When we think of Google, the first thing that comes to our minds is its being a search engine. But now, it seems that Google’s AI agent will turn the search engine into something more exciting.
Marie Haynes, the pioneer in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), said in an interview that Google will be transforming into an AI agent that will make decisions on behalf of the user rather than simply presenting ranked links. After studying Google’s algorithms for 16 years, she was contacted by then Google’s Public Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, to discuss a new algorithmic approach.
The Helpful Content system was launched in August 2022. It represented Google’s explicit use of machine learning to evaluate website quality. By March of 2024, Google absorbed those signals and ranked algorithms which eliminated the separate system entirely.
Google will now be acting more like an SEO agent rather than just a search engine for websites. It follows the EEAT framework (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness). This initiative is not new, as before Haynes’ involvement, Google had been incorporating AI components since 2015, when the company announced RankBrain. This is a machine learning system that processes user queries to determine relevance.
Google AI agents will help everyone become more productive by delegating tasks to different agents to reach their goals. Along with that, agentic workflows will become a core part of business processes with the collaboration of multiple agents in a system. Security operations will be of the utmost level as security is one of the most important factors in the world of AI.
During the Department of Justice’s antitrust trial against Google, important details about Google’s AI systems were revealed. Google employees explained that these AI systems learn continuously from every search interaction. In other words, the AI improves over time by learning from user behaviour, much like a person learns from experience. This shows how Google’s AI adapts and becomes smarter with each interaction.
