And honestly, this was one of those moments where you can feel the category shifting in real time.

For the last 12–18 months, we have been saying one thing repeatedly at DareAISearch:

Search is no longer only about rankings.

It is moving towards mentions, citations, comparisons, recommendations, and eventually decisions.

Google I/O 2026 felt like the strongest validation of that belief so far.

• AI Mode crossing 1B+ users.

• AI Overviews reaching 2.5B monthly users.

• The new intelligent Search box.

• Ask YouTube.

• Ask Maps.

• Search Agents.

• Generative UI.

• Universal Cart.

• Universal Commerce Protocol.

• Agentic Payments.

Individually, these look like product announcements.

Together, they point to something much bigger:

Google is not just upgrading Search.
Google is rebuilding the full discovery and decision journey around AI.

Earlier, a user searched.
Google showed links.
The user clicked.
The website did the selling.

Now, the journey is changing.

A user can ask a detailed question.
AI can understand the context.
AI can compare brands.
AI can cite sources.
AI can recommend options.
AI can show videos.
AI can suggest places.
AI can build shopping carts.
AI can monitor changes through agents.
And eventually, AI can help users complete actions.

That is why I believe we are entering a new phase of search.

Not just SEO.
Not just GEO.
But AI-led decision visibility.

The biggest shift: search is moving from keywords to intent

The first thing that stood out to me was AI Mode.

For years, search teams built strategy around keywords.

“Best running shoes”
“CRM software”
“Dermatologist near me”
“Hotels in Dubai”
“Best mutual funds”

But AI Mode changes how users search.

People are no longer forced to compress their need into 2–4 words.

They can ask:

“Which running shoes are best for flat feet, daily walking, and Indian weather?”

“Which CRM is best for a 20-member sales team that needs WhatsApp integration?”

“Find a dermatologist near me with strong reviews for acne treatment and evening availability.”

That is a very different search behavior.

This is why I wrote a separate blog on why AI Mode crossing 1 billion users is such a major signal for brands:
AI Mode Has Crossed 1 Billion Users: Why Brands Must Move Beyond Keyword SEO

My POV is simple:

Keyword SEO is not dead.
But keyword tracking alone is incomplete.

Brands now need to track prompt visibility.

Do you appear when users ask AI-led questions?
Do you appear when users compare you with competitors?
Do you appear when users ask for recommendations?
Do you appear when users describe a specific problem or use case?

That is where the next layer of search visibility will be built.

AI citations are becoming the new rankings

The second big signal was AI Overviews.

If AI Overviews are reaching billions of users, then citations inside AI-generated answers become extremely important.

In traditional SEO, ranking was the visibility layer.

In AI Search, citation becomes the trust layer.

This is a big mindset shift.

A brand may rank organically but still not be cited in an AI answer.

Another brand may not rank first, but if AI repeatedly cites third-party sources, reviews, YouTube videos, comparison pages, or publisher articles mentioning that brand, it can still influence the user’s decision.

This is why I wrote:
AI Overviews at 2.5 Billion Users: Why AI Citations Are Becoming the New Rankings

The way I see it:

Ranking tells you where your page appears.
AI citation tells you whether your brand becomes part of the answer.

And that is a much more powerful layer of visibility.

Brands now need to ask:

Are we being cited?
Which sources are being cited?
Are competitors being cited more often?
Is the sentiment positive, neutral, or negative?
Are third-party sources shaping the AI answer correctly?

This is exactly why at DareAISearch, we keep talking about mentions, citations, sentiment, and competitor visibility as core metrics of the new search ecosystem.

YouTube is becoming an AI answer surface

Ask YouTube was another announcement that I found extremely important.

For a long time, brands have treated YouTube as a video platform.

Views.
Subscribers.
Thumbnails.
Watch time.
Engagement.

All of that still matters.

But Ask YouTube changes the role of video.

If users can ask questions inside YouTube and AI can guide them to relevant videos or even relevant parts of videos, then video becomes part of the AI answer layer.

That means video SEO is no longer only about ranking a video.

It is about helping AI understand when your video should become the answer.

This is why we wrote:
Ask YouTube Is Coming: Why Video SEO Is Becoming AI Search Optimization

For brands, this has direct implications.

Titles need to be clearer.
Descriptions need to be richer.
Chapters need to be useful.
Transcripts need to be accurate.
Videos need to answer real user questions.
Brand, product, and category entities need to be mentioned clearly.

A product demo, founder video, customer review, expert explainer, or tutorial can now influence AI-led discovery.

This is especially important for D2C, SaaS, healthcare, education, travel, BFSI, and consumer electronics brands.

Your next customer may not discover you through your website first.

They may discover you through a video answer.

Maps is moving from “near me” to “right for me”

Ask Maps was another powerful signal.

Local search has always been close to conversion.

When someone searches on Maps, they are usually ready to call, visit, book, navigate, or buy.

But Ask Maps makes local search more conversational and context-led.

The old query was:

“Restaurant near me”

The new query becomes:

“Find a family-friendly restaurant nearby with vegetarian options, parking, and not too much crowd.”

The old query was:

“Dermatologist near me”

The new query becomes:

“Find a dermatologist near me with strong reviews for acne treatment and evening appointments.”

That is not just a local search.

That is a local recommendation.

This is why we wrote:
Ask Maps and Local AI Search: The New Discovery Layer for Stores, Clinics, Restaurants, and Local Brands

My biggest takeaway:

Local SEO is moving from proximity to suitability.

Being nearby is not enough.
You need to be the right fit.

Reviews, photos, business attributes, local landing pages, service descriptions, third-party mentions, and review themes will all become more important.

A café should not only rank for “café near me.”

It should be understood as:

Quiet.
Work-friendly.
Good Wi-Fi.
Open late.
Good for meetings.
Good ambience.
Easy parking.

That is the future of local AI search.

Search results will not look the same for everyone

One of the most interesting parts of Google I/O was Generative UI and Search Agents.

This is where I feel many brands are underestimating the change.

We are used to thinking of Google Search as a results page.

But what happens when the result is no longer a fixed page?

What happens when AI creates a custom interface based on the user’s need?

For one user, it may be a comparison table.
For another, a map.
For another, a shopping module.
For another, a calculator.
For another, a video answer.
For another, a tracker.
For another, an AI agent monitoring updates in the background.

That changes how brands need to think about visibility.

This is why we wrote:
Search Agents and Generative UI: Why Google Search Will No Longer Look the Same for Everyone

The old SEO question was:

“Where do we rank?”

The new question is:

“Where do we appear inside the AI-generated experience?”

Are we included in the comparison table?
Are we recommended in the agent alert?
Are we visible in the shopping module?
Are we part of the map result?
Are we cited in the answer?
Are we trusted enough to be selected?

This is the kind of shift that changes reporting, strategy, and execution.

Commerce is moving inside AI Search

Universal Cart, Universal Commerce Protocol, and Agentic Payments were probably the biggest signals for e-commerce brands.

For years, the e-commerce journey looked like this:

Search → Click → Website → Product Page → Cart → Checkout

But AI commerce can change that journey to:

Ask → Compare → Recommend → Add to Cart → Find Discount → Pay

The cart is no longer only on the brand’s website.

The cart can move into Search, Gemini, YouTube, Gmail, and AI agents.

This is why we wrote:
Universal Cart, UCP, and Agentic Payments: Why Shopping Is Moving Inside AI Search

For D2C and e-commerce brands, this is massive.

Product feeds become strategic assets.
Inventory accuracy becomes important.
Pricing accuracy becomes important.
Reviews become important.
Compatibility data becomes important.
Product descriptions need to become more structured.
Offers need to be machine-readable.
Third-party validation matters.

AI cannot recommend what it cannot understand.

And AI will not recommend what it cannot trust.

That is why commerce teams, SEO teams, product teams, and performance teams will need to work much more closely in the AI Search era.

The most important question for brands now

After looking at all announcements, I think the most important question for brands is this:

Are you ready to be discovered, understood, cited, recommended, and selected by AI?

That is why we created a practical checklist:
Is Your Brand Ready for AI Search? A 2026 Readiness Checklist After Google I/O

This checklist covers:

• Prompt visibility

• AI citations

• Content structure

• Entity clarity

• Technical SEO

• Third-party authority

• Reviews and sentiment

• Local AI search

• Video AI search

• Product feed readiness

• Competitor intelligence

• Analytics and AI traffic

• Actionability

Because AI Search readiness is not one task.

It is a system.

It touches SEO, content, PR, social, YouTube, local, reviews, product feeds, analytics, and conversion journeys.

My biggest personal takeaway

For me, Google I/O 2026 confirmed something we have been building towards at DareAISearch:

The future of search will not be defined only by who ranks.

It will be defined by who AI understands.
Who AI trusts.
Who AI cites.
Who AI compares positively.
Who AI recommends.
And eventually, who AI helps users choose.

That is a very different world.

SEO teams will need to evolve.
Content teams will need to write for answers, not just keywords.
Performance teams will need to understand AI-assisted journeys.
Brand teams will need to care about how AI describes them.
Product teams will need to make data cleaner and more accessible.
Founders will need to ask how their brand appears inside AI-led decisions.

