It’s no secret that the digital landscape shifts constantly. Recent changes made by Google may be strategically steering us toward ads at the cost of organic discovery.
Between degraded results quality, AI-driven summaries, and the overwhelming presence of ads, visibility on search-results pages is no longer earned by merit alone. It’s purchased, positioned, and packaged by algorithms. For brands in the luxury pool, spa, and outdoor living space, this means one thing: Evolve or disappear.
This really is Google’s world, and we are all throwing spaghetti at the wall trying to find effective ways to keep up. The good news? With a smart blend of SEO, paid strategy, and AI-aware content, your brand can still rise to the top. But now more than ever, strategy isn’t optional — it’s survival.
It’s Google’s world, so we need to play smart in it. Here’s how.
Too big to fail
Google’s dominance means people are “locked in.” Documents from a recent court case revealed that the behemoth tested significantly lower-quality search results to see how it would affect Google’s bottom line. It found that its own business did not suffer at all when its search results declined in relevance and usefulness.
In fact, you could say it worked in Google’s favor. Why? Because users stayed anyway. Not only that: Consumers kept searching, kept clicking, and stayed on the search engine longer than they might have if it had served up satisfying results at the top of its results pages.
This experiment confirmed what Google likely already knew: Its dominant market share insulates it from accountability.
This means your high-quality content may be pushed down or ignored in search results in favor of ads. High-effort, quality content can be outranked if it doesn’t align with Google’s monetization goals. What ranks isn’t always what’s best — it’s what’s most profitable for Google’s ecosystem. Even navigational searches (e.g., “Strong Spas dealer near me”) can now return maps, AI-generated text, shopping ads, or videos before your organic listing ever appears.
Google’s algorithm updates increasingly prioritize featured snippets, paid placements, and AI-generated answers over traditional links to websites. This isn’t random or accidental: Poor organic results indirectly benefit Google’s revenue. When users don’t click through to websites, they stay on Google properties longer, and the more likely they are to interact with additional ads.
This forces businesses to “buy back” their own visibility, even when they’ve done everything right organically.
AI takes top billing
Among the major changes, Google reshaped how it provides information with the rollout of Search Generative Experience and the evolution of Gemini. When a consumer searches a term or question, the platform now generates a conversational, AI-generated answer, based on content it has found and populated from a variety of resources. That summary is placed at the top of the search results, above the paid or organic links to websites that also provide the needed information. The AI-generated content often is sourced from multiple sites, but doesn’t always credit them.
That’s a massive shift: If you’re the expert, but your name isn’t cited, your content fuels the AI, but you don’t get the click. This threatens industries (like luxury outdoor living) that rely on long-form content and visual sales journeys.
So this somewhat changes the objective of SEO. Now companies must optimize for visibility within AI, not just search rankings. However, Google has not yet monetized the AI summary at the top of the search page. It takes six to 10 times more computing power to deliver the AI results than a standard Google search result. We’re predicting that Google will begin showing ads in the AI summary sooner than later.
SEO also is becoming more competitive and less predictable. Previously, strong SEO resulted in more dependable traffic over time. Now? Even top-ranked pages may see traffic plateau or decline. This generally happens because of zero-click searches, where people see the results but don’t click on any of the web pages. They often stop because of those AI-generated summaries you now see at the top of the search results. More aggressive ad placements also play a role, as companies that spend more on advertising will receive more favorable placement in search results.
And when Google implements its updates, it often doesn’t disclose exactly how ranking will work, or provide much notice for those changes. So SEO is no longer just content + keywords + backlinks. It’s a constantly moving target that favors brands with paid media budgets. Organic SEO isn’t dead — but it’s no longer reliable on its own.
Users spend more time navigating poor results, increasing exposure to ads, but increasing user frustration and downgrading the efficiency of SEO.
But since Google commands more than 90% of global search traffic, it doesn’t have to work hard to keep users. Even when organic quality slips, users default to Google because there simply aren’t viable alternatives with the same utility.
The blowback
These changes carry implications for both businesses and consumers — especially when it comes to high-ticket items such as pools and spas, which require a high level of research and trust on the consumer’s part.
So across industries, even well-optimized websites report drops in organic traffic.
Companies must do three things: pay to protect their own brand terms from competitors’ ads; compete against AI that “borrows” their content; and accept that success in organic search results alone won’t drive growth.
Now, many businesses are forced to pay for visibility, even on searches for their own brand name. If you sell high-ticket products where buyers research deeply before purchase, you can’t afford to be invisible — especially on mobile platforms.
For consumers, the shift to AI answers and ad-stacked search engine results pages changes how to discover and evaluate businesses. Potential buyers often assume that the top result carries the most weight, but that position is increasingly bought or AI-curated, not earned. This erodes trust. Especially in industries where authenticity, quality, and expertise matter, AI-generated summaries often flatten nuance, strip brand identity, and reduce everything to the lowest common denominator of information.
Strategic takeaways for marketers
In this new environment, success requires agility and a dual-channel strategy. Here’s how to stay competitive:
Optimize for AI-first search. Make your content attractive for Google’s AI. In the best-case scenario, the AI information at the top of the search results page will come from your site and you’ll get credited.
To do this, you want structured data, concise answers, FAQs, and clear headings. This makes it easy for AI to pull accurate, branded content to provide the best summary.
