What Google's AI Mode Data Reveals About How People Search Now

Send us Fan Mail📬 You like this podcast? You’ll love the newsletter.Join the weekly 3-2-1 on AI search + marketing: subscribeUser behavior in AI search has moved, and Google's own data confirms it. This week, Cassie breaks down what that shift actually looks like, why Bing's newest Webmaster Tools features were built to measure exactly this, and what both mean for your visibility strategy.We also cover Semrush's expanded 2026 AI Visibility Index (126 million prompts — the biggest AI search dataset we've seen), Google's June spam update, and a quick note on Anthropic's Fable 5 and what it signals for the frontier model landscape.In this episode:Semrush 2026 AI Visibility Index — 126 million prompts analyzed across ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode, and AI Overviews. What the citation gap between "mentioned" and "cited" means for your brand, and why brands with integrated SEO + AI visibility workflows are outperforming everyone else by 2x.Google June 2026 Spam Update — Rolling out globally as of June 24th. No new policies, but worth flagging in your reporting.Anthropic Fable 5 — Export controls lifted July 1st. Why this matters beyond the headline, and what it tells us about where frontier model governance is headed.Google AI Mode data + Bing Webmaster Tools — The anchor segment. Google released a full year of AI Mode usage data showing the average query is now triple the length of a traditional search query, with follow-up queries growing 40%+ month over month. Then Bing drops four new AI Performance features — Intents, Topics, Citation Share, and Compare — that are essentially built to measure exactly how users are searching now. Here's how to use both together.If you're listening to this and thinking I need someone to lead this for me, that's what I do.I'm an AI search visibility consultant and a fractional content strategist for startups and enterprise brands. If that sounds like the kind of help you're looking for, email me at [email protected]. Or request your 7-Day AI Search Visibility Audit: https://cassieclarkmarketing.com/ai-search-visibility-audit/Let’s connect:LinkedIn → Cassie Clark | AI Search Visibility ConsultantWebsite → https://cassieclarkmarketing.com