This week in SEO brought some game-changing developments you can't afford to miss. Google is ramping up its visual AI capabilities, ChatGPT is making bold moves into e-commerce, and Reddit \ lost billions in market value because of a small technical change that tanked its visibility in AI search results.
Google's AI Mode and the Visual Shift
Google's new AI Mode is leaning heavily into visual search results. This changes how people find and trust content online. It's not cosmetic when search results look different, user behavior changes, and that affects which sites get traffic.
ChatGPT is also moving beyond just answering questions. With Instant Checkout and their new Agentic Commerce Protocol, they're building direct shopping capabilities. AI tools are becoming platforms, not just features.
If you're running a website, visual optimization matters now in ways it didn't six months ago. How AI systems interpret and display your content is becoming as important as how Google's traditional algorithm ranks it.
Answer Engines Are Taking Market Share
Google still dominates search, but answer engines and large language models are pulling traffic. These systems favor different content than traditional search engines do, particularly user-generated content and discussion threads.
Getting cited by an LLM is starting to matter as much as ranking on page one of Google. That's a significant shift in how we need to think about online visibility.
E-E-A-T Isn't Going Away
Google's focus on Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness is getting stronger, not weaker. Search engines are getting better at distinguishing between content written by people who know what they're talking about and content that's just been generated to fill space.
The win here is combining real expertise with AI tools for efficiency. You can use AI for keyword research and technical audits, but the content itself needs genuine knowledge behind it. Search engines are rewarding that combination.
Technical SEO Still Matters
Core Web Vitals keep evolving. There's talk of a 2.0 version coming. Site speed, performance metrics, and user experience remain fundamental ranking factors.
Voice search, video optimization, image SEO, and local search through tools like Microsoft Bing Places for Business all need attention. The technical side of SEO is getting more complex, not less.
Don't let AI developments distract from the basics. A slow site with poor user experience won't rank well no matter how good your content is.
Recent SERP Volatility
Google hasn't announced a major core update, but there's been noticeable ranking volatility across multiple industries following their August spam update. Some sites are seeing movement due to issues with expired domains, and there were some intermittent page-serving problems last week that have since been resolved.
If you've seen ranking fluctuations, you're not alone. Some volatility is normal. Track your metrics and don't overreact to short-term changes unless you're seeing consistent declines.
Reddit Lost Billions Because of a Google Parameter Change
Here's what happened: Reddit's share of citations in ChatGPT responses dropped from about 29% to 5% in just a few weeks. Their stock fell 15% over eight days, wiping out somewhere between $5 billion and $13 billion in market value.
The cause was technical and oddly mundane. Google removed a parameter called "num=100" from their search results. This parameter used to return 100 results per page. Now it returns 10. Since Reddit often ranks in positions 11-20 for queries, this change made a huge portion of their content invisible to AI crawlers that rely on Google's search data.
ChatGPT and similar tools couldn't easily access Reddit content anymore, so they stopped citing it. Reddit's visibility in AI responses dropped by up to 82%.
The irony is sharp. Reddit has data-licensing deals worth tens of millions with companies like Google. They've been monetizing their content by letting AI companies train on it. Now those same AI systems are bypassing Reddit to give users direct answers, and Reddit is losing out on both traffic and citations.
Why This Matters Beyond Reddit
This is the first major example of what people are calling an "AI visibility crisis." Platforms now need to be discoverable by AI systems as much as by traditional search engines. One small technical change had billion-dollar consequences.
A few things this highlights:
Platform dependency is risky. Reddit's heavy reliance on Google's indexing for AI visibility left them vulnerable. When the rules changed, they had no backup.
AI crawlers are infrastructure now. Just like you optimize for Googlebot, you need to think about how AI systems access your content. If they can't reach it, you don't exist in their responses.
Distribution has changed. It's not enough to create content for human visitors anymore. Your content needs to be accessible and citable by AI systems that increasingly act as gatekeepers between you and your audience.
Data licensing doesn't equal visibility. Reddit licensed their data to train AI models, but that didn't protect them from algorithmic changes that reduced their presence in AI-generated responses. Training data and live citations are different things.
What This Means Practically
If you're managing a website or platform, here's what to consider:
Check how AI systems interact with your site. Can they crawl it? Do they cite it? You won't know unless you look.
Make sure your content is accessible. Robot.txt files, JavaScript rendering issues, or overly complex site structures can block AI crawlers just like they block search engines.
Diversify traffic sources. Don't rely entirely on Google, AI platforms, or social media. Spread your presence across channels.
Monitor AI citations where possible. This is harder to track than traditional search rankings, but it's increasingly important. Some tools are starting to offer this capability.
Keep technical fundamentals solid. Site performance, clear structure, and accessibility matter for both traditional search and AI systems.
The Bigger Picture
We're in the middle of a transition period where the rules for online visibility are being rewritten. AI isn't just changing how search works—it's creating entirely new distribution channels and points of failure.
Reddit's situation is a case study in algorithmic dependency. They built their distribution strategy around one system's infrastructure, and when that infrastructure changed slightly, the impact was massive and immediate.
This won't be the last example. As AI systems become more central to how people find information, more platforms will face similar vulnerabilities. The ones that adapt, chiefly by diversifying, by ensuring accessibility, by monitoring new metrics, will be better positioned than those that don't.
For SEO professionals and site owners, the work is expanding. Traditional optimization still matters. Technical fundamentals still matter. However, there is now an additional layer: ensuring your content can be found and utilized by AI systems that are becoming as important as search engines themselves.
The platforms that do well will be the ones that don't put all their visibility eggs in one basket, that stay on top of how different systems access their content, and that recognize when the infrastructure they depend on is changing.
Reddit learned this the hard way. The rest of us can learn from their experience.
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