This is the reason we built DareAISearch.

Not as another SEO tool.

But as an AI Search Visibility OS for brands that want to understand how they appear across the new discovery journey.

Mentions.
Citations.
Sentiment.
Competitor visibility.
Prompt tracking.
Traditional SEO.
AI-led traffic.
Execution opportunities.

All in one place.

The full Google I/O 2026 AI Search series

If you are a founder, marketer, SEO leader, D2C operator, SaaS team, local business, or enterprise brand trying to understand what Google I/O 2026 means for you, we published a full 8-part series on the DareAISearch blog:

1. Google I/O 2026 Confirms It: Search Is Becoming an AI Decision Layer

2. AI Mode Has Crossed 1 Billion Users: Why Brands Must Move Beyond Keyword SEO

3. AI Overviews at 2.5 Billion Users: Why AI Citations Are Becoming the New Rankings

4. Ask YouTube Is Coming: Why Video SEO Is Becoming AI Search Optimization

5. Ask Maps and Local AI Search: The New Discovery Layer for Stores, Clinics, Restaurants, and Local Brands

6. Search Agents and Generative UI: Why Google Search Will No Longer Look the Same for Everyone

7. Universal Cart, UCP, and Agentic Payments: Why Shopping Is Moving Inside AI Search

8. Is Your Brand Ready for AI Search? A 2026 Readiness Checklist After Google I/O

The biggest mistake brands can make right now is assuming this is just another Google update.

It is not.

This is not just about AI Overviews.
This is not just about AI Mode.
This is not just about rankings moving around.

This is about the search journey becoming more intelligent, conversational, visual, agentic, and action-oriented.

The next battle for brands will not only be on page one.

It will be inside the answer.
Inside the citation.
Inside the recommendation.
Inside the map.
Inside the video.
Inside the cart.
And eventually, inside the AI agent’s decision.

Search is not dying.

Search is becoming the decision layer.

And brands need to prepare for that now.

Until next time, Keep Growing!!!

Siddhant Jain

This week was a complete rollercoaster.

SearchScore AI went live on Product Hunt, and for 24 hours our entire team was running at full speed, posting, replying, sharing, engaging across communities, speaking to users, tracking signups, and trying to make the most of the launch window.

And honestly, the response was very interesting.

On the backend, SearchScore received a tremendous response. We saw strong interest, quality trials, and a lot of people trying to understand their brand’s AI search visibility.

But one big learning also became clear:

Product Hunt was probably not the right channel for us from an audience perspective.

A lot of people who supported us were likely creating their Product Hunt accounts for the first time. And because Product Hunt’s ranking system gives lower weightage to new accounts, the public upvote count did not fully reflect the actual interest we were seeing on the product backend.

That was an important learning.

Sometimes, the channel may look right because everyone in tech talks about it. But your actual audience, your real demand, and your real product validation may show up somewhere else.

For us, the biggest validation was not just the Product Hunt number.

It was the number of people who tried SearchScore AI, downloaded their reports, shared feedback, and booked demos after seeing where their brand stands in AI search.

Demos, conversations, and learning

After the Product Hunt launch, most of my time has gone into DareAISearch demos.

And next week also looks like it will be all about demos.

Enterprise brands are actively trying to understand:

How visible are they on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and AI Overviews?

Are they being cited when people ask purchase-intent questions?

Are their competitors getting recommended more often?

What kind of content, citations, website structure, and authority signals help brands perform better in AI search?

These demos have been a great learning experience because the market is moving fast. A few months ago, brands were asking, “Is AI search even important?”

Now the question has changed to, “How do we know where we stand, and how do we improve?”

That is a big shift.

Google’s AI Optimization Guide

Another major update this week was Google releasing its AI optimization guide.

For me, this is another clear signal that AI search optimization is no longer a future trend. It is now becoming part of how brands need to think about search visibility.

The guide reinforces a lot of what we have been saying at DareAISearch:

AI search visibility is not about replacing SEO.

It is about upgrading SEO for a world where discovery happens through answers, citations, summaries, and recommendations.

We wrote a detailed blog on this from the DareAISearch perspective.

Read it here: Google AI Optimization Guide

Google Analytics and AI traffic

Google Analytics has also started moving in the direction of giving better visibility into AI-driven traffic.

This is a useful update for marketers because one of the biggest problems with AI search has been measurement.

At DareAISearch, we were already helping brands identify AI-driven sessions using source parameters and analytics data. But seeing Google also move in this direction is a strong validation of the category.

AI search traffic is no longer something brands can ignore or treat as a random referral source.

It needs to be measured, tracked, and improved like every other serious acquisition channel.

We also wrote a detailed blog on this update.

Read it here: Google Analytics AI Traffic Blog

This week taught me something important.

The future of search is not just about ranking on Google.

It is about being discovered, cited, trusted, and recommended across AI-led journeys.

SearchScore AI going live on Product Hunt was just one step in that journey.

The real work starts now, more demos, more learning, more conversations, and more brands understanding where they stand in the AI search era.

Keep Growing

Siddhant Jain

And in those 12 months, we rebuilt it 7 times.

Not because the product was broken.

Because AI search was evolving faster than we expected.

Every few weeks, something changed.

ChatGPT became more search-focused.
Gemini started showing up differently.
Perplexity became an important discovery layer.
Google AI Overviews kept evolving.
Brands started asking a very different question:

“Are we visible where customers are now searching?”

That question became the starting point for SearchScore AI.

Why we built SearchScore AI

For years, brands knew how to measure traditional search visibility.

They could check rankings.
They could track keywords.
They could monitor traffic.
They could see impressions and clicks.

But AI search changed the game.

A customer is no longer only searching:

“best running shoes in India”

They are asking:

“Which running shoes should I buy if I need stability, cushioning, and daily comfort?”

And instead of seeing 10 blue links, they are getting answers.

Sometimes your brand is mentioned.
Sometimes your competitor is mentioned.
Sometimes your brand is completely missing.

That is a massive shift.

Search is moving from rankings to recommendations.

From keywords to prompts.

From traffic to decision visibility.

And most brands still do not know how they are performing in this new world.

That is why we built SearchScore AI.

What SearchScore AI does

SearchScore AI helps brands check their AI Search Visibility in under 55 seconds.

It shows how platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI search engines see your brand today.

But we did not want to build just another score.

We wanted to build something that helps brands understand:

• Where they stand.

• Where they are losing visibility.

• Which competitors are showing up.

• Which prompts matter.

• What AI models think about them.

• And what they should improve next.

The 5 pillars of your SearchScore

One of the biggest parts of SearchScore AI is the SearchScore Breakdown.

It decodes your visibility across 5 key pillars:

1. AI Citation Score
How often AI engines cite or reference your brand across relevant queries.

2. SEO Health
How strong your traditional search foundation is, because AI search still depends heavily on crawlable, structured, and trustworthy content.

3. Local Search
How visible your brand is in location-led discovery and local intent queries.

4. Voice Search
How well your brand is positioned for conversational and voice-led search behaviour.

5. Authority Signals
How strong your brand appears across trust, mentions, citations, and external signals.

This breakdown matters because a single score is not enough.

Brands need to know what is improving the score, what is pulling it down, and where the biggest opportunity exists.

Competitor Insights in seconds

AI search is not just about whether your brand appears.

It is also about who appears instead of you.

SearchScore AI gives detailed Competitor Insights so brands can see which competitors are gaining visibility across high-intent prompts.

This is one of the most important parts of the product.

Because in AI search, losing visibility does not always look like losing rank.

Sometimes it looks like your competitor being recommended as the better option.

Sometimes it looks like your brand not being included in the answer at all.

Sometimes it looks like AI engines understanding your competitor better than they understand you.

SearchScore AI helps brands identify that gap.

Real-time Prompts & Keywords

Another important feature is mapping out real-time Prompts & Keywords.

Traditional search was keyword-heavy.

AI search is prompt-heavy.

But the two are now connected.

SearchScore AI helps brands understand how their customers may be searching, asking, comparing, and making decisions across both search and AI platforms.

It highlights where the brand is losing visibility and which high-intent prompts need attention.

This is especially important because AI search is not only about awareness.

Many prompts are commercial.

People are asking AI tools what to buy, which brand to trust, which product is better, and which option fits their needs.

That makes prompt visibility a business-critical metric.

Brand Sentiment: What AI thinks about your brand

One of my favourite parts of SearchScore AI is Brand Sentiment.

It helps brands understand how AI models perceive and mention them.

Is the sentiment positive?
Is it neutral?
Is it weak?
Is the brand being positioned correctly?
Are AI engines missing important context?
Are competitors being described more strongly?

This matters because AI search is not only about being mentioned.

It is about how you are mentioned.

A brand can appear in AI answers and still lose the decision if the context is weak, outdated, or less persuasive than competitors.

SearchScore AI helps brands understand that perception layer.

AI Search Playground

We also added the AI Search Playground.

This lets users enter any prompt and check their brand’s visibility against that prompt in real time.

For example:

“Best running shoes in India”
“Top skincare brands for sensitive skin”
“Best smart ring alternatives”
“Which CRM is best for small businesses?”
“Best hospitals for preventive health checkups”

This feature is powerful because every brand has specific prompts that matter to its business.

