The Era of 10 Blue Links Is Over (Google I/O Search + May 2026 Core Update)

The era of 10 blue links is officially over. At its a Google I/O conference on Tuesday, Google unveiled an AI-powered overhaul of search centered around a reimagined intelligent search box. What the company describes as the biggest change to this entry point to the web since the search box debuted more than 25 years ago. That is from TechCrunch and lots of people have been asking me my thoughts on the Google search updates announced at Google I/O. And so that's what I'm going to give on this episode of the show because it is really, really crazy. And then also, Google just dropped a May core algorithm update. And so I'm going to touch upon that at the end of the episode as well. This, by the way, is being recorded on May 21st, but a few days ago on Tuesday, Google announced these major changes to search. So the search box can now accommodate really long searches, basically like prompts. It will expand as you put in more information. You can put in images, too. You can put in long queries like, "I'm looking for the best inventory management software for a small bakery with eight employees, but without the expensive pricing of enterprise tools like NetSuite. I want to work well on a mobile app, help track ingredients and finished products, and integrate with my online store, which is built on WooCommerce." So that would be an example of a super detailed prompt that somebody could do. And the search box would expand as a person wrote that. But let's say someone can't even think of all of that. Google will actually predict the next parts of your prompt to help you make these ultra-long prompts. Google will give you dynamic experiences. You can generate interactive visualizations that you can return to again and again. Again, with the search box. You can build SaaS within search. You can say something like, "Build a fitness tracker to automate daily workouts and wellness routines." So you want to build something for yourself? There you go, you can do it right there in search. You can have agents gather information for you, remember details about you, and constantly alert you. This could be pricing changes, related products, things that were out of stock that are now back in stock, new local deals, and get just way more thorough responses because you can have multiple agents search and compile an answer for you. And so, when you hear all of this, you as an SEO or a business owner relying on SEO, or maybe just somebody considering doing SEO, you might start to think that it has finally happened, that SEO is dead as pundits have been saying for over two decades now. Over two decades people have been saying SEO is dead, and this is the reality. So, here are my thoughts for all the people who have asked. These are These are my thoughts now. People want answers fast, and they don't want to wait for multiple agents to search things. Many AI overviews are near instant or just completely instant, and that is great. But, the thing is a lot of these use cases that I described could take some time for responses to generate. There will be some situations where that's really awesome. If you are taking the time to give a thorough prompt, you won't mind waiting for agents to go compile a thorough answer. But, that's the other thing. How many people are actually going to give thorough prompts? The thing is, it is a known behavior that people want to give the shortest prompts or searches possible. Look at ChatGPT. How many people are using voice-to-text to actually record really long prompts and put in the thought to share everything that would help an AI give you the best answer. If you do that, you will get There's a good chance that you will get a really good answer. But, not a lot of people do that, and not a lot of people want to do that. Prompt prediction will be more helpful for people willing to write these long searches or prompts. But, the thing is, it's going to to years before behavior changes so that so many more people are giving these long more personal prompts. And I'll tell you why that is in a second. How about vibe coding the SAS right there within Google just saying build me the fitness tracker. This still means that you have to be thoughtful about what you want. People don't want to be thoughtful. You have to think about the features that are going to give you what you want that are going to help you. Basically the principle is this. People are lazy. They don't want to have to think. They want to do lazy searches or lazy prompts and get fast and accurate responses. And that is never going to change. Hey GPT. Hey there. Shut up. I need a note-taking app that will generate $1 billion per year. Now. Well, let's Shut up. No flowery language. Just do it. Absolutely. No flowery language. So More concise. Got it. Straight to the point. If Just do it. Just do it. It can be great if search is remembering more about you and it probably will, but even that doesn't change the fact that the tactics that are amazing now will continue to be amazing even when there are more thorough prompts being done. And so what tactics are these? Well, it's the tactics that I have been sharing on this show since starting the show. This means making bottom-of-funnel content, targeting scenarios and use cases and services you offer, making pages targeting this language, these searches that people are doing when they know what they want, but they don't know the brand that is going to give them what they want. It means having thorough documentation. So there's just a lot of information out there, especially on your site about everything that your brand does. This means online reputation management, which I have a news for some people. Some people don't they don't realize this, but