Nobody wants to say it out loud, but the entire SEO industry is guessing right now. Not strategizing. Not optimizing. Guessing.
"All of these tools that are like, here's how you rank in AI overviews...we're really just guessing," says Marie Haynes, who studies AI patents and documentation daily. When someone at the bleeding edge of search research calls the tools worthless, that's not false modesty. That's reality.
Here's the proof: AI overviews change every two days, with 56% of the entities mentioned shifting each time. Your ranking report from Monday? Meaningless by Wednesday.
Meanwhile, conference attendance has gone through the roof. Not because people are learning, but because everyone's desperate for answers nobody has. "The top of the top, they know maybe 5% more than what most people know," notes 97th Floor CEO Paxton Gray. Everyone's hearing the same observations repeated because that's all anyone's got.
The Google DOJ trial exposed something critical: NavBoost and user signals aren't just ranking factors. They're THE factors that matter once you clear basic quality thresholds.
Haynes says marketers are still trying to game the machines, but it doesn't matter anymore. The AI systems just watch what users actually click on and adjust from there.
This changes everything. Perfect technical SEO? That just gets you in the game. User behavior determines who actually wins.
The shift is brutal for traditional SEOs. "If I've got a 400 word prompt, that's not a keyword," Haynes points out. Position tracking becomes meaningless when the query itself keeps morphing. The metrics that mattered for 15 years are suddenly irrelevant.
Haynes has already rebuilt her entire approach: "I'm trying to spend more time in GA4 metrics, looking at engagement metrics. Did I actually improve the amount of time people spend on my site? Did I improve the number of clicks that I got?"
While marketers debate AI overviews, Haynes is learning to code AI agents through Google's Agent Development Kit. This isn't future talk—it's happening right now.
"My little agents that I'm using to improve content or to look at Google Analytics, when they start working together, they're gonna do like 100 times the work that I could do." Not ten times. One hundred times.
The coding barrier that once protected technical professionals? Disappearing. Haynes went from not knowing how to code at all to building functional agents. ChatGPT walked her through downloading VS Code and installing it, step by step.
The window for advantage is temporary. "We're going to have this era where anybody can code something and for a little while, the people who can code stuff can use it to give you a big advantage."
Google offers a free Python crash course. From there, language models guide you through building whatever you imagine. The marketers learning to "vibe code" today will crush those waiting for tools to catch up.
Conference attendance has exploded, way up from three years ago, even after COVID. But the learning isn't happening there.
"A few years ago, if I wanted to learn what's working in SEO, we had a whole community of people that would happily share," Haynes remembers. "A lot of the people who are actively sharing what's working now, they're not actually providing any proof."
Gray says the same people keep showing up to conferences hoping someone finally has answers, but they just hear the same recycled talking points every time.
The real learning happens in small groups doing actual testing. Haynes runs The Search Bar community where members share daily discoveries. Gray describes 97th Floor's internal approach: constant testing with rapid knowledge sharing among team members.
Media coverage makes things worse. Haynes shares a revealing example: An interviewer asked Sam Altman about building a bunker. Altman mentioned having a well-built basement. The media ran headlines about the OpenAI CEO preparing for AI doom.
"I would encourage people to pay attention to the AI leaders and what they're saying"—not the clickbait versions. Haynes listens to leader interviews while cooking dinner, getting information straight from the source.
The Era That Feels Like 2007 All Over Again
"It feels very much like SEO felt back in like 2007, 2008," Gray says. "A lot of different stuff would work and then wouldn't work. There's so much to test and there's so much unknown."
But this time is different. The chaos isn't a transition—it's the new permanent state. "Something that worked for you yesterday, you might not be successful a week from now," Haynes confirms. Even the AI systems themselves are "changing daily too."
The knowledge gap has collapsed. Previously, size and investment created advantages. Now "it's really like speed and willingness to forego some of the old learnings and adopt new learnings," according to Gray. A solo marketer willing to experiment can outmaneuver agencies stuck in old patterns.
The measurement problem compounds everything. "Every tool samples and extrapolates from that sample," Gray notes. "But really that's insufficient when it comes to actually getting a true status of where things are."
The Practical Playbook for Survival
Waiting for clarity means falling behind permanently. Here's what Haynes recommends right now:
Use language models daily. Treat it like learning a new language. If ChatGPT gives you too many steps at once, tell it to slow down and walk you through one thing at a time.
Learn to code something. Take Google's free Python crash course, then let AI teach you the rest. Security concerns will get solved as you go.
Focus on user satisfaction. GA4 engagement metrics matter now, not keyword rankings.
Listen to AI leaders directly. Skip the media spin. "Pay attention to what the AI leaders are saying," not sensationalized quotes. They "believe that they're changing humanity."
Build or join a testing community. Share what works with actual data. Gray's team does this internally. Haynes built The Search Bar for the same purpose.
The Jobs Question Everyone's Afraid to Ask
The disruption will accelerate, but Haynes stays remarkably optimistic about what emerges.
Haynes says we'll always have work, it'll just look completely different. "If you told people a hundred years ago that you and I would be doing what we're doing now and that this would be potentially a revenue driver—that wouldn't even register."
A century from now? "We'll have jobs, but they won't be what we do today."
She sees broader transformation coming: "We're living in a dark age...everybody's eating junk food. I think that AI has great potential to improve our health tremendously. We're going to look back at this age and go, I can't believe people lived in pain."
The marketing transformation is just one piece. "There is going to be an era of prosperity," Haynes believes, despite acknowledging "there's gonna be some job loss and some very challenging times" first.
The Bottom Line
The old SEO playbook is dead. Conference circuits won't save you. Yesterday's tactics are worthless today.
But for marketers willing to become beginners again, the opportunity has never been bigger. Those learning new languages—both AI prompting and actual coding—while focusing on user satisfaction over algorithm manipulation will define the next era.
"Test things and then see what works," Haynes advises. In a world where AI overviews change every two days and tools are just guessing, that's the only strategy that matters.
Start experimenting today. Not because the path is clear, but because it isn't.
01:26 - Working on AI agents and Google's development course
04:34 - AI overviews change every 2 days
06:10 - Industry missing user interaction signals
41:11 - AI creating work-free future
43:51 - Tips: Use LLMs daily, learn to code
Learn about Marie’s work and join her community at https://www.mariehaynes.com/
Google’s Python Class: https://developers.google.com/edu/python
Google’s Agent Development Kit: https://google.github.io/adk-docs/
Connect with Marie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marie-haynes
Connect with Paxton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paxtongray/
Looking for an agency that'll be worth the investment? 97th Floor creates custom, audience-first campaigns that drive pipeline and conversions. Get started here: https://97thfloor.com/lets-talk/.
Marie Haynes is a leading expert in AI and Search. She helps her clients prepare for agentic search, surfacing more often in LLM tools like ChatGPT and using AI in their workflows.