The AI Search Playground gives teams a way to test those prompts directly.

Why we rebuilt it 7 times

When we started building SearchScore AI, AI search itself was still changing rapidly.

The way answers were generated changed.
The way citations appeared changed.
The way AI models interpreted brands changed.
The role of prompts changed.
The role of traditional SEO signals changed.
The way brands wanted to measure visibility also changed.

So we kept rebuilding.

• V1 helped us validate the idea.

• V2 improved the scoring.

• V3 improved the experience.

• V4 improved the output.

• V5 made the product more useful for brands.

• V6 added deeper breakdowns and competitive intelligence.

• V7 brought the biggest visual overhaul and the AI Search Playground.

• Every version taught us something new.

• And every version got us closer to one clear goal:

Make AI search visibility simple, measurable, and actionable for every brand.

SearchScore AI is live on Product Hunt

SearchScore AI is now live on Product Hunt.

All three of us founders and the entire team are genuinely excited.

This launch is not just about putting a product on Product Hunt.

It is about sharing 12 months of building, learning, rebuilding, testing, and improving with a global community of founders, marketers, builders, and product teams.

We are still early.

AI search is still early.

But one thing is clear:

Brands that understand AI search visibility early will have a major advantage.

They will know where they stand before others even know what to measure.

They will know which prompts matter.

They will know how AI engines see them.

They will know where competitors are winning.

And they will know what to fix.

That is the future we are building for with SearchScore AI and DareAISearch.

Show us some love on Product Hunt ❤️

If you believe AI search is the next big shift in brand discovery, we would love your support.

Please check out SearchScore AI on Product Hunt, try the product, share your feedback, and show us some love.

Your support will mean a lot to all three of us founders and the entire team that has been building this quietly for the last 12 months.

Search is changing.

AI is changing how people discover, compare, and choose brands.

And SearchScore AI is our first step towards helping every brand understand where they stand in this new world.

The last few weeks have been full of writing, building, experimenting, and preparing for one of our most exciting launches yet.

At DareAISearch, we have been closely tracking how AI is changing search, advertising, content, and brand discovery. Every week now feels like a new signal that the search ecosystem is moving faster than most businesses expected.

And honestly, this is exactly the phase we wanted to build for.

ChatGPT Ads Manager: A new layer of advertising is emerging

One of the big topics we wrote about recently was ChatGPT Ads Manager.

For years, Google Search Ads shaped how brands reached high-intent users. When someone searched for a product, service, or solution, ads became the fastest way to appear in that decision journey.

Now, conversational AI platforms are starting to open up their own advertising layers.

This is not just another ad placement.

This could become a new way for brands to appear inside conversations where users are asking, comparing, shortlisting, evaluating, and making decisions.

That changes the role of advertising.

In the AI search era, brands will not only compete for clicks. They will compete for visibility inside answers, recommendations, comparisons, and decision-making journeys.

For marketers, this means paid media, search, SEO, and AI visibility will start overlapping more deeply than ever before.

At DareAISearch, we will be testing this space closely because we believe ChatGPT Ads and similar AI-native ad formats can become an important part of the future search ecosystem.

Google removes FAQ rich results, but FAQs are not dead

We also wrote about Google’s decision to remove FAQ rich results from Search.

As of May 7, 2026, FAQ rich results are no longer appearing in Google Search. Google will also be dropping the FAQ search appearance, the rich result report, and support in the Rich Results Test in June 2026. Search Console API support for FAQ rich results will be removed in August 2026.

This is an important update.

For the last two years, the popularity of FAQs and FAQ schema had increased significantly. A lot of brands, SEO teams, and content teams started treating FAQs as a critical part of their search and AI search strategy.

But like many SEO tactics, the format was also widely abused.

Many websites added FAQ sections not because they genuinely improved the user experience, but because they wanted extra visibility in search results.

Our view at DareAISearch is simple.

FAQ rich results may no longer be important for Google Search visibility in the same way, but FAQs are still extremely important for AI search, Generative Engine Optimization, and answer-led discovery.

AI systems need clear, structured, question-led information.

They need content that directly answers what users are asking.

They need pages that make it easy to understand the brand, the product, the category, the use case, and the decision context.

That is where FAQs still matter.

The problem was never the FAQ format. The problem was how brands started abusing it.

When FAQs are written properly, they still help users. They still help AI systems understand context. And they still play an important role in making brands more discoverable and cite-worthy in AI-driven search.

Experimenting with Brand Voice Intelligence inside DareAISearch

On the product side, we also started experimenting with a new feature inside DareAISearch: Brand Voice Intelligence.

The idea is simple, but powerful.

Every brand has a voice.

But most teams do not have a structured way to preserve it.

A lot of brand voice exists only in feedback loops, WhatsApp comments, Google Doc edits, client preferences, approved blogs, and internal understanding.

This creates a problem.

Every time a new writer joins, a new editor reviews, or an AI-assisted workflow is introduced, the brand voice has to be explained again.

So we started experimenting with a system where DareAISearch can use approved blogs, brand websites, and client feedback to create a living Brand Voice Guide.

This guide can help writers, editors, SEO teams, and AI content workflows understand:

• How the brand should sound

• What tone should be used

• What words should be avoided

• How deeply topics should be explained

• What kind of examples should be used

• How the brand wants to position itself

• What the brand does not want to sound like

The larger vision is that this should not be a one-time document.

It should keep learning.

Every month, as new blogs are approved and new feedback is received, the brand voice should become sharper.

For us, this fits perfectly into the Intelligence layer of DareAISearch.

AI search optimization is not only about writing more content.

It is about writing content that is technically strong, contextually useful, and brand-aligned.

Brand Voice Intelligence is one step in that direction.

SearchScore launches on Product Hunt this Wednesday

And finally, the biggest update for this week:

SearchScore is launching on Product Hunt this Wednesday.

All three of us founders and the entire team are genuinely excited about this.

SearchScore started as a simple idea: help brands understand how visible they are across AI search platforms.

But over the last few versions, it has evolved into a much stronger product.

We have improved the UI, added clearer scoring, built better reporting, introduced competitive intelligence, and launched the AI Search Sandbox where users can manually enter prompts and check performance in real time.

For us, this Product Hunt launch is not just about launching a product.

It is about putting SearchScore in front of a global community of builders, marketers, founders, product teams, and early adopters who are also trying to understand the future of search.

Search is changing from links to answers.

From keywords to prompts.

From ranking pages to influencing decisions.

And SearchScore is our way of helping brands measure where they stand in this new world.

The search shift is getting real

The way I see it, we are still very early in the AI search shift.

But the signals are becoming stronger every week.

Ads are changing.

SEO signals are changing.

Content formats are changing.

Brand visibility is changing.

The way users discover, compare, and choose brands is changing.

And that means the way brands think about search also needs to change.

At DareAISearch and SearchScore, we are building for that future one experiment, one blog, one feature, and one launch at a time.

This Wednesday, we take another step forward with the SearchScore Product Hunt launch.

More soon.

Posting after a long time.

My last post was in February 2026, and honestly, the last 75 days have been all about one Building and selling.

Not talking about just building and planning endlessly.
Actually building.
Actually selling.
Actually learning from customers.
Actually shipping.

And in these 75 days, both SearchScore AI and DareAISearch have moved forward significantly.

SearchScore AI: From V5 to V7 in 75 Days

When we started working on SearchScore AI, the goal was simple:

Help brands understand how visible they are in AI search.

But over the last few months, the product has evolved from being just an AI visibility checker to becoming a much sharper diagnostic layer for brands.

In the last 75 days, we moved from V5 to V7.

V7: Visual Overhaul & AI Search Sandbox

V7 has been the biggest visual overhaul since SearchScore V1.

We completely refreshed the UI to make it cleaner, sharper, and easier to understand.

Because one thing became very clear to us:

A score is useful only when people can understand what it means and what they should do next.

With V7, we introduced:

• A completely refreshed UI designed for clarity

• Better readability across sections

• Easier interpretation of AI visibility data

• Toolkits across key terms for actionable guidance

• AI Search Sandbox, where users can manually enter a prompt and check brand performance on ChatGPT in real time

The AI Search Sandbox is especially exciting because it makes AI visibility more tangible.

Instead of only looking at a report, users can now ask the kind of questions their potential customers may be asking and see where their brand stands.

That changes the conversation.

V6: SearchScore Breakdown & Competitive Intelligence

Before V7, we shipped V6 with some important foundational improvements.

V6 introduced:

• Detailed SearchScore breakdown

• Clear visibility into how the AI visibility score is calculated

• Richer traditional search data

• Improved keyword and ranking insights

• Enhanced competitive analysis

• Side-by-side brand comparisons

• PDF report downloads

• Overall accuracy and reporting quality improvements

This version helped us move closer to one of our core beliefs:

Brands should not just know their AI visibility score.
They should know why that score exists.

Because once you know the why, you can start improving it.

DareAISearch: From Platform to Operating System

While SearchScore AI was evolving rapidly, DareAISearch also went through major upgrades.

Over the last 75 days, we delivered strong results for brands across:

• Mentions

• Citations

• Rankings

• Organic traffic

• AI visibility

• And in some cases, even revenue

But the best part was not just the results.

