🔥 The SEOs Diners Club - Issue #174 - Weekly SEO Tips & News

Discovering AI-Era Long-Tail Queries in Search Console: Transform Your Content Strategy

The rules have changed, and most SEO professionals are still playing the old game.

While artificial intelligence rapidly transforms our world, the way people use search engines is undergoing a fundamental shift. Users no longer type short keywords like "what is SEO" into Google. Instead, they ask detailed, conversational questions as if talking to a friend: "What are the most effective SEO strategies for small businesses in 2025?"

This shift isn't just affecting our search habits; it's also impacting our online behaviour. It's completely reshaping the data we extract from Google Search Console, our SEO strategies, and our content production processes.

Here's what this means for you: Research shows that a visitor coming from large language models (ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.) can be 4 times more valuable than a visitor from traditional search results. The reason is simple—users now make most, sometimes all, of their purchase decisions on these AI platforms. When they find the right answer, they don't even need to visit another site.

This new reality is pushing us toward what we call "AI-focused SEO" strategy. But how do we capture this changing search behaviour? How do we understand what users are asking? This is where we harness the power of Google Search Console.

How to Find Conversational Queries in Google Search Console

We now know that users interact with search engines almost like having a conversation. To find these long, conversational queries in Google Search Console, we'll use a RegEx (regular expression) method shared by SEO expert Vijay Chauhan. This technique lets you see exactly what problems users are trying to solve when they come to your site.

Here's how to find these long conversational queries step by step:

Step 1: Open Search Console
Log in to your Google Search Console account.

Step 2: Navigate to Performance Report
Click on "Search Results" under the "Performance" section in the left menu.

Step 3: Add Query Filter
Find the "+ New" or "+ Add Filter" button at the top of the performance report and select "Query."

Step 4: Use Custom RegEx
Select "Custom RegEx" from the dropdown menu.

Step 5: Paste the RegEx Code
Paste this code into the box that appears: ([^" "]*\s){32,}?

This code tells Google Search Console, "show me queries with at least 32 words." Thanks to Vijay Chauhan's method, you can capture truly long, conversational queries.

Pro Tip: For broader analysis, you can lower 32 to 15. This way, you'll encounter queries written like genuine questions to a person, such as "which smart bidding strategy optimises value using X feature?" or "you're an expert market researcher, determine if the company has been involved with SEO in the last six months."

These types of queries provide valuable clues about how users reach your content through AI search engines. With Google now adding AI Mode interaction data to Search Console, we can assume these long queries likely come from AI-powered searches.

The Importance of Conversational Queries for Content Revision

Finding these long, conversational queries is just the beginning. What matters is how we use this valuable data to adapt our content to the AI-focused world.

Creating general content like traditional SEO is no longer sufficient. Now, content that can answer ultra-specific questions like "What's the best AI for my 10-year-old manufacturing company in New Jersey?" is worth its weight in gold.

When revising your content and creating new pieces, pay attention to these key areas:

1. Creating Ultra-Specific Content
The conversational queries you find in Google Search Console clearly show what users are looking for. Create content that provides direct, specific answers to these queries. Focus on unique insights rather than general information.

2. Using Original Data
Integrate your unique data into your content. Your customer data, case studies, or market research will differentiate your content from competitors and make it a more reliable source for AI models. For example, if you have data showing that a New Jersey manufacturing company using your product increased their sales closing rates by 3x, definitely use that information.

3. Prioritising Conversion-Focused Content
It makes sense to focus on bottom-of-funnel content. Prioritise queries where users are directly in the purchasing phase or looking for specific details about your product or service to solve a particular problem. While we used to focus on informational content, now content directly related to products—"why we're the best" type content—has become more critical.

4. Visibility on Third-Party Platforms
Here's a crucial point: When AI models generate responses, they only link directly to brand sites 9% of the time. A massive 91% of the time, they reference third-party sites like Reddit, Quora, forums, and industry publications.

This completely changes the game rules. You now need to ensure your brand appears positively and accurately, not just on your site, but on other platforms where your brand is discussed. These citations become valuable signals for AI.

5. Understanding New Metrics
While traditional traffic metrics lose importance, metrics like AI visibility and share of voice are coming to the forefront. How much space you occupy in AI responses on specific topics is now critical. Tools like X-Funnel help measure this new visibility. Visit count alone isn't enough—that "final visit" leading to ultimate conversion has become much more important.

6. Opportunities for New Sites
Good news: AI results may not be as dependent on authority as traditional SEO, so newly established sites can rise faster. This presents a major opportunity for new players.

AI Mode Data Now in Search Console: What Changed?

