Google AI agents now book tables as Search Console adds annotations

"I know, I know you don't get number one ranking with just a logo, but it's still nice," John Mueller quipped on November 17, 2025, while announcing Search Console's visual refresh. The self-aware humor masked substantial changes lurking beneath the surface—changes that fundamentally alter how websites track performance and how users interact with Google Search.

Mueller, broadcasting from Google Switzerland, delivered news spanning Search Console upgrades, AI Mode expansion, Discover enhancements, and Chrome security mandates. The 6-minute video packed more strategic shifts than many quarterly earnings calls, though Mueller's casual delivery made it sound like routine housekeeping.

Search Console's custom annotations feature finally arrived, addressing a pain point that has plagued digital marketers for years. "Custom annotations help bridge that gap, making it easier to track your SEO efforts," Mueller explained. Website owners can now document when they launched that redesign, implemented that plugin, or hired that agency—all within performance charts rather than scattered across spreadsheets and Slack channels.

The implementation allows 120 characters per annotation, up to 200 total, with automatic deletion after 500 days. Annotations are "shared with your site's Search Console users," Mueller noted, making them collaborative tools rather than personal Post-it notes.

"I love seeing the progress when a site starts getting clicks from search," Mueller said, introducing Search Console Insights achievements. The feature gamifies website performance—because apparently, watching traffic graphs wasn't engaging enough. "I trust you've collected a few of these awards in the meantime, and I hope you get many more," he added with optimistic cheer that suggested he hasn't spent much time in the SEO community's angst-filled forums.

Query groups arrived alongside these updates, tackling a problem that has frustrated analysts since Google started reporting search queries. "Users search in many ways for your website, and query groups combine similar searches, making it easier for you to focus on bigger themes," Mueller explained. The AI-powered consolidation transforms dozens of variations—"how to make guacamole dip," "recipe for guacamole dip," "guac dip recipe"—into single, manageable clusters.

But query groups aren't available to everyone. Google specified they're "available only to properties that have a large volume of queries." Translation: if your site isn't pulling massive traffic, you'll continue drowning in fragmented data the old-fashioned way.

Then Mueller pivoted to the updates that really matter—the ones changing how search actually works.

"First, to get it out of the way, there was the August spam update," Mueller said with the tone of someone acknowledging a mildly embarrassing relative at a family gathering. "We update our automated spam detection systems from time to time to improve the quality of content shown in the search results. Hopefully, not a problem for your site." That "hopefully" carried weight for the thousands of sites that mysteriously tanked in August.

AI Mode stole the show. "AI mode became available to more languages and locations," Mueller announced. The feature launched in India on June 24, 2025, and extended to the United Kingdom on July 28, 2025. By October, Google expanded AI Mode to over 40 countries and territories.

"With AI mode, we're seeing people diving deeper into complex topics and asking questions nearly three times longer than traditional searches," Mueller explained. The data appears in Search Console performance reports, though tangled together with regular search results in ways that make proper attribution nearly impossible.

The real bombshell came buried in the middle of Mueller's presentation. "Also in AI mode, we're experimenting with agentic features," he said, as casually as someone mentioning they're trying a new coffee brand. "These enable users to get things done directly in search."

Then came the example that should alarm every restaurant booking platform: "For example, users might be able to reserve a table through your restaurant website automatically."

Read that again. Google's AI agents will navigate websites and complete transactions without users ever visiting the actual site. "It's currently in search labs for some countries," Mueller noted. "Can the AI agent navigate your website and help users with tasks there? Try it out."

"I expect to report more about agentic systems over time," he added. "It's a fascinating new way of interacting with websites." Fascinating indeed—particularly for anyone whose business model depends on users actually visiting their website rather than having Google's AI do it for them.

Mueller also mentioned Web Guide, another experimental feature in search labs. "It uses AI to group and organize search results, making it easier to find information and web pages," he explained. "With it, you'll find a familiar collection of links, making it easy to dive into web pages. Try it out if you have a chance."

The Discover updates arrived with similar nonchalance. "Creators can now be more visible in Discover," Mueller announced. "So, if you're creating timely and high-quality content on various social platforms, that content could now be shown in addition to your website's articles."

Google expanded Discover on September 17, 2025, adding posts from X, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts. "We've also added a profile for publications and creators together with a follow button, helping users to keep up with what you create online," Mueller said. Because apparently, managing content across multiple social platforms wasn't complicated enough—now you need to optimize for Google's aggregation of all of them.

The e-commerce updates arrived with characteristic Google simplicity. "For e-commerce sites, we added support for organization-wide shipping and return policies, both in structured data and in search console," Mueller explained. The November 12 announcement provides merchants two implementation pathways: Search Console configuration or organization-level structured data markup.

"This makes it a bit easier for sites to specify these policies, helping to build trust with potential customers," Mueller said. "This is in addition to existing product level settings." The subtext: Google wants merchants to load up on structured data because it feeds the AI systems that increasingly answer questions without sending users to actual websites.

Then Mueller delivered bad news wrapped in corporate speak. "In search, we dropped a few visual elements that use structured data," he said breezily. "We evaluate the usefulness of features for both site owners and users regularly and cleanup were reasonable."

Those "few visual elements" represented months or years of implementation work for developers who marked up their content according to Google's specifications. "You can continue to use these structured data types on your website, but they don't have a visual effect in search anymore," Mueller added. Translation: thanks for all that work, but we changed our minds.

His advice? "Having a flexible hosting configuration that makes it easy for you to add and update structured data helps you to be on top of structured data changes." In other words: build infrastructure that can pivot quickly when Google inevitably changes its mind again.