The best part was that many of the product improvements came directly from feedback shared by brands actively using the platform.

That is when the product starts becoming real.

Not when it looks good in a demo.
Not when it works well in a controlled environment.
But when real brands use it, question it, break it, report bugs, and push you to make it better.

What We Improved Inside DareAISearch

One of the biggest upgrades was the unified integration of Google Search Console and Google Analytics.

Brands can now view search performance and analytics performance in one place.

This matters because traditional SEO and AI search visibility cannot be looked at in isolation anymore.

The same brand journey may start on Google, move to ChatGPT, get influenced by YouTube, and eventually convert through organic, direct, or branded search.

Search is no longer one channel.

Search is becoming a connected decision layer.

We also improved our weekly cadence intelligence.

The goal here is to make reporting less about static updates and more about real intelligence.

What changed?
Why did it change?
What should the brand do next?

That is the direction we are building towards.

We also improved our blog generator intelligence.

Content today cannot just be SEO-first.

It needs to be structured for traditional search, AI search, answer engines, and brand authority. The content layer inside DareAISearch is being built with that future in mind.

Another small but meaningful metric:

Platform usage by our internal team increased by 10%.

This matters a lot to me.

Because before any external user fully believes in the platform, the internal team has to use it as part of their daily operating system.

If your own team does not use the product deeply, you are not building a product.
You are building a dashboard.

And we do not want DareAISearch to be just another dashboard.

The Best Bug Reports Are the Ones That Come at 1 AM

We also received a lot of bug reports from brands using the platform.

At first glance, bug reports may look like a problem.

But when brands are opening the DareAISearch platform at 1 AM, 9 AM, and 3 PM, reporting issues, checking insights, asking questions, and using the data actively, it gives you confidence.

It tells you that people care.

It tells you the platform is entering their workflow.

It tells you that you are building in the right direction.

A product nobody uses has no bugs.

A product people depend on will always surface bugs, edge cases, questions, and improvement areas.

That is part of the journey.

AI Citation Index: April 2026

We also launched our AI Citation Index for April 2026.

This is one of the most interesting intelligence layers we are building at DareAISearch.

The goal is to understand which platforms and websites AI search engines actually cite before giving users an answer.

And in April 2026, one major insight stood out:

Reddit came back as the top citation source for brands in India, followed by YouTube.

This is important because it shows that AI search visibility is not just about your website.

It is also about your presence across the wider internet.

• Forums.

• Communities.

• Video platforms.

• Review platforms.

• Publisher websites.

• Marketplaces.

• Social platforms.

AI search engines are not only reading your website.
They are reading the web around your brand.

That is why the future of search visibility is not just SEO.

It is SEO + GEO + content + community + reputation + authority + structured intelligence.

Where We Are Headed

With DareAISearch, our goal is simple:

To become the operating system of search visibility.

A platform that helps brands get:

• Mentioned

• Ranked

• Cited

• Discovered

• And chosen

Across both traditional search engines and AI search engines.

Google is still important, SEO is still important, But the search journey is changing.

• People are asking ChatGPT.

• They are comparing on Perplexity.

• They are discovering through Gemini.

• They are watching YouTube.

• They are reading Reddit.

• They are checking reviews.

• They are moving across multiple touchpoints before making a decision.

Brands need one unified system to understand and improve visibility across all of this.

That is what we are building.

We Are Just Getting Started

The last 75 days have been intense.

• A lot of building.

• A lot of selling.

• A lot of feedback.

• A lot of bug fixing.

• A lot of product decisions.

• A lot of customer conversations.

But most importantly, a lot of clarity.

SearchScore AI is becoming sharper as an AI visibility diagnostic platform.

DareAISearch is becoming stronger as the operating system for search visibility.

And we are still very early.

The next phase will be about going deeper into intelligence, automation, reporting, and helping brands understand not just where they stand, but what they should do next.

We are just getting started.

Sometimes, you don’t realize you were early until the ecosystem catches up.

Microsoft announced AI Performance reporting inside Bing Webmaster Tools allowing publishers to track how often their content is cited inside AI-generated answers.

For most marketers, this is just another feature update.

For me, it felt different.

It felt like validation.

Back in November 2024, I started going deep into AI Search. At that time, conversations around citations, AI visibility, and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) were niche. Most discussions were still around rankings and traffic.

But something was clearly shifting.

Search was no longer just about ranking pages.

It was about being selected as an answer.

Now, with AI citation reporting becoming visible, the industry is starting to talk about what we’ve been building toward for over a year.

Full Breakdown of Bing AI Performance

How This Has Shaped My Journey

When we announced DareAISearch exactly a year ago, the vision was simple but bold:

Help brands optimize for AI Search visibility across generative platforms.

At that time:

• There were no structured AI visibility metrics.

• No standard dashboards.

• No clear frameworks.

• No category called GEO.

Today:

• AI citations are measurable.

• AI share of voice is trackable.

• AI search traffic is growing.

• And generative answers are becoming mainstream discovery layers.

It’s been incredible to see the idea evolve from a hypothesis into a structured product and ecosystem.

What We’ve Built Since Then

Over the last 12 months, we’ve made significant advances in the DareAISearch product:

• AI Visibility Tracking Frameworks

• Citation Monitoring Systems

• Conversational Query Intelligence

• Entity & Authority Mapping

• Generative Engine Optimization Playbooks

• Multi-platform AI Search Audits

What started as exploration is now becoming infrastructure.

And we’re just getting started.

18th February: Revealing Our 90-Day GEO Playbook

On 18th February, we’re hosting a special session where we’ll reveal our 90-Day Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Playbook.

This is not theory.

It’s a structured roadmap covering:

• How to measure AI visibility

• How to increase AI citations

• How to build topical authority for generative engines

• How to align SEO + GEO strategy

• How to prepare for zero-click AI experiences

If you’re serious about understanding how AI Search will impact your brand, this session will give you clarity.

Register Today

The First 45 Days of This Year Have Been Wild

If this is how 2026 has started, imagine what the rest of the year looks like.

In just the first 45 days, we’ve seen:

• AI Performance reporting inside Bing

• Major improvements in AI retrieval accuracy

• Expanded AI search integrations across platforms

• Rapid acceleration in conversational discovery behavior

• Increased enterprise conversations around AI visibility measurement

The velocity of change is insane.

This is not incremental evolution.

This is structural transformation.

A Personal Reflection

When I started studying AI Search deeply in November 2024, I didn’t know how long it would take for the ecosystem to align.

But I knew one thing:

If answers are generated, visibility inside answers will matter.

Today, that thesis is no longer abstract.

It’s measurable.

It’s visible.

And it’s accelerating.

The AI era is not coming.

It’s here.

Let’s keep growing in it.

2026 is off to a ridiculous start in AI.

In just the first couple of weeks, we’ve seen AI move from “answers” to “outcomes” across four fronts:

1. Health-grade experiences

2. Ads inside AI chat

3. Agents that can actually do work

4. Big-platform partnerships that decide distribution

If January is the trailer, 2026 might become the most crucial year for AI adoption.

The biggest AI releases so far in 2026 (and what they signal)

1) ChatGPT Health is live: a dedicated health experience inside ChatGPT

OpenAI launched ChatGPT Health as a dedicated experience for health/wellness questions, with the ability to connect medical records and wellness apps.

What it signals: AI is entering regulated, high-stakes categories in a “native product” way, not just as a generic chatbot layer.

DareAISearch POV: With ChatGPT Health, healthcare discovery shifts from “search results” to AI-driven recommendations. Brands that invest early in AI trust, citations, and authoritative presence will win. Those that don’t may simply stop showing up.

Read our detailed blog on ChatGPT Health

My take (Asthma Friend POV):
This is also where India’s biggest asthma problem becomes impossible to ignore: misinformation disguised as “home hacks,” fueled by placebo and virality. There is no cure for asthma; you control it with the right plan, routine, triggers, and medical guidance.

That’s why I built a free tool:

Free Asthma Action Plan Creator

(If you or someone in your family has asthma, please use it. It’s built to be quick and practical.)

2) ChatGPT Ads testing: the “Google Ads moment” for AI chat

OpenAI announced it will begin showing ads in ChatGPT (starting with free users).

What it signals: AI interfaces are becoming new storefronts. Discovery will increasingly happen inside assistants, not just search/social feeds.

DareAISearch POV:
This is exactly why “ranking in AI” can’t be treated like a content-only SEO problem anymore. The future is:

• Organic AI visibility (mentions, citations, recommendations)'

• Paid AI placement (when ads become the default monetization layer)

If your category is competitive, you’ll need both. Ads won’t replace organic; they’ll raise the cost of being invisible.

3) Claude Cowork: agentic work, not chat

Anthropic launched Claude Cowork, positioned as “Claude Code for the rest of your work,” pushing Claude toward agentic desktop productivity.

What it signals: The winning products won’t just “answer.” They’ll execute workflows.

For brands and teams, this changes expectations fast:

• Faster research → faster decisions → faster execution

• The gap widens between teams that operationalize AI and teams that merely “use AI”

4) Apple × Google (Gemini) partnership: distribution is the moat

Apple and Google announced a multi-year collaboration involving Gemini models powering future Apple Intelligence features, including a more personalized Siri.