Google added AI Mode click-impression-position data to Search Console as of June 16, 2025. While data transparency increases for SEO professionals, the lack of filtering still creates risks.

Key Highlights:

Google included clicks, impressions, and average positions from AI Mode in the Search Console Performance report.

Clarity in click-show policy: Clicking an external link counts as a "click," appearing in an AI response counts as an "impression," and each card or visual block reflects on its own "position" line.

Tracking problem continues: Google doesn't offer the ability to separate AI Mode data with a separate filter, like with AI Overviews, everything gets mixed into classic search totals.

New query logic: Each follow-up question a user asks within AI Mode counts as a "new search," with metrics recording from scratch.

Google's Visual Update to URL Guidelines

Google updated its URL structure best practices guide on June 18, 2025. While there's no algorithm change, the guide is now much more readable, filled with examples, and aims to reduce confusion. I always tell everyone wanting to master SEO that they need to refresh such documents from time to time. This is one of those moments.

Key Highlights:

Visual Refresh: Google completely restructured the guide. Explanations with real URL examples became clearer.

No Approach Change: Google clearly stated, "This is only a documentation update. No changes were made to search engine behaviour."

Comprehensive Coverage: Topics like how URLs should be structured, crawlability, special character usage, fragment identifiers, and parameter management were revisited.

What You Can Do:

Review the guide again, especially the current page, enriched with new examples. Examine your URLs—are your URL structures ideal for SEO? Parameters, short descriptive words, hyphen usage, redirects... Share the updated version of this guide with your developer and content teams working on technical SEO.

This Week in the AI World: Tools, Services, and Tips

OpenAI Enhanced ChatGPT Search
On June 16, 2025, OpenAI updated ChatGPT Search, making the tool smarter. The new version can understand long dialogues and automatically conduct multiple searches for complex queries, initiate web searches with uploaded images, and follow instructions more consistently while reducing repetitive responses. OpenAI states this provides "more comprehensive responses" and "improved search capability," while warning that operations may take longer and "chain-of-thought" text may occasionally appear.

Google Launches Search Live
On June 18, 2025, Google launched the "Search Live" feature announced at Google I/O through AI Mode in Labs in the US. You can now start real-time voice conversations by touching the new "Live" icon in the Google app, receiving both voice and written responses from the Gemini-based model while simultaneously seeing source links on the results page. The feature naturally answers follow-up questions by remembering past conversations, doesn't interrupt dialogue when switching between apps, offers text transition with a "transcript" button, and will soon expand with camera-based visual queries.

MIT Study on AI and Critical Thinking
MIT Media Lab's new EEG-supported study with 54 volunteers shows that participants writing with ChatGPT had the lowest levels of brain signals related to critical thinking and attention compared to groups using Google search or no tools, and increasingly shifted toward "copy-paste" tendencies with each attempt. Although not yet peer-reviewed, researchers warn that early dependency on LLMs could impair learning and creativity in the long term.

Google's Veo 3 Coming to YouTube Shorts
At Cannes Lions 2025, with YouTube CEO Neal Mohan's announcement, Google is bringing the advanced text-to-video model Veo 3 to YouTube Shorts this summer. The new version replacing Veo 2 used in the previous "Dream Screen" will offer brands and content creators the ability to prepare creative short videos with just a few word commands, featuring higher resolution, improved physical consistency, and synchronised audio generation. Considering Shorts already reaches 200 billion daily views, this move will expand advertising and content diversity while pushing the format's creativity boundaries. However, Google hasn't yet clarified whether Veo 3 access will be free or tied to Gemini Pro/Ultra subscriptions.

The New Game, New Rules

As search queries become longer and more conversational, Google Search Console clearly shows us these new AI interactions. In our SEO strategy, we must focus on the ultra-specificity of content, original data, and visibility on third-party platforms.

Even our measurement metrics are changing. Traditional metrics like visit count lose importance while AI visibility and share of voice come to the forefront.

In this new era, as SEO professionals and content creators, we must be flexible and adaptive. Building AI-powered systems and using our own data is the key to gaining a competitive advantage in this new opportunity landscape.

After fifteen years in this industry, I've learned that the companies that adapt fastest to fundamental shifts like this are the ones that thrive. The AI revolution in search isn't coming—it's here. The question isn't whether you'll adapt, but how quickly you can transform your strategy to capture this massive opportunity.

Start using your Search Console data to find conversational queries now, and use AI-powered tools to revise your content for this new AI-focused search world. The future belongs to those who can speak the language of artificial intelligence while maintaining the human touch that drives real business results.

Until next week,
Mert Erkal
Founder, Stradiji

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