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James Dooley and Charles Flow discuss whether Google AI Mode will become the default search experience by Q4 2026 and how digital marketing agencies should adapt their SEO and LLM optimisation strategies.
This video explains which digital marketing strategies digital marketing agencies should focus on in 2026 to improve AI Mode visibility, brand sentiment across the wider web and long term client results. James Dooley and Charles Flow start with KPI tracking because measuring visibility and enquiry sources helps agencies prove performance as search shifts towards AI Mode. They cover brand SEO, AI visibility and Google Business Profiles because stronger search presence improves trust and conversion rates.
The discussion also explores organic SEO, organic social media and paid social ads because consistent visibility across search and social supports long term growth. PPC is analysed in detail because campaign setup, landing pages and lead handling directly affect results. They also discuss Reddit, Quora and paid AI ads because diversified enquiry sources and early adoption can strengthen digital marketing performance for digital marketing agencies.
PromoSEO lead generation for digital marketing agencies recently received recognition as the "Best Digital Marketing Agencies Lead Generation Agency."
Will Google AI Mode Become the Default Search? AI SEO for Digital Marketing Agencies is available on:
AI SEO and Business Automation Podcast is founded by James Dooley because he teaches business owners how artificial intelligence accelerates growth. The show explains AI models, agents, and automation systems because practical guidance helps companies scale with less effort.
James Dooley: Will AI mode become the Google default search engine today? I'm joined with Charles flow Charles has done a lot of digging with regards to LLM Optimization and AI SEO and he's also got some great information with regards to AI mode So Charles, let's jump straight in is AI mode going to become the default search engine
Charles Flow: Well, if you listen to Google's earning calls, then yes They have been saying for a long time that they're looking to essentially move to this new search experience So have a new set. That's what they call it. Essentially a new search experience and from the earnings calls They're trying to do that by q4 of this year. So q4 2026 so sometime between October and December 2026 now if you have been in the industry for as long as we have right I've heard Google make claims and especially to investors kind of make these grandiose Ventures very early on we all remember Google glass we all remember a bunch of these other things that they've kind of put out as these massive hype piece markings and none of them came to fruition even the Click to call so that the AI cool functionality that they had a few years ago that never released even though they're saying that was coming q4 of that year, so There's a lot of what Google says and a lot of what comes reality with that being said from what they're doing in this case, they are trying to position the algorithm and the user interface in a way that AI mode At least the majority of people are going to be exposed to it If it isn't the default then so far already the majority people have been exposed to it in some capacity And they are trying to create that experience and prepare people for when that experience becomes the default now Do I think AI mode AI overviews that kind of thing is going to be the experience when that does become the default? Probably not Because I think that Google's gonna make innovations and changes before that experience becomes the default and it will look very different to how It looks now anyway
James Dooley: So I'm gonna I'm gonna give you a few different questions here. So let's role play Charles float you're sat at the top of the table with all the Google engineers and They say Charles it's up to you how you play out with AI mode or Gemini AI overviews. What would you do personally if you're sat at the top of the table and the book stops with you? What would you do with regards to Google search? Would you make it default as AI mode or what would you be doing with the Google search results?