What it signals: In 2026, model quality matters… but distribution matters more. The assistant that sits closest to the user wins disproportionate attention. It would become hard for any other AI platform to beat Gemini & Google.

5) Gemini gets more personal: AI with your inbox + history

Google is expanding Gemini-style experiences with deeper personalization using user context (email/history/media signals), raising both capability and privacy questions.

What it signals: Assistants are shifting from “smart” to contextual, which means recommendations become more “tailored” (and more influential).

So what should you do with all this?

If you’re building a brand in 2026, here’s the playbook shift:

A) Treat AI as a discovery channel (not a feature)

Your customers are going to ask AI:

• “Best brand for X?”

• “What should I buy?”

• “What should I do next?”

Your job is to make sure the AI’s answer includes you, correctly.

B) In healthcare, the stakes are 10x

Health AI will grow fast. The brands that win will be the ones that:

• stay evidence-first

• fight misinformation with clarity

• show up consistently across trusted sources

What we’re doing next (DareAISearch)

For healthcare leaders: webinar on “AI Search in Healthcare”

We’re covering:

• What ChatGPT Health changes for discovery

• How healthcare brands can build visibility (without compromising trust)

• A practical framework you can implement immediately

Join Our Webinar

If January is any indication, 2026 won’t be the year you “learn AI.”

It’ll be the year you choose whether AI becomes your distribution advantage or your blind spot.

This week, something important happened in the world of AI and healthcare.

ChatGPT Health is now live.

For the first time, millions of people will use AI not just to search for health information, but to decide:

• Whether symptoms are serious

• Which treatment paths to explore

• Which brands, clinics, or sources to trust

This changes discovery forever, especially for healthcare brands.

What ChatGPT Health actually means

With ChatGPT Health:

• AI answers are becoming opinionated, structured, and contextual

• Users are no longer scrolling through 10 blue links

• The first AI-generated answer often becomes the final answer

For healthcare brands, this means:

• If your brand is not cited, you effectively don’t exist

• Traditional SEO alone is no longer enough

• Authority, accuracy, and consistency now matter more than keywords

We’ve broken down how healthcare brands can rank and get cited across AI search engines in this blog:

Read DareAISearch Blog

If you work in healthcare, wellness, diagnostics, hospitals, or pharma, this shift is unavoidable.

Now, a reality check from Asthma Friend

This week, an NRI member in the Asthma Friend community shared something that deeply bothered me.

She said:

“Why don’t you refer to popular Indian hacks to cure asthma? Like the fish therapy.”

This is the biggest problem we need to solve in India.

Asthma misinformation is everywhere:

• “Miracle cures”

• Viral home remedies

• Cultural hacks passed down as facts

• Placebo-driven success stories amplified by WhatsApp and YouTube

Let me be very clear:

There is no cure for asthma.
But asthma can be controlled.

With the right:

• Diagnosis

• Medication

• Trigger management

• Action plan

You can live a long, active, and healthy life.

The danger isn’t asthma.
The danger is misinformation, now amplified by AI if we don’t get this right.

Why I built the Asthma Action Plan Creator

This is exactly why I created a free Asthma Action Plan generator.

A simple tool that helps asthma patients:

• Understand their condition

• Prepare for flare-ups

• Act early instead of panicking

• Reduce dependence on myths and hacks

You can generate your plan here (free):

Create Asthma Action Plan

No downloads. No login. Just clarity.

The bigger picture

AI like ChatGPT will increasingly decide:

• Which health advice people trust

• Which brands get cited and recommended

• Which narratives scale and which disappear

In healthcare, this power comes with responsibility.

If credible brands, hospitals, and platforms are not visible in AI search, misinformation will fill the gap.

That’s exactly why we built DareAISearch.

DareAISearch helps healthcare brands become discoverable, citable, and trusted across AI search engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, by focusing on accuracy, authority, and real-world relevance, not hacks or shortcuts.

AI search is not just a marketing shift.
It’s a public health challenge and we need the right voices to win.

It’s About Being Chosen by AI.

If you’re running a D2C, eCommerce, or Retail brand, 2026 will feel familiar on the surface ads, influencers, marketplaces, SEO but something fundamental has changed underneath.

Customers haven’t stopped discovering brands on Instagram, YouTube, Google, or marketplaces.

What has changed is how they decide.

And increasingly, that decision is being influenced, sometimes fully made by AI search engines.

The New Consumer Journey (2026 Reality)

Let’s simplify what’s actually happening:

1️⃣ Discovery Still Happens on Social & Marketplaces

• Instagram reels

• YouTube reviews

• Influencer content

• Amazon / Flipkart browsing

Nothing new here.

2️⃣ Validation Has Shifted to AI

Before buying, consumers now ask:

• “Is this brand actually good?”

• “Is this better than X?”

• “Is it worth the price?”

• “Any side effects?”

• “Which one should I buy?”

And instead of opening 10 tabs, they ask:

• ChatGPT

• Gemini

• Perplexity

• Copilot

This is the AI Decision Layer and most brands are invisible here.

Why This Matters for D2C, eCommerce & Retail Brands

🚨 Zero-Click Is Becoming the Norm

AI answers questions without sending traffic to websites.
If your brand isn’t mentioned inside the answer, you don’t exist.

Visibility ≠ Rankings anymore
Visibility = Being cited, compared, and recommended

🚨 Brand Narratives Are Being Written for You

AI doesn’t invent from thin air. It learns from:

• Your website content

• Reviews

• FAQs

• Forums

• Reddit

• Blogs

• Product descriptions

• Competitor comparisons

If you don’t control this data → AI creates its own narrative.

🚨 SEO Alone Is No Longer Enough

Traditional SEO answers:

“How do I rank on Google?”

AI Search asks:

“How does the internet talk about this brand?”

That’s a very different problem.

Industry-Wise Impact

D2C Brands

• Product comparisons happen inside AI

• Claims get cross-verified instantly

• Price vs value is evaluated in seconds

If AI doesn’t trust your brand → conversion drops before checkout even loads.

🟢 eCommerce Brands

• AI shortcuts the funnel

• Fewer products get surfaced

• Only trusted + clearly differentiated brands win

Average brands get filtered out silently.

🟢 Retail & Omnichannel Brands

• “Which store should I visit?”

• “Which brand is reliable offline?”

• “Which option has better service?”

AI influences store visits, not just clicks.

The Brands Winning in 2026 Are Doing 3 Things Well

1️⃣ They Treat AI Search as a Channel (Not a Side Experiment)

AI Search is not:

• An SEO extension

• A content experiment

• A one-time audit

It’s a new distribution channel for trust.

2️⃣ They Optimize for Questions, Not Keywords

AI runs on:

• Questions

• Comparisons

• Context

• Authority

If your brand doesn’t answer real customer questions clearly, AI won’t recommend you.

3️⃣ They Measure AI Visibility, Not Just Traffic

New questions brands must ask:

• Where does my brand appear in AI answers?

• Against which competitors?

• With what sentiment?

• On which prompts?

What you can’t measure, you can’t improve.

Where Most Brands Are Getting It Wrong

❌ “AI Search is too early”
❌ “Let’s wait for traffic impact”
❌ “SEO team will handle it”
❌ “We’ll react later”

By the time traffic impact is visible, brand preference is already set.

2026 Will Separate Brands into Two Buckets

1️⃣ Brands AI recommends
2️⃣ Brands AI ignores

There is no middle ground.

Join Our Live Webinar This Wednesday

To break this down practically, we’re hosting a live, 30-minute session where we’ll cover:

• How AI Search actually impacts D2C, eCommerce & Retail brands

• Real examples of AI-driven buying journeys

• What brands should start doing in 2026 (without overhauling everything)

• How to measure AI Search visibility correctly

📅 Date: This Wednesday
⏱ Duration: 30 minutes
🎙 Speakers: Siddhant Jain & Sukrit Chopra

If AI is influencing buying decisions and it already is, this session will help you stay ahead, not catch up.

Register Here

AI Search isn’t killing marketing funnels.

It’s compressing them.

And the brands that understand this early will win trust faster, cheaper, and more consistently in 2026.

See you on Wednesday.

This year didn’t go the way I imagined when it started but in many ways, it gave me exactly what I needed.

January: Broken, but hopeful

The year began with my health at its lowest. I was optimistic because I was about to start immunotherapy for my asthma but it failed. What followed was one of the worst asthma attacks I’ve ever experienced.

Physically exhausted and mentally broken, something unexpected happened.

That phase gave birth to Asthma Friend an idea rooted in lived pain.
A simple mission: help people with asthma breathe easier by giving them community, support, and practical tools.

At the same time, on the professional front, I was deep into experimenting with AI Search. Internal discussions at Digidarts led to the early foundations of what would later become DareAISearch.

January was tough but it quietly planted the seeds for two things that now define my life.

February to April: Momentum returns

By February, my health improved. We announced DareAISearch to the world, and I continued sharing informative content through Asthma Friend.

In March, we began working on SearchScore (V1) our AI visibility checker.
It wasn’t public yet, but select brands started testing it.

