Google's AI searches run 3x longer, and agents want to book for you

Alphabet's third quarter results came out on October 28. Its earnings release puts revenue at $127.6 billion, up 25% from a year ago, with Google Search and other at $63.35 billion, up 12%. So the people who predicted AI would quietly eat Google Search will need a new prediction.

In the same release, Sundar Pichai says Google's AI investments are driving Search query growth, including commercial queries, and that year over year query growth is at its highest rate in five years. Commercial queries are the ones where someone is looking to buy, book or hire. That is the part of Search your marketing budget cares about.

The release also says the Gemini app reached one billion users, which Google calls the fastest growing product in its history. These are Google's own numbers about Google's own products, so read them as the company's claims. They are also the only numbers anyone outside Google gets.

In Pichai's remarks on the quarter, Google says AI Mode queries are, on average, three times longer than traditional searches. People aren't stopping at "dentist near me" anymore. They're typing something closer to "dentist near me who takes my insurance, has Saturday hours and won't lecture me about flossing."

Google also says one in five AI Mode searches around the world now uses voice, images or documents, and that people run over 50 billion visual searches a month. So a growing share of your future customers will snap a photo of a broken part, a menu or a storefront and ask Google what to do about it.

For context, Google said in its May Search update that AI Mode had passed one billion monthly users a year after launch, and that AI Mode queries had more than doubled every quarter since it started. October's numbers say that habit stuck.

Marketing insight: Pick the five questions customers ask on the phone before they buy, the long ones with price, timing and who it's for. Answer each one in plain words on the page for that service, with the details a long AI Mode search would include. Add your own photos of real work, named for what they show.

The part of the remarks that matters most for small businesses is about agents. Google describes software that books reservations, fills in forms, schedules appointments and makes purchases for people. It says it is starting with the Gemini agent for enterprise customers, because the bar for security and governance is so high, and then bringing agents to Search, the Gemini app, Chrome, Android and Workspace. Pichai calls agents "a unifying layer across our products."

Some of this was already on the way. In May, Google said Search would expand its booking help to local experiences and services, pulling together prices and availability and linking people to the provider to finish booking, and would call businesses in some categories such as home repair, beauty and pet care for the user. Google said those features would roll out to everyone in the U.S. over the summer.

Shopping is moving the same direction. On October 15, Google launched Universal Cart in the U.S. across Search, AI Mode included, and the Gemini app. It saves products from different stores in one cart, watches for price drops and restocks, and lets people check out with Google Pay or send the items to the store's own site, with merchants such as Nike, Sephora and Target. Google says merchants stay the seller of record and handle the order and the support.

Put the three pieces together. People ask Google longer, more specific questions, more of them by voice or photo, and Google is building software to take the next step for them. The business that wins is the one whose page answers the specific question, and whose booking or checkout works on the first try.

The good news is that Google says you don't need a special trick for this. Its guidance on AI features says there are no extra requirements and no special optimizations to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. A page has to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet. After that, the advice is the classic list: let Google crawl, link your pages to each other, keep important content in text, support it with good images and video, keep structured data matching what's on the page, and keep your Business Profile and Merchant Center details current. Google also says you don't need new AI text files or special schema.

Measurement is simpler than people fear, too. Google says traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode shows up in the Search Console Performance report under the Web search type. If your Search Console numbers look flat while your phone rings more, check which pages people land on before blaming the robots.

• Answer long, specific questions on each service page: price range, timing, who it's for and what's included.
• Use real photos with clear file names and alt text, since visual searches now run in the billions each month.
• Keep your Business Profile hours, services and booking link current.
• Make booking and forms short: ask only what you need, and test them on a phone this week.
• Watch Search Console's Web report for the pages AI Mode sends people to.

For twenty years, search marketing meant ranking for short phrases. Google's own numbers now point to long questions, photos and agents that try to finish the job. The businesses that do well will be the ones that are easy to understand and easy to book, for a human or for the software working on that human's behalf.

Want a second set of eyes on whether your pages answer the long questions and your booking flow holds up? Talk to our founders below. See you in the next edition.