97F Reacts: Google I/O 2026 and What It Actually Means for Marketers

I watched the Google I/O video and the thing that hit me wasn't the AI. It was the intent. Google is building a world where you never have to leave Google. Want to know what bands are on tour? They'll tell you. You don't need Bandsintown. You don't need Ticketmaster's blog. You just... stay. So if all we're doing is offering up content for Google to take and keep within its own platform, then we have to create the easiest path for conversion once users leave. If Google will tell you what bands are on tour, the sites that gave Google that information need to be super optimized to get users to buy tickets.

That's exactly it. And we'll need to start optimizing conversion paths for Google agents to make purchases too when the time comes.

Totally, because that will come. Users will want to convert within Google as well.

I wonder how fast people will actually adopt these changes though. For us in the industry these things are easy to implement, but will the average user want to know how to set up agents?

I think we're probably a full year before normal users just embrace the new search experience entirely. But that year is going to go fast.

Traditional SEO has always focused on text-based signals like H1s, title tags, and keyword placement. With multimodal search, visual assets and files are now active entry points for queries. Are they marked with alt text? Are they stock images or something unique? It's now so much more than just the text on the website. And I'm really curious how search agents will impact B2B clients. A lot of our clients have really long, complex buying cycles and we need to think through exactly how these background agents will alter that research and consideration phase.

The stat that reframes everything: AI Mode just hit a billion users and queries are at an all-time high. The channel isn't shrinking, the format is changing. SEOs who are panicking about rankings are asking the wrong question. The new question is: are you getting cited? That's where visibility lives now.

Tracking specific AI prompts is too narrow. You can't win a prompt, you have to own an entire topic. We need to ensure our brand sentiment reflects our target audience so we are the solution offered when a user is ready to leave the Google interface.

Local SEO and e-commerce are going to take the biggest hit in terms of conversions. I can see a lot of people utilizing the option of having Google call a business on your behalf and that's going to skew historical data in a big way. This also makes the case for clients to have as much product information on their site as possible. I know a lot of clients prefer not to list pricing because they want the phone call. But not having that information could keep you from being surfaced in this new format. Now it seems like the more info, the better.

The buyer's journey I mapped out two years ago is already obsolete. Agentic booking, agentic shopping, AI-powered search agents, together they collapse the funnel in ways I wasn't prepared for. The top of the funnel is now largely invisible, handled by agents. Brands need to show up at the moment of synthesis, when the AI is deciding what to recommend. What does your checkout look like to a machine? That's the new CRO question.

It always comes back to conversion. Google can have the traffic. But the moment a user, or their agent, decides to act, that moment still belongs to whoever is ready for them.

The platform changed. The principle didn't.