March and April were all about building:

• Experimenting with brands

• Testing hypotheses

• Breaking things

• Learning fast

This was the phase where DareAISearch truly started finding its shape.

May: Asthma Friend goes public

In May 2025, Asthma Friend officially went public.
We launched our Email + WhatsApp community, and today it’s close to 700 members strong.

Watching strangers support each other, share experiences, and find comfort reminded me why I started this in the first place.

This year, most of my professional energy from Digidarts went into DareAISearch but health continued to be an ongoing battle.

July to September: A breakthrough & Hard Work

In July, I discovered something critical: sleep apnea was silently aggravating my condition.

It was another diagnosis but also another ray of hope.

I started sleep therapy using a CPAP machine, and from July to September, my health significantly improved. For a while, life felt… normal again.

This also allowed me to go full throttle on DareAISearch, we did continuous client acquisitions, product changes and full blown marketing. We started receiving venture interest as well and though of raising funds for this venture.

October to November: Choosing life

Then came Delhi pollution.

From mid-October, my health deteriorated rapidly—steroids, nebulizers (5 times a day), and a long list of medicines.

In early November, I made a hard but necessary decision:
I moved to Dehradun for a 3-month experiment.

As I write this, I’m almost 2 months in and it’s been one of the best decisions I’ve made.

My health is better.
I’m walking more.
I’m living more.

Yes, I caught a cold last week but even that feels manageable compared to Delhi.

I genuinely feel hopeful about building a healthier life here.

Small wins that matter the most

One moment that truly stayed with me:

In September, Asthma Friend helped a community member get a discount on skin prick testing.

It may sound small but it was one of our earliest goals as a community. Seeing it happen felt incredibly rewarding.

DareAISearch: From idea to impact

On the DareAISearch front:

• Brands from India, Australia, and the Middle East are using our product and solutions

• In July, we officially launched SearchScore and more than 500 brands have used it since.

• Watching SearchScore evolve from V1 in March to V5 in November has been surreal

I also personally wrote multiple DareAISearch blogs that were appreciated by industry peers and conducted 3 in-depth webinars.

And this is just the beginning.

Looking ahead to 2026

2026 will revolve around three things:

1. DareAISearch – bigger product updates, deeper impact, better visibility for brands

2. Asthma Friend – growing the community and making real-world help more accessible

3. Health & happiness – because nothing else works without this foundation

I also hope to stay more consistent with this newsletter.
This was my 14th post of 2025 slightly more than one per month.
In 2026, my goal is one post every week.

Gratitude

None of this would have been possible without the people around me.

Through medical challenges and professional chaos, I’ve been incredibly lucky to have:

• My parents, wife, and brother

• My friends, colleagues, and cousins.

Thank you for standing by me, especially on days when I couldn’t stand by myself.

Wishing you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas and a healthy, hopeful, and fulfilling 2026 🎄✨

Here’s to breathing better, building bravely, and living fully.

Over the last 12 months, I’ve spent every single day deep inside one problem:
How will brands stay visible when AI becomes the primary layer of search?

From studying thousands of prompts across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity…
To building DareAISearch from scratch…
To working with brands across India, Middle East, UK, and Australia…
This has been the most intense learning curve of my life.

And now, it’s time to open this knowledge to everyone.

Introducing: The AI-Search Visibility Masterclass (Weekly Webinar Series)

A weekly, 30-minute, no-nonsense session where I break down the exact playbooks we are using to help brands stay discoverable across AI-powered search engines.

The first session goes live this Tuesday:

📌 The Rise of AI-Search: How Consumer Discovery Is Changing Forever
🗓️ Tuesday, 25th November 2025
⏰ 3:00 PM IST

Register Now

This series is built for:

• Brand Heads

• Marketing CXOs

• SEO & Performance Leaders

• Anyone who wants to understand how search is shifting from Google to AI-driven engines

And if you’ve followed my journey, you know this isn’t theory.
This is practical, field-tested learning from real brands, real prompts, and real results.

Why this matters now

AI-led search is no longer a future problem.
Consumers already ask ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity before they open Google.

Brands who adapt now gain the advantage.
Brands who wait get left behind.

If you want clarity on what’s coming next and what your brand should do today join me this Tuesday.

Let’s decode AI-Search together.

This week started better in terms of health, but as I was building exciting things at both Asthma Friend and Digidarts, I got carried away pulling late-nighters early in the week. By Wednesday evening, around 8:15 PM, I suddenly felt uneasy, had to take my nebulizer, and just rested. The next day I only woke up around 9 AM. It was a reminder that cutting sleep down to 4–5 hours isn’t sustainable, sleep is the best medicine.

On the Digidarts front:

• We finally went live with our Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) blog series, which will be the go-to place for everything around GEO.

• We also announced our technology partnership with SEMrush, a milestone that opens exciting possibilities for the future.

• Alongside, we’re working on improving some of our core processes, because growth doesn’t come from hacks but from constant upgradation.

On the Asthma Friend side:

• I finally published two self-shot reel, a face reveal for our growing community of 400+ members. This was always part of the plan, and I’m glad I did it now. From here, I’ll continue publishing weekly videos as it’s central to our mission of creating awareness around asthma.

  • YouTube Shorts 1: Importance of Masking Up | Real Story

  • YouTube Shorts 2: Silent Asthma = Silent Threat

• We also shared valuable resources this week on inhaler techniques, spacer cleaning, night reflux, and more.

Outside of work, I want to recommend a must-watch documentary by Think School on Nvidia: Watch here.

For any entrepreneur, it’s an eye-opener. In today’s startup culture where everyone chases quick success, Nvidia’s story is a lesson in building a business designed to last generations, making real-world impact along the way.

That’s all from this week. Next week brings the return of Formula 1 🏎️, a race weekend at last and of course, much to do on the work front.

This week was on the slower side for me. I caught a viral infection last Sunday, which meant Monday and Tuesday were complete bed rest. By Wednesday and Thursday, I managed to get back to work, though with fewer meetings and a slower pace. Thankfully, this long weekend is giving me enough time to fully recover.

💪🏻 Hard Work

That downtime also gave me space to reflect on a quote by Steve Jobs that I’ve always resonated with:

“I’ve never found in my whole life that you could convince someone who doesn’t want to work hard to work hard.”

For founders, the constant challenge is to find those rare hard-working people and then nurture them. Because you can’t train someone to want to work hard.

🧘🏻‍♂️ Product Focus

On a similar note, one thing that deeply disappoints me these days is how many founders are not product-focused. Your number one priority should always be building the best possible offering for the price point. Improving your product requires relentless effort and yet, many shy away from this grind. Instead, they pour their energy into sales, marketing, and branding.

These are essential, yes, but without a strong product, even Steve Jobs himself couldn’t sell it. Remember, even Apple under Jobs had its share of failures like the Apple Lisa, Macintosh TV, and the Newton.

Great branding can’t save a weak product.

🇮🇳 Independence Day 2025

As we celebrate Independence Day 2025, I want to touch on something personal. Often, when I mention my asthma, people tell me, “You should shift abroad, India is not for you.”

I smile because they don’t realize the struggles people with asthma face outside India too. Yes, we have a long way to go in terms of awareness and prevention here, but one thing I truly believe is that India offers affordable healthcare.

That belief is at the core of Asthma Friend, to build awareness around asthma in India and help reduce asthma-related deaths in the country.

Independence Day Special Podcast

Lastly, in our Digidarts Briefcase series, we revisited some iconic ad campaigns from the past. It’s always fascinating to see how creativity and context shaped consumer behavior across generations.

Open Digidarts Briefcase

Wishing you all a restful long weekend and a meaningful Independence Day. 🇮🇳

🚀 Scaling DareAISearch and AI systems at Digidarts.

💙 Building asthma awareness in India so no one hides their inhaler in public.

🤖 Relentlessly experimenting with AI, turning tests into real-world impact.

Everything I’ve done in the past six months has looped back to these priorities. Some experiments start at Asthma Friend and become Digidarts systems. Others begin in my day job and transform how we run the community. The crossover is where the magic happens.

Recently at Digidarts, we had a session where someone asked our leadership team a series of thought-provoking questions. I left with mixed emotions, proud of how far we’ve come, but also thinking about the basic things we could have done earlier to be much further ahead.

It reinforced my belief: if you improve your offering by just 0.1% daily, you’ll eventually be far ahead of most of your competition.

Asthma Friend Updates

• 300+ subscribers in our community and growing.

• Biggest moment of the week? Someone told me they joined us after listening to our podcast.

• We’ve now launched 30 podcast episodes, but this is the kind of validation that really hits home.

• A reality check: despite creating content rooted in Indian context and personal experience, only 11.9% of active users on our website are from India. This gap is a stark reminder of the lack of asthma awareness in the country and it motivates me to keep going.

New content: Sibling Bond & Asthma, my personal story of how my brother gave up activities as a child so I wouldn’t feel bad about myself.

Listen Audio Version

Read Blog Version

On GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

I’ve seen a flood of posts on X about GEO lately and many of them wildly inaccurate.

Starting next week, we’ll be launching a series of trusted GEO blogs at Digidarts so you get accurate, no-nonsense insights. I’ll also be posting regularly on both X & Threads.

