SEO & AI Update: Google Releases Gemma 3 AI, OpenAI’s New API, Manus AI Launches, & Google’s Ides of March Core Update

Welcome to the fourth edition of the Previsible SEO and AI Update, where each week we see what’s new when it comes to the confluence of search and AI, and how the two continue to combine and ultimately improve how we search for and find key business answers.

The combined SEO and AI space evolution continues at breakneck pace, and this week brings us industry shifts from Google, OpenAI, a launch from Manus AI, along with new AI report and survey data.

Let’s jump in and examine the ten top SEO and AI news items this week, and we’ll also take a look at a few of the areas on the fascinating periphery of the two, including the history of search technology and its future — plus a lighthearted bonus opportunity to create your own modern version of a retro punch-card.

TOP 10 SEO & AI UPDATES OF THE WEEK

Google calls Gemma 3 the most powerful AI model you can run on one GPU

Google has released its newest AI model Gemma 3, which the search giant calls the strongest model that can currently be deployed with a single graphics processing unit (GPU), targeting developers looking to build a wide range of AI applications. The Verge

SEO & AI IMPACT: With a data context window increase from around 8,000 tokens in Gemma 2 to 128,000 in Gemma 3, accompanied by multi-modal functionality for working with video and images alongside text, Google’s latest model is primed to be put to use by SEO professionals expanding on existing tools and developing new ones that were not within reach with Gemini 2.

OpenAI pushes AI agent capabilities with new developer API

OpenAI has launched its new Responses API product designed to build AI agents, the company recently announced. Built with the ability to interact with both web and local file search and to make use of the host computer, the new Responses API takes OpenAI’s agent-oriented development to new heights, and is set to replace its Assistants API by 2026, OpenAI recently announced. Ars Technica

SEO & AI IMPACT: Open AI’s Responses API provides new access to web search models including the two prime technologies behind ChatGPT Search — GPT-4o mini search and GPT-4o search — which will allow SEO professionals to more easily develop original agentic search tools.

How Gen AI Could Change the Value of Expertise

Advancements in AI are changing the way and the pace at which workers develop new skills, and the firms seeing greater AI-implementation success are increasingly those which take this shift to heart, as the Harvard Business Review recently explored. Harvard Business Review

SEO & AI IMPACT: SEO industry change happens at a swifter pace than in many industries, and with the ratcheting up of new skills that AI has brought, companies will increasingly look to new ways of evaluating performance and how new workers are vetted and hired.

Manus AI is the New Challenger to DeepSeek — Everything you Need to Know

Manus AI has launched what it calls the world’s first fully autonomous AI agent — utilizing a conglomerate of AI models working in unison — and has highlighted its unmatched agentic assistance functionality right out of the digital box, the China-based company recently announced. Tom’s Guide

SEO & AI IMPACT: Lowering the AI assistant entry barrier from those with programming and development experience to folks in more general non-technical roles places Manus temporarily into a new category — one which is certain to have additional entrants throughout 2025, and with this release SEO professionals have another powerful tool available .

New Research: Google Search Grew 20%+ in 2024; receives ~373X more searches than ChatGPT

Google saw the number of searches across its properties increase by some 22 percent during 2024 compared to 2023, with the search giant also seeing an average daily search volume of 14 billion — some 373 times that of top AI platform ChatGPT — two of several findings of interest to search professionals in newly-released search data from SparkToro and Datos. SparkToro

SEO & AI IMPACT: Google’s search volume lead in 2024 — while still the juggernaut it has long been — will be a fascinating benchmark to compare with data for the entirety of 2025 in time, as the number of searches performed within an ever-growing array of AI tools is likely to rise significantly, perhaps topping Google’s current primary search challengers Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo.

The Disconnect Between AI Spend and Potential [McKinsey Report]

47 percent of corporate executives have said that their organizations are moving too slowly when it comes to developing and using AI tools, while three times more employees are using generative AI tools for a third or more of their work than their managers believe — two of numerous findings of interest to search marketers included in newly-published report data. McKinsey

SEO & AI IMPACT: While some 92 percent of companies expect to increase investment in AI, only one percent of firm leaders consider their organizations to be at a mature level on the AI development spectrum, with nearly half of employees noting only moderate or less support when it comes to AI technology training. Going forward, SEO professionals are likely to see a shift towards greater alignment between AI tool investment and training on their use.