this has always been part of SEO. It's well known that when people are considering going with a product or service, they will do due diligence and you want good stuff to show up for the people in the due diligence stage. And guess what? That helps with AI. And all of this, it just helps you get surfaced at the decision stage, especially bottom of funnel content. Also, making comparisons where you compare your brand to a competing brand and your targeting keywords are around the term alternative, like competitor plus the word alternative. This was a great tactic before ChatGPT, and it is still a great tactic. You still need to rank well in Google to get surfaced in AI. But I'll say, you know, if the agents do a good job keeping track of things for searchers and it is really intuitive, that will be great for consumers, but it's not going to change what happens to businesses who are selling their own things. It's not really going to change that very much. If you are a brand selling your services, selling your products, or you're an agency helping brands do that, it's not going to change things that much. But, you know what? You know what though? There are some people who are going to bleed from this. And I'm not going to deny that. So, who is this going to be? It's really going to hurt and it's it's already been happening. It's publishers and it's affiliates. What has happened to publishers over the years has been so horrendous. You had the helpful content update demolishing so many independent niche publishers. And then, on top of all of that, you have AI taking clicks from the ones who are still around. It is so insane what has happened to publishers. Affiliates as well. And a lot of publishers depend on affiliate commissions. The thing is, as an affiliate, you can be generating a lot of awareness for a product. The AI is going to see that, it's going to strip out your affiliate link and recommend the product without it, so you don't get the commission. So, that'll hurt, too. The hard reality, and I've been saying this on the show now for the last year, but in private I've been saying this for years, is if you can rank, you should sell your own stuff. Actual businesses that sell their own things that are relying on search will be fine. Maybe even more than fine because there might be more people scared to try SEO. So actually there could be less competition. Agencies relying on businesses who need SEO and Geo, they'll be fine as well. Affiliates and publishers would be better if they figured out their own products and services to sell or white labeled other ones rather than doing affiliate or relying on AdSense. And I I will say, you know, this TechCrunch article opened with the era of the 10 blue links is officially over. But later on in the article they say, "The links to clarify have not entirely disappeared. They are just no longer the priority for many types of searches." Anyway, those are my thoughts on Google I/O's update. Exciting changes for searchers, but it does not change the way that you should be doing SEO. It does, however, change the way that publishers and affiliates should run their businesses. The last thing to touch upon, Google Search Central posted, "Today we released the May 2026 core update. We'll update our ranking release history page when the rollout is complete." Again, I'm recording this on the 21st, which is when this happened. Normally I record these a day in advance. Now I'm doing a few days in advance because I'm traveling and I have to have ones made in advance for days where I can't record. So this rollout is going to take 2 weeks to complete. Leading up to this rollout I was getting people DMing me, emailing me. I was seeing chatter on X and Reddit and Threads and LinkedIn. Think there's an update happening. I think there's an update happening. Have you seen anything about an update? Seems like there's an update happening. And so this has been going on. This has been stirring up for days leading into this update. People suspected the update. I've seen entire blogs get deranked, ones relying very heavily on AI. And people are reporting drops in their backlinks being reported in Google Search Console. Barry Schwartz, a legend in SEO, said, "I see a drop of over 100,000 links for one of my sites." I'm going to make a more thorough episode on the May update tomorrow, but I had to touch upon it. And that is everything that I got for you on episode 1,053 of the Edward Show. If you want to learn how to do bottom-of-funnel SEO, how to use SEO for online reputation management, how to build links in SEO that also is effective with public relations, how to do comparisons and alternative pages, what the proper templates for bottom-of-funnel SEO landing pages should look like, how you can work in documentation into your bottom-of-funnel SEO landing pages. If you want to learn all of this and so much more, my 13 and 1/2-hour SEO course Compact Keywords teaches all of this. If you haven't checked it out yet, you are going to love it. I constantly update it. I spent a year making it, and I constantly keep it updated. Shout out to Boris for this review. "Hi Ed, I just finished watching all the videos to get a better understanding of what I can expect from the whole course. Wow, my mind is blown. This is by far the best-structured and informative course I've ever taken, free or paid. Congrats on doing such an amazing job. I can already tell this will play a major role in my startup success. Thank you." Again, that is at compactkeywords.com. This is 1,053 days in a row doing this podcast. If you watch this on YouTube, thank you so much for watching. If you listened on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, thank you so much for listening. And I will talk to you again tomorrow. Bye now.