AI Updates

• GPT-5: From an API perspective – a win. It’s faster and helps reduce costs significantly. But in chat quality? No major leap from GPT-4o yet. More testing needed.

• Comet Browser: The agent feature is unique but still early-stage. Works decently for research, but no groundbreaking business use cases yet.

• Dia Browser: My favorite from a UX perspective clean, intuitive, and enjoyable to use.

• Agent Mode Experiments:

  • Test: Asked both Comet Browser Agent & ChatGPT Agent Mode to log into my Canva and create a carousel for Asthma Friend.

  • Result: ChatGPT couldn’t log in (blocked by Canva for non-human traffic). Perplexity’s agent produced one of the worst designs I’ve seen.

  • Verdict: Browser agents still have a long way to go.

🏎️ F1 Corner

No race weekends for a while, so my YouTube feed is full of:

• Hamilton’s struggles at Ferrari.

• Oscar Piastri’s strong season and why he’s a favorite for the WDC this year.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. Whether it’s marketing, asthma awareness, or AI, my goal is to share insights that spark ideas and action.

Stay curious, keep experimenting, and keep improving, even if it’s just 0.1% each day.

This Tuesday, I turned 29.

While I’m grateful for everything this past year brought, I won’t lie, there’s a bit of nervous energy thinking about turning 30. There’s a lot I still want to achieve, and now there are less than 365 days to do it.

Most of my birthday was spent prepping for Meta Day 2025, but I wrapped the night with family, food, and a little reflection.

🚀 Meta Day 2025: Digidarts × Meta India

On Wednesday, we hosted Meta Day 2025 in partnership with Meta India and what a day it was.

With 150+ founders, CXOs, and marketers in the room, it wasn’t just another festive playbook event.
It was about sharper strategy, smarter bets, and intentional performance.

• Meta India kicked things off with sessions that redefined how we should think about ROI this festive season.

• We followed with two stellar panels:

  • Creative that Converts

  • AI in Marketing, where we unveiled DareAISearch.

I’m beyond proud of what the Digidarts team pulled off.

🧠 DareAISearch: Launched, Loved, and Leveling Up

Though our target market lies outside India, the response we received at Meta Day was amazing. This launch marks a new chapter for us. We unveiled AI Search Score which tells your brand’s AI readiness and visibility score.

Check you AI Search Score

We’ve also partnered with SEMrush to sharpen our analytics and coverage further. The next 3 months are crucial, we’re doubling down on product, partnerships, and onboarding more clients.

💼 Hiring at Digidarts: Fixed the First Step

Hiring has long been a bottleneck at our end.
So I took the first step and built a simple, structured form to streamline applications.

Apply to Digidarts

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be deploying AI agents to help us screen and shortlist profiles faster, aligning skillsets with open roles.

🌬️ Asthma Friend: A Growing, Breathing Community

I started Asthma Friend to build a support system for people like me.

We now have 250+ members, and the best part? People have started engaging organically, asking questions, sharing tips, and supporting one another.

To celebrate Friendship Day, we’ve curated a special set of resources to make life with asthma a little easier.

🎧 Listen Now

💚 Explore our Friendship Day picks

🤖 Tech I’m Testing: Comet + Agent Mode

In the last 48 hours, I’ve been exploring two future-forward tools:

• Comet Browser: Clean, AI-native, with a potential to reimagine how we browse.

• ChatGPT Agent Mode: Early experiments are promising, especially around automating marketing workflows and reporting tasks.

There’s a lot of potential here. Might do a deep dive in a future edition.

🏁 F1: Final Weekend Before Summer Break

Leclerc is on pole, and we’re heading into the last race before the summer break.
But I can’t help feeling gutted for Hamilton. His first half of the season with Ferrari has been rough and as a longtime fan, this one stings.

Here’s hoping the second half turns things around.

💚 Health & Life

Between Meta Day, birthday introspection, and building communities, I’m reminded again that growth isn’t always loud.
Sometimes, it’s in solving that one bottleneck.
In sleeping better.
Or in watching a forum come alive without your push.

Here’s to fewer regrets and more action in the next 365 days.

Until next week
Keep growing, keep breathing.

Another impactful week, marked by exciting events and valuable personal insights!

🎯 Exclusive Event - Digidarts X META Day: We're gearing up for our exclusive event, Digidarts X META Day, scheduled for 30th July at Meta's Gurgaon office. Join us for:

• Insightful discussions on the latest innovations in digital platforms.

• Proven strategies for enhancing performance marketing.

• Networking opportunities with India's top CXOs, Business Heads, and Marketing Leaders.

Request an Invite

🚀 DareAISearch Developments: At DareAISearch, we've been working diligently on exciting updates, notably the upcoming launch of our AI Search Score. This innovative feature will empower businesses with precise insights to optimise their digital presence effectively. Stay tuned for further details!

🌙 Asthma Friend - Sleep Apnea Awareness: At Asthma Friend, we've been extensively exploring the link between Sleep Apnea and Asthma. Check out our latest podcast on managing and understanding this important health connection.

Latest Episode on YouTube

🏎️ Personal Update: Though it wasn't a race weekend, my wife and I enjoyed quality time together building a Mercedes F1 Lego car set, a perfect blend of relaxation and shared passion.

The use of a CPAP machine has significantly improved my health, making a noticeable difference in my daily life. The next few weeks are critical at both Asthma Friend and Digidarts, with lots of exciting developments on the horizon.

Additionally, the AI landscape is evolving rapidly, and I've been experimenting with tools like Dia Browser and Perplexity Pro. I'll share detailed insights in an exclusive bonus newsletter next week.

Stay inspired, stay healthy, and keep innovating!

Sunday evening brought an unexpected turn, I experienced a significant asthma attack. This week, I’ve been in recovery mode, contributing to the team for a few hours here and there. It’s been a poignant reminder of the importance of health and the need to take time to heal.

💚 Asthma Friend Update

While progress was limited this week, we published two insightful blogs:

• 🌳 World Environment Day: How Green Spaces Can Help or Hurt Asthma

  Read here →

• 😷 COVID-19 and Asthma: What You Need to Know in 2025

  Read here →

Next week, we’re focusing on Father’s Day content, stay tuned!

🧠 AI Update

OpenAI has introduced a new voice recording feature in ChatGPT called Record mode. ChatGPT can capture any meeting or voice note, transcribe it, identify key points, and take follow-up action. Currently available exclusively to Business Plan/Team plan users on the Mac app. This advancement brings us closer to more natural AI interactions. They also announced Connectors under deep research to help you connect more tools and applications.

Watch ChatGPT for business update

⚙️ Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

Listening to Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity, and Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, discuss the future of AI search has reinforced my confidence in the Generative Engine Optimization services we’ve developed at Digidarts. It’s inspiring to see our work aligning with industry leaders’ visions.

Experience GEO with DareAISearch

🍏 Tech Front: WWDC 2025

Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off on June 9. Anticipated announcements include:

• iOS 26: A significant redesign inspired by visionOS, featuring translucent menus and rounded icons .

• Apple Intelligence Enhancements: Subtle AI improvements, including AI-powered battery optimization and live translation in Messages .

• AirPods Updates: New features like head gesture controls and sleep detection .

As someone considering a switch to Android, I’m hopeful Apple will deliver innovations that reignite my enthusiasm for iOS.

🎧 Pick of the Week

A captivating conversation with design legend Jony Ive, offering deep insights into design philosophy and innovation. Watch the conversation here

🏏 Cricket Highlight

While there’s no F1 race this weekend, the cricket world is buzzing, RCB has clinched the IPL title! Though I haven’t followed the IPL closely in recent years, the excitement surrounding RCB’s victory is truly infectious.

As I wrap up this week of recovery and reflection, I'm reminded that sometimes stepping back allows us to see the bigger picture. From personal health challenges to exciting developments in AIand the anticipation of Apple's WWDC, it's been a week of both challenges and possibilities. Thank you for continuing to be part of this journey, and I look forward to sharing more updates next week. Stay tuned.

We’re officially entering the age of AI-powered eyewear. Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses are now available in India. They are redefining what it means to stay connected hands-free. With built-in Meta AI, voice commands, and seamless photo/video capture, they’re like a wearable assistant on your face.

Google, in collaboration with Samsung and Qualcomm, revealed its plans for new XR (extended reality) glasses powered by Android and Gemini AI. The goal? A more natural, immersive interface that blends the digital and physical worlds.

It’s becoming clear that the next big leap in AI interfaces won’t be a screen, it’ll be something you wear.

🧳 Briefcase Drop: May Edition Is LIVE

Marketing in May didn’t just ride the wave.
It was the wave.

From lavender jerseys worn with purpose to Google’s mind-reading AI, we compiled the best of digital dopamine.

Presenting: D-Briefcase | May Edition
→ A carousel that’s one part trend report, one part meme scroll, and one part scroll-stopper.

📲 Check it out on Instagram

Because in 2025, trends don’t trickle down.
They explode up.

🚭 Asthma Friend Update: World No Tobacco Day Special

This week, Asthma Friend went live with a special campaign on tobacco’s impact on Asthma. It doesn’t just come from pollen or dust.

