Local Agents, Alexa's Do-Over, Google Dark Ad Patterns, Reviewpocalypse

AI Mode, Agents & Local

It's still not clear whether and how AI Overviews, AI Mode, Web Guide (i.e., AI Organized pages) and Gemini and Gemini in Chrome will co-exist. Many people believe AI Mode is the future of Google's SERP. I'm not entirely convinced, but Google is aggressively promoting AI Mode, rolling it out globally and integrating it into Chrome. More recently the company has started releasing AI Mode's "agentic" capabilities for people opted-in to Google Search Labs. Google is starting with restaurant reservations but will shortly introduce local services appointments and event tickets. I had some challenges triggering the restaurant functionality but was able to get it to show up with the prompt "Find me a dinner reservation ..." The screen below was the result: restaurants with reservation buttons provided through Resy and OpenTable integrations. Other scheduling/commerce partners include Tock, Ticketmaster, StubHub, SeatGeek and Booksy. Most of these are coming out of Reserve with Google while others are likely separate integrations (see also, Google Actions). The current agentic functionality is comparatively primitive vs. its promise. But capabilities will accelerate and become more sophisticated over time. AI Mode is not widely used today but if it gains usage there are obvious local scheduling and commerce implications for marketers.