Google’s Task-Based Agentic Search Is Disrupting SEO Today, Not Tomorrow
Mika Sandgrove | | 3 min read
Intro: What happened this week (and why it’s ‘today, not tomorrow’)
Late-September reporting from Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Land points to the same reality: Google’s shift toward task-based, agentic experiences is changing SEO now. The effects show up in three connected areas: tighter spam controls (including a new AI spam detector called SAFE plus an active spam update window), AI Overviews (AIO) that may show more links without reliably producing open-web sessions, and new Google Search Console (GSC) reporting surfaces, including image-based search data.
“AI Mode” attribution is also floating around in industry coverage. Treat it as a watch item for now; the bigger near-term risk is misreading volatility when enforcement, SERP behavior, and reporting all move at once.
1) Anti-spam is tightening: SAFE + the September spam update window
Google has deployed an AI spam detector called SAFE, per the cited coverage.[1] At the same time, Google’s September spam update may take up to two weeks to roll out.[2] Plan for higher sensitivity to spam-like patterns during a multi-day window where rankings and indexing can wobble before settling.
When I monitor these rollouts, I look for issues that cluster by template or pattern, not one URL:
- Impressions/click declines tied to a section, template, or CMS component.
- Indexing anomalies, like important URLs cycling in/out or a spike in “Crawled – currently not indexed.”
- Scaled spam patterns: thin programmatic pages, repetitive internal anchors, boilerplate blocks reused across thousands of URLs.
Example: annotate the rollout start date, then compare 7-day impressions/clicks for your top 20 landing pages before vs. after. Don’t judge on a single day.
2) AI Overviews are adding links—but attribution to the open web is still uneven
The reported change: AI Overviews are showing more links, but not all of those links result in visits to the open web.[3] More citations inside AIO doesn’t guarantee proportional referral traffic. In practice, the journey can stay on Google—expanding the module, following related prompts, or completing the task without a measurable session.
That breaks the simplistic model of “AIO presence → traffic.” A safer model is “AIO presence → visibility,” with traffic as a conditional outcome.
What to watch:
- Query-level impressions rising while clicks lag, especially on informational terms where AIO appears.
- Changes in which URLs earn impressions on AIO-heavy queries; in audits I’ve run, the page winning visibility is often not the historical top landing page.
Example interpretation: even if AIO shows more links, the user may still stay on Google. Treat AIO presence as a visibility KPI, not a guaranteed traffic driver.
3) Measurement is evolving: GSC adds image-based search data (and the industry is watching AI Mode traffic)
GSC is adding image-based search data, according to the same SEO Pulse coverage.[2] That matters as discovery gets more multimodal and more “task completion” oriented. If spam enforcement is also reshaping what Google trusts, you need cleaner visibility signals, and image performance can surface shifts sooner than page-level clicks alone.
Immediate actions this week:
- Check for the new image-related performance view(s) in GSC and note when it appears.
- Identify queries/pages where images materially contribute to impressions, then compare week-over-week during the spam update window.
- Sanity-check tracking consistency (GSC vs analytics) before labeling a swing as “quality” or an “algorithm hit.”
Separately, keep an eye on attempts to separate classic Search traffic from “AI Mode.” Don’t operationalize it yet, but it will shape how teams explain “visibility without sessions” if reporting firms up.
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Article author
Mika Sandgrove
Mika Sandgrove is an SEO writer and independent SEO consultant with more than three years of experience creating and optimizing content for search. He runs his own SEO practice, helping businesses improve their organic visibility through SEO strategy, content optimization, and technical and on-page SEO services. Much of his work comes through freelance marketplaces and online client platforms, where he works with businesses across different industries and markets. Mika primarily writes about SEO, search visibility, and practical optimization strategies, and is increasingly exploring Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and how businesses can adapt their content for AI-powered search experiences.