The Chrome security announcement landed with the weight of an ultimatum. "The Google security team just announced that Chrome will make HTTPS the default by October 2026," Mueller said, "meaning users will have to give permission before any non-secure site can load."

His follow-up carried a note of judgment: "I hope you're all using HTTPS."

The Chrome Security Team's October 28 announcement specified that Chrome 154 will enable "Always Use Secure Connections" by default. Between 1% and 5% of web traffic faces disruption. Windows shows approximately 95% HTTPS adoption, while Linux demonstrates nearly 97% usage. That remaining 3-5% includes millions of web pages that will soon require explicit user permission to load.

Mueller moved through several housekeeping items with characteristic efficiency. Site Kit, Google's WordPress plugin, "now supports reader revenue manager, helping you to grow, retain, and engage people by adding newsletter signups, surveys, contributions, and subscriptions." The message: if you're running WordPress, Google has tools to monetize your audience.

Documentation updates addressed JavaScript-based paywalls. "We added some additional information on how to configure JavaScript-based paywalls to our documentation so that they work well for search and beyond," Mueller explained. Publishers implementing subscription models received technical guidance—a rare instance of Google explicitly supporting content monetization strategies that don't involve its advertising ecosystem.

Then Mueller addressed the question that's been circulating since AI search features launched: "And since we frequently get asked questions about it, no, Google doesn't support the LLM's text file."

He elaborated with a statement that deserves scrutiny: "As we've mentioned before, you don't need to do anything special to be displayed in Google's AI powered search features." This sounds reassuring until you consider that many publishers are watching their traffic collapse as AI summaries answer user questions without requiring clicks to source websites.

Mueller closed by acknowledging Google's conference circuit. "August through September are often filled with events here. It's inspirational for us to meet folks like you working on websites worldwide." The company visited Thailand, Mexico, Hungary, Ireland, Germany, Hong Kong, Serbia, Dubai, Japan, Israel, the United Kingdom, Turkey, and Switzerland.

"We'd love to meet more of you. So, watch out for future events on our blog," he said before delivering his sign-off: "And with that, this episode of Google Search News is now complete."

What Mueller framed as routine updates actually signals substantial shifts in search dynamics. Custom annotations provide useful tracking tools, but they're window dressing compared to AI agents booking restaurant reservations and query groups determined by algorithms rather than human categorization. The cheerful delivery obscured the reality that Google is systematically positioning itself between users and websites, extracting value from content while reducing the need for users to visit the sources that created it.

The marketing implications extend beyond technical implementation. AI Mode visitors demonstrate 4.4 times higher conversion value compared to traditional organic search—but only when they actually reach websites. Agentic features threaten to complete transactions within Google's interface, transforming the search engine from intermediary to primary interface.

Mueller's casual tone throughout the announcement belied the strategic importance of these changes. Search Console improvements matter for optimization workflows, but the real story involves Google's expansion into task completion, content aggregation across platforms, and AI systems that synthesize information from multiple sources without directing users to any single website.

The October 2026 HTTPS deadline provides concrete action items, but the AI developments demand strategic reconsideration of content distribution, monetization models, and platform dependencies. Google presented these updates as helpful enhancements. Website owners would be wise to recognize them as fundamental shifts in how search traffic reaches destinations—or increasingly, doesn't.

Timeline

• November 17, 2025: Google Search Console adds custom annotations for performance tracking
• November 17, 2025: Search Console Insights launches achievements feature
• November 17, 2025: Google announces query groups for Search Console
• November 12, 2025: Google expands shipping policy options for online merchants
• October 28, 2025: Chrome announces HTTPS enforcement by default for October 2026
• October 7, 2025: Google expands AI Mode to over 40 countries and territories
• September 17, 2025: Google Discover adds social posts and creator follows
• July 28, 2025: AI Mode launches in United Kingdom
• July 16, 2025: Google Search Console launches comparison mode for 24-hour performance data
• July 2, 2025: Google extends AI Mode to Workspace accounts in the US
• June 30, 2025: Google launches new Search Console Insights report
• June 24, 2025: AI Mode launches in India
• June 17, 2025: Google AI Mode now counts toward Search Console totals
• March 2025: AI Mode initial launch in United States

Summary

Who: Google Search Central, led by John Mueller, Search Advocate at Google Switzerland, announced the updates affecting website owners, SEO professionals, digital marketers, content creators, and e-commerce merchants globally.

What: Google Search Console received custom annotations for performance tracking, achievements in Insights, query groups for analyzing similar searches, and a refreshed logo design. AI Mode expanded to additional languages and countries with experimental agentic features enabling task completion directly in search. Discover added content from social platforms and creator follow capabilities. E-commerce sites gained organization-wide shipping and return policy options. Chrome announced HTTPS enforcement by default for October 2026.

When: Google announced the Search Console updates on November 17, 2025, during its quarterly Google Search News video. Chrome's HTTPS enforcement targets October 2026 with the release of Chrome 154. AI Mode expanded throughout 2025 following its March launch.

Where: Search Console features rolled out globally through Google's webmaster tools platform. AI Mode expanded to over 40 countries and territories by October 2025. Discover enhancements affected users accessing the feed through mobile applications and desktop interfaces. Chrome's HTTPS enforcement will apply globally across all platforms where Chrome operates.

Why: Google aims to provide website owners with better performance tracking tools through custom annotations and query groups while maintaining Search Console's utility during infrastructure changes. AI Mode expansion responds to user adoption patterns showing queries three times longer than traditional searches. Agentic features represent efforts to enable task completion directly within search results. HTTPS enforcement addresses security vulnerabilities where attackers can hijack insecure HTTP connections. E-commerce policy options help merchants communicate fulfillment information without requiring Merchant Center accounts.