Search News You Can Use - SEO Podcast with Marie Haynes

Search is becoming agentic, task-oriented, and deeply integrated with AI that learns, improves, and even negotiates on our behalf. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by how quickly AI is reshaping everything from SEO to web development, you're not alone!

In this episode I share about Gemini in Chrome, how I built a plant journal with Antigravity, UCP, WebMCP, WordPress' EmDash, Shopify's AI Toolkit, Andrej Karpathy's autoresearch and more.

This episode goes with this issue of Search News You Can Use: The Agentic Web is here

0:00 - Introduction & Marie's experience with Gemini in Chrome
1:25 - Sundar Pichai interview: Search is becoming agentic
3:32 - Why SEO clicks are dropping (AI Overviews & AI mode)
6:21 - Google's internal use of Antigravity (Agent manager/coding tool)
8:19 - Building a plant journal app using Anti-gravity
11:03 - Liz Reid (Head of Search) on agents taking over web interactions
12:08 - The rise of Agent-to-Agent protocols
13:07 - UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) and the future of e-commerce checkout
15:35 - What is MCP (Model Context Protocol)?
17:53 - WebMCP: Enabling agents to interact directly with your website's front end
19:55 - Demo: Diagnosing a traffic drop using Gemini in Chrome on a specific webpage
22:56 - EmDash: Cloudflare's new AI-native CMS (the "spiritual successor to WordPress")
26:13 - Shopify's AI Toolkit demo (Automating SEO updates and applying discounts)
29:32 - Andrej Karpathy's auto-research and AI recursive self-improvement
32:42 - Project Mythos, Project GlassWing, and cybersecurity concerns
34:43 - Timeline predictions: 2027 as the major inflection point for agentic systems
38:13 - Demis Hassabis on the expanding opportunity space and final thoughts on learning AI tools

If you sell products online, the way your customers buy from you is about to fundamentally change. We are moving toward a future where buyers will check out directly inside of Google or ChatGPT, without ever visiting your website.It's called Universal Commerce Protocol, or UCP. And while platforms like Shopify are starting to integrate it , if you don't structure your site's data correctly right now, your products are going to become completely invisible to the AI agents doing the shopping.In this video, I sit down with Andrea Li, an SEO and ecommerce expert who actually taught herself how to build AI agents using Claude Code to audit sites for this exact shift. We discuss exactly what UCP is, how to prepare your site for it, and why the era of traditional software might be over. Let's dive in.Links mentioned:The Search Bar free SEO & AI news feed:https://community.mariehaynes.com/spaces/11879397/feedSearch Bar Pro paid community:https://community.mariehaynes.com/collections/1050374?sort=by_hosts Reach Andrea Li:https://redpingeek1.substack.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreali-redpingeek/https://www.redpingeek.com/Andrea's book recommendation: Prediction Machines: https://amzn.to/3OcbBOJ Reach Marie:https://mariehaynes.com/contact/00:00 - Introduction 01:00 - Meet Andrea: From Pinterest Expert to SEO03:15 - What is Agentic Commerce and UCP?06:45 - The Threat of Unconsented AI Scrapers10:00 - Why Shopify Users Have an Advantage13:30 - Building Custom SEO Agents with Claude Code18:15 - The Best Way to Learn AI Coding23:45 - Is SaaS Dead? The Rise of Custom AI Tools28:00 - The Future of Shopping & Google Disco32:15 - Preparing Your E-Commerce Site for UCP35:30 - Rapid Fire: Best AI Advice & Book Recommendations39:00 - Where to Find Andrea & The Search Bar

