SparkToro, “In 2026, Less than One Third of Google Searches Still Send a Click,” June 9, 2026, https://sparktoro.com/blog/in-2026-less-than-one-third-of-google-searches-still-send-a-click/

Axios, “Exclusive: AI writing hasn’t overwhelmed the web yet,” October 14, 2025, https://www.axios.com/2025/10/14/ai-generated-writing-humans

Ahrefs, “74% of New Webpages Include AI Content (Study of 900k Pages),” May 19, 2025, https://ahrefs.com/blog/what-percentage-of-new-content-is-ai-generated

GSQI (Glenn Gabe), “When ‘Mt. AI’ Crumbles, ChatGPT Can Follow [Case Study],” April 20, 2026, https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/when-mt-ai-crumbles-chatgpt-follows/

The Search Signal, Episode 10, “Building an AI Search Strategy, Part 1: The Infrastructure,” Wikidata section at 41:45, https://youtu.be/WW8qIH1XpQc?t=2505

AI systems answer at the entity level. They pick out the things in a question, then assemble an answer from what they have stored about those things and how they connect. Michael lays out what an entity strategy is, how you build one, and the two things that have to be true before any of it can work.

What you’ll hear in this episode:

• Why checking whether you appeared for one exact prompt tells you almost nothing
• What an entity is, and why AI systems assemble answers at that level instead of the page level
• The two ways AI systems get a brand wrong, and why the second one costs more
• Two checks you can run in a browser to see whether AI crawlers can read your site at all
• Where to start, and what to fix before you publish anything new

You can find all the resources for this episode at:
https://victorious.com/podcast/full-funnel-foundation/

0:00 Intro
1:18 This Week in Search: Microsoft Clarity Adds an AI Scrape-to-Referral Ratio

3:42 Shopify's Q2 Data: AI Referrals Up Almost 200%, and Converting Better

6:41 Google Research: Models Store Your Facts and Still Fail To Retrieve Them

9:05 Today's Topic: Building a Full-Funnel Strategy for AI Search

11:55 The Reframe: Search Used To Be Deterministic

14:19 Why Entities Are the Foundation

15:36 How AI Systems Get Your Brand Wrong

17:40 Building Your Entity List

20:37 Keywords, Anchor Pages, and Prompt Research

29:17 Can AI Reach Your Content? Rendering and Blocking

34:35 What You Declare About Yourself: Schema and Disambiguation

38:15 Getting Corroborated Off Your Own Site

40:55 Where To Start

Microsoft Clarity, “Microsoft Clarity adds AI Scrape-to-Referral Ratio insights report,” August 13, 2026 https://clarity.microsoft.com/blog/scrape-to-referral-insights/ 

Shopify, “AI referrals up 197%, but organic search still leads traffic,” August 13, 2026 https://www.shopify.com/enterprise/blog/ai-search-category-behavior 

Google Research, “Empty shelves or lost keys? Recall is the bottleneck for parametric factuality,” August 17, 2026 https://research.google/blog/empty-shelves-or-lost-keys-recall-is-the-bottleneck-for-parametric-factuality/ 

Vercel, in partnership with MERJ, “The Rise of the AI Crawler,” December 17, 2024 https://vercel.com/blog/the-rise-of-the-ai-crawler 

Cloudflare, “Your site, your rules: new AI traffic options for all customers,” July 1, 2026 https://blog.cloudflare.com/content-independence-day-ai-options/ 

Victorious, “Q2 2026 Quarterly Search Report, Findings 1 and 2,” July 2026 https://victorious.com/quarterly-search-report/ 

Google, “Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings,” May 16, 2012 https://blog.google/products/search/introducing-knowledge-graph-things-not/ 

Google is rebuilding search around AI Mode, and Michael Transon makes the case that it will become the default way people search. He walks through the evidence, from the rapid spread of AI Overviews to the rise of zero-click results, and explains why AI Mode's modest adoption numbers understate what's coming. Then he gets practical about preparing for it, laying out the four foundations that keep a brand visible on every Google surface and the specific numbers to track each month so you can watch the shift happen in your own data.

CHAPTERS

0:32 Search news: Google tests a sign-in wall and new homepage AI buttons

2:43 Today's topic: Google's AI Mode and the future of search

4:52 AI Overviews: from 30% to nearly 50% of queries in a year

6:40 Zero-click searches reach almost 70%

8:45 AI Overviews move onto commercial keywords

10:08 The "perfect click": AI-referred traffic converts at 3x

10:39 What AI Overviews do to a #1 ranking

12:07 What AI Mode is and how it differs from AI Overviews

14:29 Every AI Overview is now a doorway into AI Mode

16:11 Adoption numbers, and what they can't tell you

18:57 Michael's prediction for where Google is headed

20:55 The four foundations that carry across every search surface

28:30 How AI Mode behaves differently, and what it means for your content

33:20 Measuring AI Mode: visibility and traffic are separate systems

35:12 The four numbers to record every month

39:56 The one thing to take away from this episode

RESOURCES
Find links to everything on the episode page:
https://victorious.com/podcast/ai-mode/

Google tests forcing sign-in for more search results (Search Engine Land): https://searchengineland.com/google-search-testing-forcing-searchers-to-sign-in-to-get-more-search-results-484223

New AI buttons on Google's homepage (Search Engine Roundtable): https://www.seroundtable.com/google-home-page-ai-features-41842.html

AI Overviews at the one-year mark (BrightEdge): https://www.brightedge.com/resources/weekly-ai-search-insights/ai-overviews-one-year-presence-size-citing

Less than one-third of Google searches still send a click (SparkToro): https://sparktoro.com/blog/in-2026-less-than-one-third-of-google-searches-still-send-a-click/

AI Overviews are expanding across commercial search (Semrush): https://www.semrush.com/blog/ai-overviews-commercial-search-study/

AI traffic converts at 3x the rate of other channels (Microsoft Clarity): https://clarity.microsoft.com/blog/ai-traffic-converts-at-3x-the-rate-of-other-channels-study/

Click loss when an AI Overview appears (Ahrefs): https://ahrefs.com/blog/?p=195053

How AI Mode is changing the way people search (Google): https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/search/ai-mode-us-insights/

The 2026 Generative AI Landscape Report (Similarweb): https://www.similarweb.com/corp/reports/2026-generative-ai-landscape/

Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings, including AI Mode's 1B+ monthly users: https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/message-ceo/alphabet-earnings-q2-2026/

Google.com is now AI Mode's #2 cited domain (Profound): https://www.tryprofound.com/blog/google-com-is-now-ai-mode-s-2-cited-domain

Google's AI features documentation for site owners: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features

The Search Signal is hosted by Michael Transon, founder and CEO of Victorious, and brings marketers research-backed guidance on what's happening in search. New episodes weekly. If this one helped, leave a review and hit follow so the next episode finds you.