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Everybody Loves Ray-Bans (Hopes Mark Zuckerberg)

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​From the search bar to your customer’s line of sight​
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Ten years ago, Google Glass flopped. Too early, too awkward, too gimmicky.
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This week, Mark Zuckerberg tried again. At Meta Connect, he unveiled the new Ray-Ban Display glasses. And the first reviews are… surprisingly positive.
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The pitch this time isn’t “cool tech on your face.” It’s AI. Meta is framing Ray-Bans as the gateway to personal superintelligence - an assistant that sees what you see, hears what you hear, and answers in real time. His line? They’ll make you feel more present than staring at your phone.
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And he’s not wrong about the direction. This week, Google launched Search Live in the U.S., letting people point their phone camera, ask a question, and get an instant AI answer. Different companies, same idea: discovery going visual, hands-free, and in the moment.
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As most of you know, I’m a big fan of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) - I even recorded a full working day inside VR last year. And while I’m not convinced this new device will spark Alexa-level mass adoption, it shows how far we’ve come since Google Glass. We’re moving from gimmick to something people might actually use and wear.
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What's fascinating is how discovery is moving from the search bar to your customer’s line of sight.

• Products: When someone looks at your brand and asks their AI, “Should I buy this?”, reviews and reputation will decide if you’re the answer - or if a competitor is.

• Discovery goes live: Not walls of text, but in-the-moment guidance: in-store, at events, right in front of your product.

• Signals: Structured data, trusted content, and authority signals become critical - these are the cues AI will rely on when surfacing answers.

• Presence = the new clicks: In the future it will be about being visible in the moment: ads, branded environments, and live experiences in both physical and virtual spaces.

So what does this all mean for us?

Although there are some exciting opportunities for brands in AR and VR today, you don’t need to jump straight in. The same groundwork applies today:

• Build trust signals - reviews, ratings, and publish the best content and answers on the internet.

• Get your structured data in order - make it easy for machines to understand your data.

• Test voice and camera search in Google’s new tools.

These are the same signals AI will rely on in glasses tomorrow - and they’ll serve you well in AI and search today.

Watch the launch at Meta Connect and read more here:
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👉 BBC News - Facebook owner unveils new AI-powered smart glasses​
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👉 The Verge - I regret to inform you Meta’s new smart glasses are the best I’ve ever tried​
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👉 The Kewyord - 5 ways to get real-time help by going Live with Search​
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Meanwhile, elsewhere this week in search and AI...
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​Cloudflare gives publishers a way to block AI - but will Google listen?​
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​Cloudflare’s new Content Signals Policy adds fresh directives to the familiar robots.txt file, letting sites say yes to search but no to AI Overviews or model training - the first real tool publishers have had to draw that line. The catch? robots.txt is voluntary, and Google, OpenAI, and others haven’t said if they’ll honour it. If this becomes the new norm, we’ll all face a tough call: protect our content and risk losing visibility, or stay open and risk our brands being repurposed without credit in the AI era.

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👉 Search Engine Land – Cloudflare offers way to block AI Overviews – will Google comply?​
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👉 The Cloudflare Blog - Giving users choice with Cloudflare’s new Content Signals Policy​

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This could reset the rules of engagement for analytics, ads, and personalisation in Europe​
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The EU is preparing reforms to its 2009 cookie consent rules, which created the hated pop-up banners. Options include browser-level consent (set once, applied everywhere) or broader exemptions (e.g., simple analytics). Although we'll cheer smoother UX and better engagement, but any reform will intersect with GDPR and the upcoming Digital Fairness Act (2026), which targets adtech, personalisation, and manipulative design. Translation: fewer pop-ups may come with stricter limits on tracking and attribution.
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👉 Politico - Europe’s cookie law messed up the internet. Brussels wants to fix it.​

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Google’s August spam update wraps up​
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Google has confirmed the August 2025 spam update is complete after a 27-day global rollout. SISTRIX data shows it was a penalty-only sweep: spammy domains, hacked sites, and irrelevant pages lost visibility, but there were no big winners. Most legitimate sites saw little change. If your traffic dropped, review compliance with Google’s spam policies - recovery depends on fixing issues, not quick hacks.

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👉 Google Search Status Dashboard​
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👉 Sistrix Blog - August 2025 Spam Update: Visibility Data, Analysis, and Background​
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👉 Search Engine Journal - Google Confirms August Spam Update Is Complete​
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👉 Search Engine Roundtable - Google's Wild August 2025 Spam Update Finished Rolling Out​

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AI “workslop” is killing productivity​
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New HBR research names a growing problem: workslop - AI-generated output that looks polished but lacks substance, dumping the real effort onto colleagues who must fix or redo it. Nearly 40% of U.S. employees say they’ve received workslop in the past month, costing big firms millions in wasted time. The takeaway is to not confuse output with impact. The ROI of AI comes from quality, not volume - and if workslop slips through to clients or customers, it doesn’t just waste time, it damages credibility.
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👉 Harvard Business Review - AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity​
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​AI Mode now speaks Spanish (but not yet in Spain 🇪🇸)​
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Google’s conversational AI search is rolling out globally in Spanish - but notably not in Spain or other major EU markets (yet). Spanish speakers worldwide can now use Gemini-powered AI Mode for natural-language Q&A, image uploads, and deeper search conversations. For brands, it’s another signal that AI search is spreading fast across languages.
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👉 The Keyword - Try AI Mode in Spanish today​
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👉 TechCrunch - Google’s AI Mode arrives in Spanish globally​

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Thinking of giving up on SEO because of AI? OpenAI isn’t.​
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OpenAI just posted a Growth - SEO, CRO & Web Strategy role to scale ChatGPT’s organic acquisition end-to-end (technical SEO, migrations, schema, programmatic SEO, CRO, dashboards). Translation: even the AI giant is doubling down on search, web, and experimentation, not replacing them. It also looks like they are planning a migration from OpenAI to ChatGPT.
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👉 OpenAI - Growth - SEO, CRO and Web Strategy​
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