Here’s what we released:

• World No Tobacco Day Blog Series: A curated collection of blogs and resources published for World No Tobacco Day. From passive smoking to third-hand smoke and asthma-friendly homes, find practical tips to protect your lungs and raise awareness about tobacco’s hidden dangers.

• Latest Podcast: Not My Cigarette, But Still My Problem

• Asthma Friend Community: Stories from those navigating smoke exposure daily.

We’re building this for everyone who’s ever said: “I’m wheezing, but I didn’t even smoke.”
If that’s you or someone you know, join us.

💡 Recommendation of the Week

🎧 The Apoorv Sharma Episode – GrowthX Inner Circle

This one’s a storytelling masterclass. Apoorv has led marketing for Apple, Flipkart, Amazon, and more.
In this episode, he breaks down:

• How Apple went from 1% to 12% market share in India

• What made Flipkart's Big Billion Days legendary

• Why marketers should focus on creating hype, not just content

🔗 Listen to the episode

🏁 A Win That Made Me Smile

🇮🇳 Kush Maini just made history, becoming the first Indian to win at Monaco by clinching the F2 Sprint Race.

As a lifelong F1 fan, this is massive.
From karting circuits to the streets of Monaco, he’s proof that Indian talent belongs on the global grid.

If you missed the finish line moment, go look it up. It’s goosebumps material.

🏁 Ending Section: Final Note

Zoom Out. Breathe In. Keep Building.

This week reminded me why I do what I do.

• Watching tech evolve from screens to wearables

• Publishing asthma content that helps someone breathe easier

• Marketing trends becoming more vibrant, Gen-Z focued, and all about AI.

• Seeing an Indian flag wave at Monaco

All in one week. Growth isn’t always metrics. Sometimes, it’s just momentum.
Keep chasing yours.

This week was a masterclass in how fast AI is evolving, especially if you’re in marketing.

From Google’s big reveals at Marketing Live and Google I/O, to Jony Ive’s next AI device, to Microsoft and Claude's developer-first announcements, it’s clear:
The way we search, advertise, create, and measure is changing fast.

Let’s break it down 👇

🔍 Google I/O & Google Marketing Live: A New Era for Ads & AI Search

This week, Google made its most aggressive AI push yet, and marketers must pay attention.

Here are the key highlights:

Search (Paid & Organic)

• AI Mode is the future of search.

• PMax open beta with channel-level reporting now live.

• AI Max for Search = keywordless targeting + smart bidding.

• Demand Gen powered by GenAI creatives.

• AI Overview delivering higher quality clicks organically.

• New SEO guidance to align with AI-first indexing.

YouTube & Video

• Video ads are now showing on Search & Shopping.

• YouTube Shorts → Purchase Journeys are now trackable.

• Shopping ads on CTV, YouTube Masthead, and Shorts.

• Creator Partnership Hub (like Meta’s branded content tools).

• Full attribution between YouTube discovery and Google Search purchase.

Apps

• Improved app install insights from Search + PMax.

• Target ROAS for iOS campaigns is here.

• Cross-platform measurement and insights improvements.

Ecommerce

• Commerce Media Suite now for brands + marketplaces.

• Meta-style partnership commerce ads are coming to Google.

Creative & Commerce Tools

• Veo 3 video generation is integrated into ad creation.

• Asset Studio in Google Ads (launching this year).

• Auto-generate creative variations.

• Convert static images → videos.

• Google Merchant Centre now includes:

  • Promotion Suggestions

  • Brand Profiles on Search

  • Video Asset Library synced with Google Ads.

Measurement & Data

• Meridian: Google’s open-source MMM (Marketing Mix Modelling).

• Data Manager: unified first-party data connector.

• Data Manager API: All performance APIs in one place.

• GA4 now supports cross-channel measurement, including:

  • TikTok

  • Snapchat

  • Pinterest

Marketing Advisor (Coming Soon)

• A Google AI Agent that will suggest and automate performance improvements inside your ad account.

I also shared my key takeaways from the event on LinkedIn:
👉 Read my LinkedIn post

And we launched a new series at Digidarts called Briefcase, a weekly drop of insights every marketer should have in their toolkit.
Our first file? All things Google.

View on Instagram

As a Google Partner agency, we at Digidarts are equipped and excited to help brands make the most of these changes, from AI search to performance-driven creative automation.

📱OpenAI x Jony Ive: Where Design Meets AI

Jony Ive, the legendary designer behind Apple’s most iconic devices, is now building an AI-first consumer device in partnership with OpenAI.

This is exactly the kind of collaboration the AI world needs, where design leads the user experience, not just the tech stack.

His minimal, intuitive philosophy is what generative AI interfaces have been missing.

👨🏽‍💻 Microsoft Build & Claude Updates

• Microsoft doubled down on Copilot with deeper Windows & Office integration.

• Claude introduced contextual memory and collaborative workflows, making knowledge and marketing ops more team-friendly.

These moves show how platform AI is now supporting not just devs, but business and growth teams too.

🌱 Asthma Friend Update: A Fresh New Community Experience

This week at Asthma Friend, we’ve taken a big step forward in building a more supportive and personalised space for people living with asthma (and their families).

We’ve revamped our entire community experience, you now get tailored journeys whether you have asthma or support someone who does. It starts with a simple newsletter signup, and you’re guided step-by-step.

Join For Free

📝 New content is live:

• How Weather Affects Asthma, from summer heat to sudden monsoon changes (something I struggle with too).

• How to Explain Asthma to Your Child: A Parent’s Guide. Whether your child has just been diagnosed or is starting to ask questions, this guide will help you talk about asthma in a way that’s honest, reassuring, and age-appropriate.

Every post, podcast, and update is rooted in lived experience. Building Asthma Friend has made my own asthma journey less lonely and hopefully it does the same for others too.

Curious? Explore more at asthmafriend.com

🎥 Personal Pick of the Week

GrowthX Inner Circle ft. Apoorv Sharma – This episode is a storytelling masterclass. Apoorv, who led marketing at Apple, Amazon, Flipkart & more

🏁 F1: Monaco GP Weekend

This weekend it’s time for the Monaco GP, the crown jewel of the F1 calendar.

It’s the only circuit I’ve never finished crash-free on PlayStation. Tight corners, no run-offs, pure punishment.

Let’s see if Piastri can bring the fight to Verstappen this weekend.

🚀 Wrapping Up

From AI search and creative automation to smart attribution and platform wars this week was a turning point in how growth will be done going forward.

Thanks for reading, and see you next Saturday with more updates from the edge of marketing, tech, and life.

Welcome back to my weekly dispatch, where I document my week as a growth marketer navigating the AI-powered marketing landscape.

Let’s jump into what made this week exciting 👇

🔍 The Future of Search Is Getting Real

Next week is Google I/O 2025, and I’m especially excited about updates to the Generative Search Experience (GSE).

Search is no longer about links. It’s about context, answers, and actions, and Google’s next move will shape how brands appear online. If you’re not thinking about AI-first visibility already, now’s the time.

I’ll be watching closely and will break down key takeaways in next week’s edition.

🧭 6 Years at Digidarts – A Quick Flashback

Coming Tuesday marks 6 years since I joined Digidarts.

While reflecting on the journey, I realised there's one place that probably knows my last 3 years better than I do: ChatGPT.

So, I asked it “What have I been up to at Digidarts?"
Here’s what it said 👇

“You've headed acquisition of 100+ brands across 9+ industries. Oversaw 360° strategy for active clients. Launched DashIQ and made it profitable from Day 1. Led affiliate marketing across LATAM, scaled SEO & content ops, and built ai-led automations across verticals. Played a key role in launching D-Immune, DareAISearch, and marketing D-View. Oh, and you tweet about F1 on weekends too.”

Grateful to the mentors, teammates, and clients who’ve been part of this ride.
Next chapter: more impact, more experiments, and hopefully…fewer medical leaves.

🫁 What’s New at Asthma Friend

This week has been big for Asthma Friend, my passion project that’s helped me manage asthma better while building a support system for thousands like me.

We released a special Mental Health Awareness Week blog series & podcast, because stress and anxiety aren’t just mental battles, they’re asthma triggers too.

We launched the Asthma Friend podcast in Hindi, so more people across India can breathe easier, one story at a time. 🎧 Listen here

And here’s something cool: I’m building Asthma Buddy, a custom AI chatbot trained to answer asthma-related questions.
👉 Try Asthma Buddy early here

Whether you live with asthma or know someone who does, I’d love for you to check Asthma Friend out.

🎥 Personal Pick of the Week

If you’ve ever wondered how everyday products are made, this one’s a gem.
Check out this video by @MadeVision on how Lay’s chips are made, super satisfying and informative.
The whole channel is a rabbit hole of manufacturing magic.

🏁 Race Weekend Mode: Imola GP

We’re headed to Imola this weekend and I can’t wait.
With Oscar Piastri in top form, this might just be the race he extends his lead.
Expect pace, strategy, and maybe a surprise or two. F1 fans, strap in.

Thanks for reading through another week in this wild ride of growth, AI, and curiosity.
Catch you next Saturday, with Google I/O updates and more real-time marketing stories.