New Google AI Search Box, Local Sponsorships & Review ROI | E32 The Whitespark Local Update

Um, I will give a shout-out for...

It's almost like our own bingo card of who am I gonna talk about, but it's actually Near Media.

It's their newsletter.

If you haven't signed up for it, you need to sign up for it.

Um, and they speak about a number of different things, but one of which is a little bit of coverage of the Google I/O, which we all look forward to and wonder what is gonna happen.

Uh, Brittany Mueller did make me laugh on LinkedIn.

Uh, she did a Google I/O bingo card, um, where she predicted [chuckles] what, what was gonna be said.

Um, so you could have played along with that.

Uh, so that made me laugh.

One of the things that was on there was, uh, including AI mode, uh, becoming the new SERP.

So it was something that we were sort of thinking about and wondering were they going to announce.

Um, so they didn't announce that, but they didn't, uh, they did announce the intelligent search box.

So Near Media talk a little bit about their interpretation of that.

I love Near Media because obviously you've got the layers of experience, but also they put a local focus on everything.

So this is their coverage.

They're talking about Liz Reid describing, um, the change as the biggest upgrade to the search box for twenty-five years.

So as you can imagine, it's sort of rather than saying AI mode is a new search, it's another tightening of the link between what we saw as old search and AI, um-

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

... basically.

And then, um, she talked about information agents.

Um, and the bit that Near Media then go on to say is, uh, seeing it as the AI equivalent of Google Alerts with more capabilities, but also that's where the agentic piece will fit in, especially for local businesses.

I don't have an intelligent search box yet.

Have you got one, Darren?

No, I think it's very few people have it.

Like, it's not even, like, rolled out to a specific country yet.