Patricia Guzmán | AI Visibility & Agents

Most brands are still optimizing for attention. AI is already optimizing for selection. If AI can’t understand you, it won’t recommend you. I help brands become: — citable — interpretable — chosen DM “AI” for an AI Visibility Audit.

I’m starting to think the biggest AI mistake companies are making is not using AI. It’s assuming AI understands them. Most websites explain products to humans. Very few explain enough for an AI system to trust, compare, cite, and recommend them. That gap is going to become expensive. Are companies ready for that?

This is exactly why the next visibility problem is not traffic. It is selection. If users stay inside search, AI overviews, or answer engines, the brand that wins is not always the one with the best page. It is the one the system can understand, trust, and include in the answer.

I was lucky enough to be invited to Google's quarterly cash extraction summit, to maximise revenue Google will force users to stay within search, no one's allowed to visit your website, think of it as a search curfew. It's called Google's ZERO Click web where every user clicks on a paid result, or where Gemini injects ads on to ads so users can click double the ads in one go. Moving forwards, SEOs will owe Google clicks, expect GSC click lines to go negative. As Klaus Schwab said - you will own nothing, you will click paid ads and you'll be happy.

This is the part many brands still treat as technical SEO, but it is becoming strategic visibility. If Google and soon AI systems cannot clearly understand your entity, verify your claims, and connect you to trusted sources, your brand becomes harder to recommend. Authority is no longer just a score. It is machine-readable trust.

Google already knows about your brand. The key question is whether it considers your entity trustworthy enough to feature prominently in search. Knowledge Panels aren’t manually assigned – they’re generated from signals in Google’s Knowledge Graph. They surface trusted information about your brand directly in search, helping users instantly understand who you are. To improve your chances of getting one: → Clearly define your entity → Add structured data → Stay consistent across all platforms social.semrush.com/4d2EjLE.

This is exactly where authority is moving. Backlinks still matter, but AI systems are starting to evaluate something deeper: Can the brand be understood? Can its claims be verified? Can trusted sources support its identity clearly enough for an AI answer to cite it? The next authority layer is not just ranking. It is being interpretable enough to be selected.

Website authority in 2026 goes beyond backlinks and domain scores. It also depends on how clearly your site communicates who you are, and whether other trusted sources consistently support your claims. Here’s how to strengthen it: 1. Get Quality Backlinks with Valuable Content 2. Optimize Your Content for Relevant Keywords 3. Develop a Solid Internal Linking Strategy 4. Get Mentions from Across the Web 5. Build an AI-Friendly Content Structure social.semrush.com/4eWxgFJ.

I don’t think AI will replace brands. I think AI will erase the brands it cannot understand. The next advantage won’t be louder content. It will be clarity. Can AI explain what you do? Can it trust your signals? Can it choose you when someone asks for a recommendation? That is the new visibility.

@semrush Internal links used to distribute authority between pages. Now they also help AI systems understand relationships, context, and trust across an entire company. The future of visibility is not just ranking. It’s becoming interpretable enough to be selected.

5 Tips to Increase Your Website's Authority: 1. Get Quality Backlinks with Valuable Content 2. Optimize Your Content for Relevant Keywords 3. Develop a Solid Internal Linking Strategy 4. Get Mentions from Across the Web 5. Build an AI-Friendly Content Structure Full breakdown here: social.semrush.com/4eztP7D.

We’re entering a strange moment in business. Companies are still fighting to be seen by people while AI systems are quietly deciding what gets seen at all. Search was about finding options. AI is about selecting outcomes. If AI cannot understand your company, it slowly disappears from the decision layer of the internet.

@ViperChill What’s interesting is that companies are starting to separate “traffic” from “trust.” AI traffic may still be smaller today. But it often arrives with higher intent, faster decisions, and less noise. That changes how brands should think about visibility entirely.

Here's what public companies have said about AI & SEO in the past few days. It's nice to report on SEO wins, and that AI traffic continues to convert well. Of course, AI and changing user habits have not been kind to a lot of companies that were reliant on search. Traffic diversification is top of mind for many of them. There also seems to be a lot of genuine excitement around AI as a whole, and not just from SaaS companies, but from eCommerce stores and marketplaces as well. I think there are some much bigger marketing stories to tell there, so look out for some upcoming (free) reports on that topic. I’m hoping to have the first one live in a couple of weeks. As always, there's more to investor updates than I can share in these summaries, so please do your own research before making investment or marketing decisions. Thanks for reading! 🤝

@semrush AI will probably eliminate a surprising number of meetings. Not because AI replaces people. Because it exposes how much time humans lose explaining things that were never clear to begin with.

be honest, does your calendar look like this?

Most people think AI replaces work. What it actually replaces is unnecessary friction. The people who grow with AI won’t be the ones trying to compete against machines. They’ll be the ones who learn how to think better, decide faster, communicate clearly, and work alongside agents without losing their humanity. AI is not the end of human value. It’s exposing where human value actually is.