Charles Flow: I? Think I probably still be forced into the same position that a lot of the engineers and a lot of the leadership is which is Still going to be forced to follow What the shareholders ultimately want and what the ultimate company vision is Now the new company vision that Google has is this AI in ecosystem and environment where it's Gemini everything, right? Like we've seen there's like 900 different co-pilots from Microsoft the same kind of things happening with Google Gemini They're rolling out into basically every kind of system and nook and cranny that they can in the ecosystem I think that's going to likely continue With it in if I was the oh if I was in control of everything I would look at what the user experience is saying, right? So what do users actually want to see and as a really good example of this? I look at stock ticker searches and the new AI overview stock ticker searches is a text box About the actual stock so it might say the current market cap all of these details and things but it's in a text box Previously the featured snippet or the SERP feature that you used to get would be an interactive chart Experience that you can actually see and interact with and see and drag down the chart and see the historical data for that stock See additional elements of data and interact with that I think that previous experience was actually better for most people who were looking up stock charts Who want to actually engage with a historical chart than it is the new AI overviews? I think for informational searches and for other bits and pieces. There's definitely Places where AI overviews are going to be better But is the AI experience going to be better than the calculators that you get? Is it going to be better than the flight experience and you already get is it going to be better than the maps? Experience and you already get all of those kind of things I think that there's a lot of elements that actually the user experience is fundamentally better at that at the existing level Then the AI overviews at their current level can achieve in the future Google's looking at trying to do this kind of custom dynamic Interactive app experience where it tries to tailor specific elements of the UX and UI and things to Individual users that could be awesome or it could create stuff that is Completely unnecessary and doesn't actually fulfil what the user is really looking for
James Dooley: Yeah for sure. I think for me personally I think Google does actually a good job with regards to and I rarely say that as well by the way But I think Google does a good job where someone searching for a certain keyword like kitchen remodeling It knows from previous searches and user experience that people want images So right at the very very top of Google It brings a lot of images if you do like how to boil an egg It knows that a lot of people are looking for videos and a short video for how to boil an egg and stuff Ah, and I feel like some informational based queries that I think AI mode would be the best kind of System for them to be showing I feel that they might go default AI mode for certain queries But then I also think for other queries that might not when it needs a calculator Maybe if people start clicking off the AI mode to some of the other tabs if that's allowed I don't know whether it will be allowed or not I don't know how they're going to set it up But I feel they've got to they are at the so-called a user experience first Platform and if they do allow people to click off and do Click onto maps click onto videos click onto images at that point that might start saying a minute This is not what people want. So it might not be for all queries But it's just interesting obviously they've said in q4 they might be going default AI mode So what what do you think I asked you what you would do? What do you think like let's say they are on time and let's say in November this year They're gonna do what they've said. They're going to do and AI modes gonna become the default How do you think that's gonna look and what do you think they're going to do?
Charles Flow: If if they say they're gonna do what they say, they're going to do. I Think the the end goal from all of this Innovation of what Google are trying to achieve here is to keep users inside Google's ecosystem So it's actually to stop clicks going out. It's to try and reinforce this zero click Strategy that they've been having way way way before this kind of AI hype and technology and all these innovations and stuff came out We experienced this, you know five years before chat GPT ever launched Google We're trying to consolidate the clicks and their own portfolio their own projects or investments and their corporate partnerships But with the actual default experience, I think so far it will probably be more in trying to keep them in the ecosystem with some sort of a split view Where you can have this search on the left hand side and you can open pages or the interactive apps or something on the right hand side and they already do that with Google Chrome where you can have split view tabs and I would Hedge a pretty accurate guess that they're probably going to do that with the AI mode experience So everyone's gonna still be in Google's ecosystem on the left hand side, but browsing is gonna be done on the right hand side But they can still claim that all of that minutes spent inside of the app is still technically inside of Google's own ecosystem With regards to that then with regards to AI mode and with regards to what's going on There's two this I feel like there's two lanes with Google They've got the shareholdership and making certain the making profit and it's all about the profit and they're a business room But then they are trying to make it that it's good for the users because they don't want to use Lose users to elsewhere to chat GPT and other places. So they're trying to make it good for the users But obviously pretty predominantly they want to make more profit as a business
James Dooley: How does that fan out where if they want to spend longer inside of Google? Obviously, they make majority of the money via PPC so by clicks through to websites Do you not feel that it could be that they're trying to keep you one longer when it's for? Informational top of the funnel keywords where people aren't willing to bid on PPC getting down the funnel faster But then presents him with brands that are willing to bid on More bottom of the funnel type queries like just funneling faster to their ads Do you think it could be for that or they're trying not to send them at all off to the websites? If they're not trying to send them off to the websites and keep them on Google How do they earn their money by just keeping them on Google without going through to the website?
