Who Wins When AI Owns Search?

About This Episode

AI is no longer the future of search— it is the search.

In this unfiltered roundtable, top agency leaders break down how AI Overviews, zero-click searches, and LLM-powered engines like ChatGPT are rewriting SEO as we know it.

Host Koa Kauwe brings together an expert panel—Adam Loveridge (Blue Forge Marketing), Jerry Van Vort (Nivel / Marketing & PR Agency), David Sanchez (Digitalis Medical), and David Black (Ready Set Search) for a candid look at:

Takeaways:

• How AI-driven search is reshaping visibility and attribution
  
  
• Why brand mentions and entity authority matter more than backlinks
• How agencies are proving ROI when AI owns the top of the funnel
• What really separates winning brands in the AI-first search era

If you want to understand who survives and thrives when AI runs the results page, this conversation is a must-watch.

Timestamps

00:00 — Podcast Intro : AI takes over search 

02:00 — Meet the experts: Adam, Jerry, David & David

05:14 — How agencies are adapting to AI Overviews

07:21 — Is AI just another search engine or something bigger?

09:04 — The E-E-A-T dilemma: why human expertise still wins

10:30 — Structuring content that AI loves to cite

13:13 — Tracking ROI when there are no clicks left

15:10 — Branding vs attribution: what to measure in 2025

18:42 — How AI is redefining “awareness” and “demand creation”

20:34 — Are clients ready for AI-first SEO strategies?

22:11 — Educating clients who still think “rankings = results”

26:24 — How agencies communicate AI visibility and impact

28:29 — Tools shaping the next SEO revolution (Ahrefs, Profound, NLP-based insights)

35:05 — The rise of brand mentions and PR-driven SEO

37:12 — Building dominance: what elite agencies do differently

38:15 — Local SEO in an AI world: narrowing the map

43:05 — Closing thoughts: The Wild West of AI Search