@neilpatel Brands are no longer competing only for clicks. They’re competing to be included before the user even visits a website. AI visibility is becoming part of market strategy, not just marketing.

There's a big opportunity to get your ads to show up in AI Overviews. When Adthena looked at how often ads appear in AI Overviews for commercial terms, it was only 0.14%. That's not even 1%. It's a fraction of a percent. You'll see that number drastically increase over time for commercial terms.

The point is not to let AI replace human judgment. The point is to stop wasting human judgment on work machines can help carry. That is where leverage begins.

I don’t think AI is here to replace us. I think it is here to reveal what we should have stopped doing alone. The future belongs to people who know how to work with agents, not fear them. Use AI for speed. Use humans for judgment. Use both to build something clearer, faster, and more alive.

@semrush The interesting shift is that users may stop “searching” entirely. Agents will compare, filter and decide before most brands are even seen. Visibility is becoming machine to machine before human to human.

The marketing funnel is being redefined. What used to be a step-by-step process, where people search, compare, and decide, is now compressed into a single interaction. AI agents handle discovery, evaluation, and comparison. The user’s role is shifting from researcher to final approver. This shift changes how brands compete: • Awareness, consideration, and conversion are happening at the same time • Visibility depends on whether AI systems can interpret and trust your content • Positioning needs to be explicit, structured, and easy to verify If AI cannot understand your value, it will not surface, compare, or recommend you. Learn about Agentic Web: social.semrush.com/3Rvvr8I.

@aleyda The interesting shift is that search engines are starting to optimize less for indexed pages… and more for trusted interpretation layers. The future of traffic may depend on whether AI systems can explain you confidently.

☕️ Your Top SEO & AI Search News of the Week [#SEOFOMO - May 10, 2026] 👇 * ​Google is releasing new updates to AI Mode and AI Overviews to find relevant websites, deep insights and original content from across the web: More AI referral traffic to sites? * Google logging error that prevented Search Console from accurately reporting impressions from May 13, 2025 until April 27, 2026, has been resolved. Are you seeing impressions increases or decreases now? * ​Google to no longer support FAQ rich results: This doesn't mean you should stop using it though * ​Google expands UCP checkout to main search shopping results: Let's see how this integration evolves and impacts conversion * ​Bing explains the evolving role of the index: From ranking pages to supporting answers: Another useful AI search resource from the Bing team * ​OpenAI Launches Self-Serve Ads Manager for ChatGPT: The rollout is currently limited and still in beta. * ​The downfall of G2's SEO has to be studied: G2 no longer fits what Google is prioritizing. * ​SEO’s new goal in 2026: Recognition, not rankings: Ranking no longer equals visibility * ​AI Citation Ranking Factors Analysis: Evidence-based analysis of 54 experiments, patents, and case studies * ​Whitespark’s Guide to Google’s AI Mode for Local Businesses: How can your local business be prominent in Google AI Mode? * ​Patterns we see in ChatGPT query fanouts: Learn about the top 10 words added by ChatGPT. * Much more! Including SEO jobs, events, tools... From SEOs like @TomekRudzki @AshLiddell1250 @gaetano_nyc @kmadhavan77 @CyrusShepard @yagmrsmsk and many more! Read here: seofomo.co/posts/your-top… and remember to subscribe: seofomo(.)co

AI agents will not browse the internet like humans. They will skip, filter, compare, and choose. That means brands are no longer competing for attention. They are competing to be understandable enough for machines to trust. This is where the next visibility war begins.

@sama @icanvardar The interesting shift is that people are starting to describe models emotionally, not technically. “Trust.” “Feels smarter.” “Feels human.” “Feels reliable.” AI competition is becoming behavioral.

@icanvardar curious to see if you still feel this way after the next model!

gpt 5.5 is already enough for most programming work the bottleneck is no longer the model

Most brands still think visibility is about publishing more. AI systems are starting to care more about consistency, clarity, references, and behavioral trust signals. That changes the economics of attention completely.

I think the biggest AI shift is not productivity. It is disappearance. Companies are preparing to use AI but very few are preparing to be understood by AI. That gap will decide who gets recommended, who gets ignored and who never enters the customer’s mind.

@semrush AI visibility is becoming a market expansion strategy, not just a marketing strategy anymore.

We’re excited to announce that Semrush has officially partnered with Blueseed Group, marking our first Enterprise partnership in Vietnam 🇻🇳 This collaboration marks a key milestone in our growth in Southeast Asia and reinforces our commitment to advancing AI-powered marketing capabilities across the region. Together, we’ll be co-creating initiatives, hosting joint events, and strengthening the local marketing ecosystem with data-driven insights and innovative solutions. social.semrush.com/4ni78XD.

@neilpatel The interesting shift is that brands are no longer competing only for clicks. They’re starting to compete for inclusion inside AI-generated decisions.

Not sure if you should run ads in AI Overviews? You may want to rethink that. 81% of the companies we surveyed say their AI Overview ads are profitable.