01What Google AI search agents are and how they work
Google AI search agents are agents that search, compare and act for a person instead of the person doing it by hand. Julian Goldie explains that Google Search is turning into these agents.
Sundar Pichai sat down with Alex Heath, who asked if Google Search and Gemini will ever fully merge. Pichai said the products will not merge, but the agents will do it. He called this the agentic layer, and he said the near future is just one single box.
This means the next person looking for your business may not be a person at all. It will be their agent, running in the cloud all day and all night. It will remember what they asked last week and pick the answer for them.
Julian says the business that agents pick will win the customers.
02The two pieces: Gemini Spark and search agents
Julian says there are two pieces to this update, and they snap together.
- Gemini Spark. Google showed it at Google I/O this year. It is an always on personal agent. It gets tasks through its own Gmail address, browses the web through Chrome, and keeps working with or without your laptop open.
- Search information agents. Liz Reid, Google's VP of search, confirmed these at I/O. They run in the background, keep watching the web, and push updates to you without you searching again.
Spark runs on the new version of Gemini and is built on Google's Anti-Gravity Harness. Julian explains that the harness is the body around the brain. The model thinks, and the harness lets it click, read, write and remember.
Pichai tied the two together. He said the enterprise agent and the consumer agent use the same model, same harness and same runtime. Only the context changes.
03What is new in Google AI search agents
Google has talked about AI in search for a while, and AI Overviews and AI Mode are not new. Julian points to three differences.
- A search becomes part of a longer job. Someone asks about a kitchen fitter on Monday, and on Thursday the agent is still comparing quotes. Your business is judged across a whole week.
- The agent works while the person has gone. You can trigger search agents by putting get me updated on or alert me when in your AI Mode prompt.
- The agent does the task end to end.
Google says these agents watch blogs, news sites, social posts and live shopping for changes tied to your question. Julian calls them the next step after Google Alerts, which launched in 2003. They read the page for you and tell you what it means.
Pichai said the share of agentic queries is going up steadily in Gemini.
04How Google AI search agents act on a search
Julian shows what a search could look like soon. People will not just type best SEO agency. They will type something like find me three agencies, check their reviews and book a call with the best one.
An agent then goes off and does it.
Google already has pieces in place for this.
- Since July 2025, AI Mode in the US can call a local business to check if they are free and what they charge.
- Spark supports MCP, an open standard that lets it plug into many apps and outside services.
- Google plans to let people create custom sub agents.
- Google plans to let Spark run its own browser.
Put together, search finds a business and Spark does the work. It is the same model, same harness and same memory. Pichai said every task gets its own little computer in the cloud, called a micro VM, which runs securely 24/7.
05The numbers behind Google AI search agents
Julian goes through the numbers that show how many people already use AI search.
- AI Overviews has two and a half billion monthly users.
- AI Mode passed one billion monthly users in one year since launch.
- AI Mode queries have more than doubled every quarter since launch.
- Google reports 900 million monthly Gemini users, and Spark lives inside that app.
Then he looks at clicks. Ahrefs studied 300,000 keywords. They found AI Overviews lined up with a 58% lower click through rate at the top ranking page.
Eight months earlier, the same study found 34.5%. So the drop almost doubled in a year.
The traffic does not just disappear. It goes to whoever the AI names. Julian runs an SEO agency and sees rankings hold steady while clicks drop, and owners ask why they get fewer leads.
06How to get picked by Google AI search agents
Julian says your website is no longer only for people. An agent does not care about pretty pictures, big headlines or long intros. It wants facts.
Make these easy to find.
- What you do.
- Who you do it for.
- What it costs.
- Where you are.
- What real customers say.
If an agent cannot find these answers fast, it will move to someone who makes it easy. The site still needs to work for the human who lands, but it first has to make sense to the agent that decides whether they land at all.
The agent picks based on what it can find about you across the web. That means reviews, mentions, articles, guest blogs and your own pages. Julian says this is why Goldie Agency looks at whether a client gets mentioned when someone asks AI a question in that space.
It is about reviews, testimonials, good blogs on other sites and great PR.
07Limits, timing and who needs to act on Google AI search agents
Julian shares some limits. Pichai said Google mostly launches for Ultra and Pro users first. He said it will be much more widely available over the next few months.
He also said newer models give a big step up in agentic search.
Julian adds that there may not be a human layer to Google Search for much longer. He says we do not know, but that is the way he thinks it is going.
There is one thing you can control. Build an audience that already knows you, such as an email list or a community. People come straight to you without asking Google first, and that does not depend on an agent's choice.
It also shows social proof to AI agents that you are popular and trusted.
This matters most for business owners who rely on Google to get leads. Julian also says owners who use agents themselves can save hours every week.