It should be clear in each section what topic is being covered, or what question is answered. In the content, you’re addressing questions that people might type into google — something like, “What’s the difference between a fiberglass pool and a vinyl-liner pool?” So not only will your content be relevant, but Google can find a whole section about that topic in one place. You’re almost formulating the conversation and content like an FAQ.
The content should contain clear headings, such as “Frequent questions we get about pools,” or “What to know about the different types of pools,” or “How to know what type of pool is best for you.” This helps the AI find and identify the relevant material.
You still want to make sure your brand and market area are prevalent. Throughout the entire section you’d want to say, “Here at ABC Pools we perform XYZ services,” or, “We use XYZ method at ABC Pools.” So you’re constantly mentioning your name and the areas you serve.
But there’s a challenge — writing it so it’s clear, concise and readable, while incorporating all the needed key words. So, if you’re going to use an AI application such as ChatGPT to generate your copy, make sure to have a human edit it to ensure its accuracy and readability. We use AI to add search terms, taking a whole article we’ve written and saying, “Incorporate these key words in places that make sense.” But AI-generated copy is notoriously clunky, and it sometimes fabricates information, so you absolutely need to have that human oversight.
The more you structure your content this way, the more frequently you will appear in the AI-generated results, and your organic SEO will continue to rise.
Run paid ads to protect visibility
It has become very obvious that SEO will perform better for those who run Google ads. So branded search terms and high-intent keywords should be supported with paid ads on Google.
The evergreen campaigns are meant to support your brands and products. Load the ad campaign with high-intent keywords — those typically used by consumers who are more ready to make a decision and a purchase, as opposed to key words and search terms used by those at the beginning of the sales funnel. The highest-intent would be something like “pool store near me,” or “hot tub store near me.” High-intent search terms also would include “hot tub pricing,” “swimming pool price near me,” or questions like, “How much is a hot tub?” These will generate more leads.
Low-intent terms would include questions like, “What colors or shapes do pools come in.” A search term like this indicates that the person doesn’t know enough yet to have a buying intention.
It’s become a necessary evil to have Google ads running at some level for branding and SEO.
Keep up with algorithm updates
Track performance during Google’s core updates, and adjust based on volatility. We use a tool called Looker Studio that is based on the Google platform. It allows you to plug all your systems into one metrics report. So you can plug in metrics from your CRM, Google ad performance, SEO tracking, and Meta ad tracking to see how they are performing.
Google sends notifications to its ad partners two to three times a month, explaining updates they’re making to their systems, algorithms and platforms. These changes help make sure nobody can beat the algorithm. Everybody who runs ads should receive these notifications and pay attention. Sometimes they notify about these changes as little as one week in advance.
So, at times, you have adjust to make sure your ads are configured based on how they optimize. We have no control over what Google does — we have to play by the rules and within the confines of what they share about the changes. If your budget meets a particular minimum, a dedicated Google specialist can help.
When major changes take place, you can expect a period of adjustment, especially if we haven’t been given much notice. The number of quality of leads can suffer: After a major change last fall, our customers were telling us, “We’re getting all these spam leads.” We knew but we had to figure things out to get back on track. As it turns out, AI bots had been introduced into the ecosystem through bad actors taking advantage of new algorithm changes. So we collaborated with several other marketing agency owners to research and find ways to prevent this from happening.
Balance short-term visibility with long-term brand authority.
To enjoy the best of both worlds, use SEO to build brand trust and establish your company as an authority, then paid media to keep your brand top-of-mind for the public.
Reaping the benefits of SEO takes a while — it’s a long-term strategy built around consistency and original, quality content that incorporates the right keywords and search terms. It’s like building an airport landing strip over time. An industry partner of ours recently described it this way in a webinar we collaborated on: “Every month that you add content, you expand the runway with another section of SEO, so eventually you’ll be able to land whatever size plane you want.”
Since we started offering SEO services for our clients, we would write about a blog a week and create new website pages, all containing keywords that our research determined to be the most effective. With this method, you’re adding to the volume of relevant content and SEO on your website every month.
Now we also use more sophisticated and comprehensive tools that have been developed to identify which search terms to target, with the goal of putting our client at the top of that results list for those specific terms. We do this for each quarter with new search term goals.
SEO can’t be ignored. If it’s strong, it will add more valuation to your business than paid advertising will if you sell your company. SEO ranking is worth more than how many leads you generate per month.
Because of this SEO also should be considered on the advertising side. AI will list an advertisement as a search result if its content is relevant to the search. Think about SEO when placing your Google ads. Add specific SEO-style queries into the ad sets — for instance “salt water pool vs chlorine” or “salt water pools and skin sensitivity.” This should help ensure that your ads and website are shown in or just under the AI results when those terms or questions are used. Making your ad sets informational and not just promotional is becoming more important.
Always track your leads
This should go without saying, but companies need a CRM and other means of tracking leads if they want any hope of detecting when changes to Google’s algorithm have an impact on your company. More to come on CRM benefits and value in an upcoming article!
Ali Reynolds is co-CEO, and Jena Colvil is director of client success of The Get Smart Group, (Thegetsmartgroup.com) an Angels Camp, Calif.-based marketing agency specializing in the pool/spa industry.