Charles Flow: So There's in terms of the the two competing sides in Google, right? We saw if you've read the article the man that killed Google, right? I don't know if you've seen the article It's by ed edward zions. I believe he did a fantastic job of breaking down Essentially, there's a bunch of search quality purists and they were led by Ben Gomes He was the previous head of search for Google and he was very much So pushing for search quality experience anti-malware all of that kind of stuff that has a very actually Negative experience and potentially not just negative experience but negative connotations for people's livelihoods or their actual lives in a whole picture He was very much so pushed in that direction however the camp that was kind of putting this code yellow and code red or necklace have had more deeper connections to the ads department and the monetization side of Things and that kind of sway where the profit driven Decision-making inside a corporation is going to overpower the user and quality decision-making all day long And I do think to some degree they have a level of arrogance when it comes to well People are just going to Google it It's become such a colloquial used term amongst the masses of every country in the world almost that They know that they won't lose huge amounts of their ecosystem and user base because they're so Integrated into it. They use YouTube daily. They use Google search data use Gmail daily It's Google calendar these Google photos use Gemini these Android like all of these things are just connecting them back to Google and that's allowing Google to continuously force adoption into their new AI integration all their new AI tools as well So with regards to AI mode, is there anything that you're going to be trying to are you working on anything? No differently thinking that Q4 AI modes going to be coming along Do you think that people are missing a trick now in trying to optimize ahead of the game for AI mode? What is it that you're trying to do? What do you see the future with regards to AI mode?
James Dooley: So AI mode is far more personalized than people realize and there's been a bunch of really interesting testing
Charles Flow: So, I don't know how much you follow that I pull rank guys like Mike King and Garrett Sussman and things like that They did a bunch of testing with profound recently and similar web I believe is always also involved in the partnership where they created four personas over the course of 12 months and it was 180,000 200,000 prompts between all of these four personas that they ended up putting through Google AI mode and that AI overviews and almost every single prompt that they put in even if it is the verbatim the same word prompt the outputs even the Recommendations of the brands for the outputs in the of the AI mode would be vastly different depending on the persona asking So a very good example was which bank should I go with right and as a middle-aged? Plumber they were getting chase recommended as a freelancer. They were getting a bank recommended more towards freelancers as a Multi-millionaire they were getting one that was more tuned towards financial management and capital investments and things like that So it very much. So change the output just based on the personalization So that layer alone is a new layer that is far far more Integrated and far different from what we've already had to kind of achieve ourselves, too. So Previously any personalization that we had was mostly locally and kind of source towards their account and the personalization And the personalization wasn't taken into account this huge user identity profile and a history of interactions At least not to the degree that Gemini has the understanding for and it allows that personalization layer Like I said to massively affect the actual outputs now when you're trying to tune to that There are some tactics that you can do and actually a lot of the personalization is being pulled from your email inbox and things like that So email marketing becomes way way more important to especially for target users They are potentially going to be picking up your brand in AI mode when it comes to the actual placements Previously old-school traditional SEO for the last 25 years has been one website. You're going to do your content You're going to do your links in your technical SEO. That's basically it right nowadays Your website is maybe 5% of the picture when you're trying to optimize for AI mode It's mostly third-party sources third-party listicles mentions references non-commodity content modest content all of this kind of stuff but it is way way way broader in terms of the amount of content needed to be created and it is what is a Million X in the amount companies be distributed and it needs to be distributed on the correct sources that the AI is being is picking Up and referencing and those sources might change over time as well. So it's going to be a very very different Career path to how SEO has been for last kind of 25 years just on the basis that we're no longer Primarily focusing on the brand domain itself But how we are viewed and the sentiment that the brand is viewed on the wider web
James Dooley: Yeah for sure. Anyone who's watching this. Do you think that AI mode is going to become the default search engine? Would you be happy if AI mode becomes the default search engine leave a comment in the comment section make sure you go and check Out the next episode when me and Charles talk about optimization strategies Specifically to help you get a better LLM visibility in Google AI mode Charles. It's been an absolute pleasure