AI is changing how people search
You may have seen that Google now surfaces “AI Overviews” at the top of many results pages. These summaries pull information from several different websites to answer a user’s question directly, giving people a quick understanding without clicking through. This is Google’s way to making its search results more helpful to visitors. It’s a bit like a super‑charged featured snippet. Google has also introduced “AI Mode” in Search, which lets users ask complex questions and follow‑up questions. AI Mode breaks a question into subtopics and runs multiple searches at once, then synthesises the results into a detailed answer. It’s designed to go much deeper than a traditional query and is a sign of where search is heading.
INSERT VIDEO DEMONSTRATING AI OVERVIEWS VS AI MODE.
AI as a toolkit
Beyond changing the search results, AI offers a suite of tools that can make your marketing work faster and easier. Here are some examples of what we’ll be doing inside the SmallBizToolbox course (Note – there will be new terminology below, we will understand and explain these throughout the course):
- Blog post drafting: Use AI to brainstorm headlines and outlines, then generate a first draft of your post. You’ll review and refine the draft to ensure it matches your voice and message.
- Social media posts: Quickly create engaging updates or promotional messages based on your latest blog post or product launch. AI can suggest captions, hashtags and even schedule posts.
- Keyword research and topic ideation: Generate lists of potential search terms your customers might use, organised by intent and priority.
- On‑page optimisation: Draft meta descriptions, titles and alt text for images; create FAQ sections and structured data to help search engines understand your content.
- Outreach emails: Write personalised emails for link building or customer follow‑up campaigns.
- Analytics summaries: Turn raw Google Analytics and Search Console data into clear, actionable summaries you can understand at a glance.
All of these capabilities are built into the AI tools available through SmallBizToolbox, so you can work within one platform rather than juggling multiple apps.
In practice
Throughout this course you’ll see how AI search and AI tools come together to grow your business. By optimising your pages to provide clear answers and using structured formats like FAQs and lists, you’ll increase the chances of showing up in Google’s new AI‑driven results. At the same time, AI‑powered tools will help you create more content, analyse your performance and find opportunities faster than you could manually. As you implement these strategies, you should see your website climb higher in organic search rankings, attract more clicks from both traditional and AI search results, and ultimately generate more enquiries and sales. The combination of smart AI tools and solid SEO fundamentals is designed to make your business stand out in a crowded online space.
Action Step: Spotting AI Overviews
Take 5–10 minutes to see how Google is currently presenting information for businesses like yours. Open Google and enter a few search phrases that a customer might use to find your brand, services or products (for example, “[your suburb] accountant” or “[your business name] reviews”). Note whether an AI Overview appears at the top of the results page. You don’t need to click anything or make changes yet—just observe which queries trigger an overview and what kinds of sources Google is citing. Jot down your observations; we’ll discuss what they mean in later lessons.
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Lesson outcomes
- Understand how AI is changing the traditional search
- How to use AI Tools for your small business
- Apply this knowledge to your SEO plan
Resources
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