Growth Intelligence Brief - #1

Today: The future of AI Search, tariffs and e-commerce, SEO landscape check, AI-automated workflows

Welcome to another Growth Intelligence Brief, where organic growth leaders discover what matters—getting insights into the bigger picture and guidance on how to stay ahead of the competition.

This is a new format I’m testing based on many feedback sessions with premium subscribers. The most common theme was that there is not enough time to read the Deep Dives, so I’m hoping to remedy that by cutting them down to their essence in an easily skimmable and recognizable format. Free subscribers can read the first top story only, Premium subscribers obviously get the full Brief. Please leave your feedback in the comments so I can calibrate. And, as always, thank you.

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Here’s what’s covered this week:

• Google (AI) Search becomes more personalized, conversational, and multi-modal

• AI overviews reduce CTRs by ⅓

• Temu and Shein raise prices and slash ad spend

• SEO landscape check: Dating, local, and events are up; freelance marketplaces, jobs and delivery sites are down

• Why Match and Tinder are growing

• Prediction tracker: Will teams use AI-automated workflows by default?

• Content snacks

Google (AI) Search becomes more personalized, conversational and multi-modal

In an interview with the Financial Times, Google’s Head of Search, Liz Reid, answers questions about AI Overviews.

Why this news matters:

Search changes drastically. These AI Overview insights come straight from the leader working on them.

Here’s what happened:

In the interview, Reid says:

• Google shows AI Overviews only when it thinks they have net value over the rest of the search results

• People ask a lot more questions and more often in combination with images

• Google experiments more with conversational answers (AI Mode)

• AI Overviews are meant to be an addition to classic search results

• Traffic is of higher quality

My take on this:

Take the answers with a grain of salt. This interview is very favorable toward Google’s narrative. Reid got lowball after lowball. And yet, I wouldn’t dismiss all of the statements.

Some are actually quite interesting.

Where I don’t believe Reid is how passive Google is about showing AI Overviews:

In order to show AI Overviews, we have to believe the response is high quality [and] is it a net value over the rest of the search results? If we think the rest of the search results page provides the answer, then we don’t feel an obligation to respond.

I’ve seen too many examples and too much data to know that this is not true.

Where I do believe Reid is that people ask more questions and traffic is of higher quality.

I’ve seen the data. It also makes sense to me that AI Overviews and AI Mode could benefit from personalization, multi-modal interactions, and conversations:

It will get more personalised over time, not just in the results, but in how you learn well. Are you somebody who learns well with videos or are you someone who prefers text?

Here’s what to do:

Don’t settle on a playbook yet (or an acronym for the “new SEO”).

Things keep changing, so test a lot, lower your expectations, and don’t fall in love with a narrative.