In this episode of the "Real People Using AI" series, host Marie Haynes sits down with SEO content strategist and AI transition consultant Liz Micik to discuss the massive shift from a chat-based internet to the "Agentic Web." They break down Google's latest developer protocols—including MCP, A2A, UCP, and AP2—and translate what these highly technical concepts mean for everyday business owners and marketers. If you are wondering how AI agents will discover, consume, and negotiate with your website in the future, and what actionable steps you can take right now to prepare your brand (like cleaning up your schema and structured data), this conversation is your roadmap.Google’s blog posts on the agentic protocols:https://developers.googleblog.com/developers-guide-to-ai-agent-protocols/Reach Liz Micik:https://lizmicik.com/Reach Marie:https://mariehaynes.com/contactThe Search Bar:https://mariehaynes/comBecome a member of Marie’s paid community:https://community.mariehaynes.com/collections/10503740:00 – Welcome to the Agentic Web: Moving beyond chat interfaces and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) to prepare for AI agents.2:16 – The Evolution of the Web: Why the current shift mirrors the early days of e-commerce and how bots are consuming websites (discussing Cloudflare's markdown feature).11:00 – The 3 C's of AI Readiness: Why your website must be clear, complete, and consistent for AI agents to trust it.13:50 – What is MCP & WebMCP?: Exploring the Model Context Protocol and how AI applications connect to external systems and tools.25:20 – Agent to Agent Protocol (A2A): How agents discover and communicate with one another using JSON Agent Cards.27:50 – Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP): The future of AI shopping, building carts across multiple sites, and protecting your business's "moat."38:00 – Agent Payments (AP2) & MPP: How agents will handle transactions, negotiate payments, and the security hurdles of an agentic economy.46:15 – Actionable Advice for Businesses Today: Why Schema and Structured Data are the most important tools you can implement right now.52:00 – Agent to User Interface (A2UI): The potential for AI to generate unique web pages, UIs, and interactive tabs on the fly.56:50 – Summary & Rapid Fire Questions: A quick recap of all the protocols, plus Liz's advice on learning AI, financial planning with Claude, and the importance of reading analog books to kids.

Join Marie Haynes and Tom Capper as they dive into Google's evolving algorithms, focusing on AI-driven changes like WebMCP and the role of agents in search. Discover how brand signals and user satisfaction are reshaping SEO, and why traditional tactics may no longer suffice.Links mentioned in this call:Google site quality score: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9031929B1/enThe helpful content update was not what you think. Tom Capper. https://moz.com/blog/helpful-content-update-not-what-you-thinkMoz: https://moz.com/products/pro/pricing Stat: https://getstat.com/ 00:00 Introduction to SEO and Algorithm Changes02:42 The Evolution of Search Algorithms05:10 User Satisfaction Signals and AI07:49 The Importance of Brand Authority10:28 Understanding EEAT and Its Implications13:13 The Impact of Helpful Content Updates15:49 Navigating Core Updates and Brand Trust18:11 The Future of SEO in an AI-Driven World26:44 The Evolution of Search and AI's Role36:58 Impact of AI Overviews on Businesses43:08 The Future of Search with AI Agents and WebMCP

Did you know Google "re-ranks" search results using AI that is trained on user data and quality rater scores? In this video, I break down revelations from the DOJ trial, including the "Glue" system, RankEmbed BERT, and why user satisfaction is now the most critical factor for SEO.

00:00 - Intro: Why user satisfaction is the most important ranking factor.
00:49 - Google’s Quality Raters Guidelines & Helpful Content documentation.
01:36 - Marie’s Theory: Traditional algorithms vs. AI re-ranking systems.
02:35 - Why Google says "Don’t chunk your content" (Danny Sullivan).
03:00 - Vector Search & Embeddings: How AI retrieval actually works.
05:40 - The DOJ vs. Google Trial: Leaks on user-side data.
07:44 - The "Glue" System (NavBoost): How Google tracks clicks & hovers.
09:03 - "Instant Glue": How search adapts to new intent (Nice vs. nice).
10:20 - RankEmbed BERT: The deep learning model Google hid.
12:21 - How AI re-ranks the top search results.
13:03 - BERT Training: Wikipedia, Books Corpus... and romance novels?
15:18 - The 3 Deep Learning Models: RankBrain, DeepRank, RankEmbed.
17:40 - RankBrain: Why it only re-ranks the top 20-30 results.
18:47 - The Helpful Content System: A machine learning classifier.
21:18 - March 2024 Core Update: The evolution of helpfulness signals.
23:00 - Frozen vs. Retrained Google: How algorithms are tested.
26:01 - Why Google runs 17,000+ live traffic experiments.
27:16 - Does Google use Chrome data for rankings? (DOJ evidence).
28:32 - The "AI Mountain": Why AI-generated traffic often crashes.
29:30 - How to optimize for user satisfaction (beyond keywords).
31:00 - Liz Reid on AI Overviews: Why users click for depth.