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Don’t fight the bots. Lure them in. |
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We are standing at the threshold of a global shift. Not a crash. Not another pandemic. It's a transformation in the very fabric of the internet. As big a shift as mobile and social were - and just as inevitable.
The Agentic Web means you no longer sell only to people. You sell to the AI assistants - agents that take action: they search, compare, book, and buy on behalf of your customers. These aren’t chatbots. They’re decision-makers. Trusted proxies. And soon, they’ll be the market.
For over a decade, we were told: write for users, not bots. We published the best pages. We A/B tested. We tweaked. We persuaded. All for humans.
In fact, we built our websites to keep machines out - CAPTCHAs, blockers, puzzles. But now the machines are the users. The curators. The critics. The trusted gatekeepers.
It’s no longer about optimising for people alone - it’s about optimising for the agents they trust. And those agents are here now - already making purchasing decisions in early real-world tests. The capability exists today, and the adoption curve will be incredibly fast - more like LLMs than mobile.
These assistants aren’t swayed by clever copy or trendy design. They want strong signals like proof. Evidence. Structure. Integrity.
The question is simple. When AI agents recommend, will they choose you?
Not sure where to start? We’re all figuring this out together - but a good first step is running real-world agent tests.
Like user testing, but for the assistants your customers already trust. Give them scenarios on your site - for example, ask ChatGPT's agent mode to find something that you offer and submit an enquiry. See how you perform. Afterwards, ask: did they understand everything they came across? |
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Would an AI agent choose you? Let’s find out.
We’re running free AI Agent User Tests for 50 subscriber brands.
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• Snapshot report: See how you and up to 5 competitors appear in AI agent recommendations.
• Scenario tests: Discover how well your site serves assistants in real-world tasks.
• Benchmarking webinar invite: Gain aggregated, cross-industry insights - who’s visible, who’s missing, and which patterns are emerging.
We’re currently onboarding a small group of brands to refine the methodology and for benchmarking. If you’d like your brand to be part of the study, just use our Contact Us page and mention AI Agent User Tests in your message.
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Alongside many successful tests, we’ve seen agents hesitate, get distracted, browse the wrong pages, or miss key details customers care about. |
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How AI is changing search behaviours on Nielsen Norman Group
By Kate Moran, Maria Rosala and Josh Brown
This new study shows that AI is reshaping search without replacing it. People still default to Google, but AI Overviews now grab attention and cut website clicks. At the same time, Gemini and ChatGPT are gaining ground through habit and convenience. The future visibility depends on being cited in AI answers, not just ranking in search results.
AI search and JavaScript rendering on GSQi
By Glenn Gabe
A practical case study showing how client-side rendering breaks visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. If your site relies heavily on JavaScript, AI agents may not “see” you, leading to missed opportunities in AI search. Technical SEO matters more than ever. For brands with JS-heavy sites: test your site now or risk being invisible in the AI search era.
GPT-5 made SEO irreplaceable on Dejan Marketing
By Dan Petrovic
Far from killing SEO, GPT-5 reinforces its importance. AI systems still depend on structured, optimised, and authoritative content to generate answers. For those being told to “pivot to AI,” this is a reminder: SEO isn’t obsolete - it’s the foundation AI relies on, and still a driver of growth.
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Google confirms AI content must be human reviewed
Interview on Search Central Live, covered by Roger Montti on SEJ
Google’s Gary Illyes clarified that AI-generated content is fine for search, but only if it’s accurate, original, and human curated. In other words: AI can speed things up, but brands still need editorial oversight to avoid errors and sameness. He also noted AI Overviews and AI Mode run on custom Gemini models grounded in Google’s search index, not live web fetches.
Sam Altman on the AI bubble on The Verge
Dinner with Sam Altman by Alex Heath
OpenAI’s CEO admits we’re in an AI bubble - valuations are overheated, some startups will get “burned,” but the long-term payoff will still be huge. He also acknowledged missteps in GPT-5’s rollout, promising lessons learned as usage surges. Altman’s bigger play? Trillions for data centers, bets on consumer hardware, and even talk of brain-computer interfaces. AI isn’t slowing down - the infrastructure is only scaling up.
China’s SEO reality check on Advanced Web Ranking
Interview with Natalia Witczyk, interviewed by Gianluca Fiorelli,
The picture of international SEO looks very different from the Google-first world most readers know. Baidu is ad-heavy, rife with black-hat tactics, and only works in Mandarin. WeChat is where people actually discover brands and services. Listen to this excellent interview to find out Chinese companies heading abroad often look spammy, why Google’s reliance on AI translations risks pushing English further into dominance, and how International SEO will morph into International UX.
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Public Company Commentary on SEO and AI in 2025 on Detailed.com
By Glen Allsopp
A live reference to show how big businesses are talking about these shifts - super useful because it validates that SEO and AI disruption aren’t just niche industry chatter, they’re boardroom-level concerns.
How to select your preferred sources in Top Stories in Search on Google's Blog
By Duncan Osborn
In the US and India, Google now lets people pick which publishers they want to see in the Top Stories carousel. Think of it like curating your own newsstand - or subscribing to a channel on YouTube so it always shows up first. For now it’s just for publishers, not brands, but it’s a peek at how search might get more personal in the future.
Excel gets AI formulas on the Microsoft 365 Insider blog
By Catherine Pidgeon
Excel now has a new =COPILOT() function that lets you drop AI prompts straight into your spreadsheets. you can ask Copilot to summarise survey responses, classify customer feedback, generate SEO keyword lists, or even rewrite copy - all inside the grid. Spreadsheets aren’t just for numbers anymore, they’re now live AI workspaces.
Meta rolls out AI voice translations on TechCrunch
By Sarah Perez
Your reels can now talk in Spanish (or English) - in your own voice. AI dubs your content and even lip-syncs it so it looks natural. It’s like having a built-in translator for your social feed. For now it’s just English ↔ Spanish, but more languages are on the way.
OpenAI adds Google Connectors in ChatGPT on Open AI
ChatGPT just plugged into Google. With new “connectors,” you can link ChatGPT to Google Drive, Gmail, and more - letting it pull in your files, draft emails, or surface info without copy-pasting. It’s another step toward AI as your universal work hub.
Google vs ChatGPT
By Ahrefs
Updated yesterday, Ahrefs crunched data from 44K sites to compare referral traffic from Google and ChatGPT. The gap is huge: Google drives 41.9% of traffic, while ChatGPT sits at just 0.19%. But ChatGPT traffic is growing 3.8x faster than Google’s. If AI referrals keep scaling, the brands optimising for them early will be the ones to capture outsized gains.
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Michael Chidzey, Editor of The Signal
For those who don’t know me... I’m the founder of Good Signals, an internet marketing agency based in London.
I built my very first website in ’98. It was pretty basic compared to today’s standards, but I loved it - and I loved that I was able to share it with a small group of engaged visitors who interacted with it almost daily. That was probably the best introduction I could have ever had to the web and online marketing.
I became the person friends would turn to when they needed help growing their website traffic or improving its performance. And, as with anything, the more you do it, the better you get. Since then, I’ve always built or worked on websites and in online marketing.
At Good Signals, I’ve worked on everything from launching websites for startups and scaling e-commerce stores to managing complex sites for large organisations such as universities and charities. No matter the project, the goal has always been the same: helping people grow their businesses online in new and exciting ways. |
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