Pinterest Begins Labeling Generative AI Content

Pinterest has rolled out overlay tags to denote images that its systems detect as having been created or modified using AI, displaying “AI generated” and “AI modified” over pinned content flagged by the firm’s new AI-detection system. Social Media Today

SEO & AI IMPACT: How AI-generated or modified content is embraced or rebuffed within social media platforms can provide SEO professionals a gauge on what the internet as a whole is increasingly facing, and Pinterest’s move to combat AI created or altered imagery — while simultaneously also offering its own AI features — represents the fine line today’s technology firms increasingly walk.

Google is Exploring Ads in New AI Mode

With Google’s recent launch of Google Search AI Mode, which we covered last week, new related advertising options were expected, and this week Google noted that it has been exploring methods for doing so . Search Engine Land

SEO & AI IMPACT: Google said that it would utilize what it has learned from the advertising options it has offered alongside its AI Overviews within search, and expand on them when it launches ad capabilities for its new Search AI Mode, while some SEO professionals viewed such options as inherently having lower click-through-rates (CTRs) than traditional search results, due to the nature of AI overviews.

Study: AI Search Engines Are Confidently Wrong Too Often

When it comes to identifying specific web content publishing details in AI tools ChatGPT Search, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Gemini, Copilot, and Grok, more than 60 percent of queries were incorrect collectively among the tools, according to test data published recently by the Columbia Journalism Review. Search Engine Roundtable

SEO & AI IMPACT: It can be helpful to examine how AI tools can, when faced with uncertainty, generally improve significantly in how apt they are to note such uncertainly, rather than providing incorrect answers. The study’s data also highlights just how important website crawling rules can be in either restricting or allowing access to particular types of online information.

DOJ: Google Must Sell Chrome, Android Could be Next

The U.S. Department of Justice has sought to have Google divest from its popular Chrome web browser as part of remedies for the firm’s search monopoly, while forcing the same type of sale for Google’s Android mobile operating system was also still a possibility, the Department of Justice recently noted. Ars Technica

SEO & AI IMPACT: Severing the tight ties between Google and its flagship Chrome browser, used by some 3.4 billion people — should the court succeed in its monopoly case — would present a world of challenges for Google, and likely even greater new opportunities for SEO professionals during such a shakeup.

Google Announces “Ides of March” Core Update

Google has released its latest Google Search core update, with an initial focus on surfacing a higher percentage of content from creators, Google recently announced. Search Engine World

SEO & AI IMPACT: Google core search updates showcase the search giant’s ongoing public-facing refinements to its flagship search product, with some of the changes having rolled out unannounced and others now set to take effect in the coming weeks, as Google Search Central announced on LinkedIn.

SEARCH & TECHNOLOGY HISTORY & FUTURE:

Microsoft Quantum Computing ‘Breakthrough’ Faces Fresh Challenge — Nature

The Quest for A.I. ‘Scientific Superintelligence’ — New York Times

The Virtual Keypunch [History] — Masswerk

Big Tech’s Quantum Race is a Golden Opportunity for Dutch Startup QuantWare — The Next Web

Mayo Clinic’s Secret Weapon Against AI Hallucinations: Reverse RAG in Action — Venture Beat

VOICES OF SEARCH PODCAST LATEST EPISODES:

What does storytelling bring to the SEO table when it comes to crafting today’s standout content? Horizon Peak Consulting CEO Jessica Mehring recently joined Previsible CEO Jordan Koene on the Voices of Search podcast and shared her takes on the importance of human-centric content in SEO, the impact of generative AI on SEO and much more — you’ll find it all at “Making SEO Content Stand Out With Storytelling.”

FRIDAY FIVE SEARCH MARKETING & AI FAVORITES TO FOLLOW:

• Stephanie Stahl
• Michael King
• Ruth Burr Reedy
• Greg Gifford
• Sarah Evans

TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR THE LATEST SEO & AI UPDATES

Learn more about Previsible‘s mission to unlock scalable organic growth with AI search optimization.

Have you found an important news item exploring the intersection between SEO and AI that we haven’t covered yet? If so, please don’t hesitate to drop us a line.

Thank you for joining us for this week’s edition of the Previsible SEO & AI Update, and we hope that you will return again next Friday for another selection of the most up-to-date and relevant SEO and AI industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us on our LinkedIn page for even more timely insight.