Living Positive on Purpose | October 23, 2026
Today I went down a Google rabbit hole and came out thinking about baseball.
Y’all, I love data. I can spend hours researching what changed, why it changed and what the evidence really says. Today’s topic was Google’s latest guidance on search and AI. Somewhere along the way, that rabbit hole turned into a dugout.
The World Series starts tonight. I’m a Yankees fan, but I’m from Florida, so with the Tampa Bay Rays facing the Milwaukee Brewers, I feel like I’ve got a little skin in the game. I’m still keeping my pinstripes, though.
Here’s what connected the two for me: A baseball team can study every statistic and prepare for every pitcher, but once the game starts, players still have to adjust to the pitch in front of them.
That’s exactly where marketing teams are right now. Search is changing. AI is changing how people find information. And just when we’ve developed a playbook that works, we’re being asked to rethink parts of it.
The question I’m thinking about isn’t whether the rules will change again. They will. It’s how we lead our teams through those changes without taking away their confidence to create.
What Google Is Actually Saying
For all the noise about SEO being dead, Google’s guidance on AI search tells a more practical story. The fundamentals still matter: make your website accessible, understand your audience and publish original, useful content grounded in real expertise.
Google’s October guidance on AI-generated content also makes an important distinction. AI can help create content, but pumping out pages without adding value can violate spam policies. Accuracy, originality and review still matter. And no magic file or special markup guarantees a place in Google’s AI answers.
What has changed is how people discover us. Traditional search results are now part of a bigger picture that includes AI-generated answers, videos, communities and conversations. Large language models can introduce someone to a brand before they ever reach its website.
My takeaway? Don’t throw out everything your team knows. Build on it. We still need good SEO, but we also need content worth referencing and a brand people trust when they encounter it somewhere other than our website.
Give Your Team Room to Swing
This is where leadership can either create momentum or shut it down.
We tell our teams to be innovative, move quickly and think differently. Then we sometimes turn around and expect every idea to hit a home run on the first try. Imagine a baseball coach demanding big swings and then punishing every strikeout. Eventually, players stop taking chances.
I love being able to point to the data behind a decision. The researcher in me wants a hypothesis, a baseline and a way to measure the result. But the leader in me also knows the next great idea might come from someone who sees an opportunity the rest of us missed.
Maybe a team interviews a subject matter expert instead of writing another generic article. Maybe they turn a customer question into a useful video, test a new way to explain a complicated service or build something people want to share. Not every experiment will work. That’s why we measure, learn and adjust.
Give people a clear goal and the freedom to figure out how to reach it. Ask what they learned, not just whether the first attempt worked. That’s how you develop a creative team that keeps getting better.
Keep Score of What Matters
Baseball loves statistics, and so do I. But you don’t win a World Series by staring at the scoreboard.
In marketing, rankings, traffic and clicks still tell us something. They just don’t tell the whole story. We also need to understand whether our brands are being discovered in AI experiences, whether the right people are engaging with us and whether that attention leads to meaningful business results. Google has even introduced reporting for visibility in its generative AI search experiences.
That means giving our teams a better picture of success, not moving the goalposts every Monday. Revenue matters. So does learning which activities are creating the trust and interest that eventually lead to revenue.
And just like baseball, not every contribution looks like a home run. Sometimes a single moves the runner. Sometimes someone makes a great defensive play. Strong teams recognize how those contributions fit together.
The Part Leaders Can Control
I’ve spent years leading growth teams, and I’ve learned that change doesn’t make our responsibilities disappear. We still have deadlines, budgets and revenue targets. We still have to make decisions, sometimes without having all the answers.
What matters is how we respond and the environment we create for the people doing the work.
That’s where being positive on purpose comes in. For me, it’s about leading with perspective, encouraging curiosity and giving people the confidence to try something new, even when the outcome isn’t guaranteed.
And…that brings us back to baseball. Neither team taking the field tonight knows how this series will end. They can prepare, trust their teammates and respond to the pitch in front of them. That’s the kind of team I want to lead.
We can’t control every Google update or every answer an LLM generates. But we can control the environment we create for the people doing the work. When people feel trusted enough to think creatively, they’re much more willing to step up.
The rules will change again. Let’s give our teams a reason to keep swinging.
Positive on purpose, for a purpose.
Sources
- Google Search Central, Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search, 2026.
- Google Search Central, Guidance on using generative AI content on your website, updated Oct. 1, 2026.
- Google Search Central, Introducing Search Generative AI performance reports in Search Console, June 3, 2026, with updates.
- MLB, 2026 postseason schedule, results and how to watch, October 2026.
