🧠 Google: the “villain” that removes friction
According to Natzir Turrado (SISTRIX), Google behaves today like a benevolent antagonist: it changes the rules of the game, not to get more clicks, but to reduce the user’s effort.
New systems such as AI Overviews, Lens and AI Mode aim to provide answers without the need to leave the search engine.
What “Delphic Costs” are
The term comes from the paper “Delphic Costs and Benefits in Web Search”, by Andrei Broder and Preston McAfee (Google), where it is proposed to measure the quality of a search engine not by clicks, but by the total utility generated.
The fewer steps, reformulations and clicks the user needs, better the experience according to Google.
👉 In short:
Fewer clicks ≠ Worse experience.
Fewer clicks = More efficiency.
🤖 The new paradigm: AI Mode and conversational search
Google is evolving towards a model intent → resolution, leaving behind the classic ranking → click.
The new AI Mode combines text, voice and image to offer conversational results, supported by:
- 50 billion products from the Shopping Graph.
- 250 million places in Google Maps.
- Real-time signals from Google’s backend.
How answers are presented
- 99.7% show sources, but only 19% include direct links.
- On average, each answer uses information from 3.8 different websites.
- Only 42% mention brands, and tend to cite several at once.
- The new section “What to know” summarises key points with AI and adds visual context.
🛍️ Gen Z and the change in the way of shopping
The report New Modes 2025 reveals that the Generation Z already uses ChatGPT almost as much as Google to research products (33% vs 37%).
YouTube consolidates as a key platform for the discovery phase, displacing Google Search in the “upper funnel”.
AI and agentic commerce
OpenAI has launched “Instant Checkout”: direct purchases in ChatGPT without leaving the chat.
For now, available with Etsy, Walmart and soon Shopify, using the agent commerce protocol developed with Stripe.
🧮 Notable news of the month
- Launches AI features in Search and Discover to show updated web content.
- Tests AI Overviews more publisher-friendly (higher CTR).
- Confirms errors in the 37% of financial responses from its AI.
- Officially closes Privacy Sandbox and keeps third-party cookies.
- Presents Gemini 2.5 Computer Use, a model capable of controlling web interfaces.
- New User-Agent “GeminiiOS” to measure traffic from iPhone.
- NotebookLM ignores robots.txt, claiming it acts “on behalf of the user”.
- Proposes changes to the EU to avoid fines for monopolies in Shopping and Flights.
- Will implement the header “No-Vary-Search” to improve cache and web performance.
Microsoft and Bing
- Show notices when they use your history to personalise searches.
- Publishes SEO guide for AI searches: the principles remain the same (fresh, crawlable and semantic content).
OpenAI
- Launches ChatGPT Pulse, which researches for you every night and sends personalised daily summaries.
- Introduces Atlas, its new Chromium-based browser with integrated AI (and many privacy concerns).
- Vulnerabilities detected in ChatGPT that can leak personal information through connected emails or calendars.
Industry trends
- AI-generated articles already outnumber those written by humans.
- Wikipedia loses 8% of human traffic because of AIs that use its content without clicks.
- Visa and Mastercard create verification protocols for payments made by AI agents.
- Reddit caught Perplexity scraping its content and has filed a complaint.
- Only 250 documents are enough to manipulate an AI model’s response according to Oxford and Anthropic.
- The 45% of AI summaries contain relevant errors, according to a BBC-Ipsos study.
- The IETF proposes ethical best practices for AI crawlers.
📅 Next SISTRIX event
📍 Digital Marketing Meetup Madrid – 6 November 2025
Free event with practical talks, a panel discussion and networking.
👉 Venue: Unonueve Madrid
👉 Time: 18:30
🔥 Fun facts
- ChatGPT has reduced its use of web searches from 15% to just 2.5% in two weeks.
- AI search engines prefer press sources and comparison sites, and can be manipulated by changing publication dates (“Updated: September 2025”).
💬 Conclusion
Google redefines its role on the web: fewer clicks, more retention, more AI.
Search becomes conversation, and creators will have to adapt to an environment where visibility will depend less on ranking and more on context.
Do you want to be one step ahead in the new conversational SEO?
👉 Write to me and I’ll help you adapt your strategy to this new era of Google and artificial intelligence.