AI search is simpler than everyone makes it
The short version: AI-search visibility starts with ordinary search fundamentals: make the page crawlable, answer a real question clearly, support claims, and earn relevant mentions. Google says there is no special AI schema or AI-only file required for its AI features.
Evidence note: The 22% figure in the original issue refers to the linked Semrush survey of 481 marketers. Outbound reply thresholds below are BGW operating criteria, not industry benchmarks. See Google Search guidance for the current search baseline.
AI Search is Simpler than Everyone makes it.
Liz Reid’s two rules, the 22% of marketers who actually act on them, and a lead list hiding in plain sight.
Hey humans! Vaibhav here.
Quick week.
Google’s head of Search said the quiet part out loud, Semrush counted who’s actually doing AI search (most aren’t), and an operator on Reddit is closing 4-6 clients a month from a single ad library.
Chuck wanted to add a take. We told him to sit down.
Today’s Playbook
(4 min read)
⚡Quickies:
• Google’s AI Search guidance is simpler than most marketers think.
• Only 22% of marketers are actually optimizing for AI search.
🛠️ This Week’s AI Arsenal
- Aside
- Hermes Bible
📋 Mini-Playbook: Turn Meta’s Ads Library Into a Buyer Intent Lead List
[FOR YOUR TEAM]
Stop guessing who can pay. Find businesses already investing in ads and build a qualified prospect list.
⚡ QUICKIES
1. Google’s new AI search rules sound a lot like high school English class.
Liz Reid, Google’s VP of Search, went on the AI Inside podcast and reduced AI search visibility to two moves: let Google’s crawlers in, and write something worth saying. That’s it.
Original, expertise-rich pages still earn clicks in AI answers. Recycled, anyone-could-have-written-this stuff gets crickets. If your site blocks AI crawlers or just rephrases what’s already out there, you don’t show up. Boring advice. Still true.
2. Only 22% of marketers have actually integrated AI search and SEO. The rest are stuck.
In its linked survey of 481 marketers, Semrush reported that 85% said AI changed their work while 22% said they had integrated AI search and SEO across strategy, execution, and reporting.
The gap is operational. Teams that did integrate were way more likely to report real AI-driven traffic and leads. 40% are still typing prompts into ChatGPT by hand to check if they show up. If nobody on your team can name the metric or run the check, that’s the leak.
You’re Not Missing Opportunities. You’re leaking them.
Want the leak scored for you before you send any email? That’s exactly what the free audit does.
We tell you which of the three is bleeding first, so your line one writes itself.
Find your growth leak -> ScaleOnSteroids
🛠️ THIS WEEK’S AI ARSENAL
1. Aside (aside.com)
An AI browser that does the boring web work for you. Logged-in messages, payments, doc fills, internal-tool clicking. Ranked #1 on three browser-agent benchmarks. Useful where you’d normally pay an assistant to click buttons. Bring your own ChatGPT or Claude key. The next leverage layer isn’t another AI tool, it’s an agent that already knows your tabs.
2. Hermes Bible (hermesbible.com)
A free, community-built, searchable mirror of Hermes Agent docs plus real workflows people have already built. When a tool moves this fast, the operator wiki beats the official docs.
📋 Mini-Playbook: The Ads Library Lead Loop
What it is: a way to build a cold list of businesses that already have budget, by mining Meta’s free Ads Library instead of scraping random domains.
Why it works: if a business is running paid ads right now, two things are true. They have money. They want growth. That filter alone beats most paid lead databases. One operator (Reddit, last week) said he’s been closing 4-6 clients a month on this exact loop. 300-400 emails out, 5-10% reply rate.
Steps to run this week:
- Pick one niche. One. Supplement brands. Local clinics. Pool builders. Whatever you can speak to.
- Open Meta’s Ads Library, filter to your niche and region, and pull active advertisers. Apify has a working scraper if you’d rather not click manually.
- Score before you send. The signal stack: active ads, a clear offer, a weak landing page, an owner-route email, and a visible problem you can point to in line one. Drop anything that fails two of those.
- One short email per prospect. Reference the ad, point at the leak, offer the fix. No “hope this finds you well.” 100-120 words.
- Track reply rate per niche. 5%+ on a clean batch of 100 means the niche is live. Below 3%, fix the filter, not the volume.
🎯 NEXT STEPS
- Open Meta Ads Library today. Pull 25 active advertisers in one niche. Smallest version of the loop.
- If your own site is invisible in AI answers (quickie 1), run the audit on yourself first.
- Reply with the niche you’re testing and we’ll send back the three filters working best.
Stay weird,
Vaibhav
P.S. Friday’s Deep Dive was on why AI search has no #1, only a show-up rate. Same engine sits behind the free audit above. Check the June 2026 archive.