<\/p>
AI agents are already here. Not as a concept, not as a demo, but shipping inside browsers used by billions of people. Every major tech company has launched either a browser with AI built in or an extension that acts on your behalf.<\/p>
Anthropic\u2019s Claude for Chrome can navigate websites, fill forms, and perform multi-step operations on your behalf. Google announced Gemini in Chrome with agentic browsing capabilities, including auto browse, which can act on webpages for you. OpenClaw, the open-source AI agent, connects large language models directly to browsers, messaging apps, and system tools to execute tasks autonomously.<\/p>
For more understanding about optimizing for agents, I spoke to Slobodan Manic, who recently wrote a five-part series on optimizing websites for AI agents. His perspective sits at the intersection of technical web performance and where AI agent interaction is actually heading.<\/p>
From Slobodan Manic\u2019s testing, almost every website is structurally broken for this shift.<\/p>
\u201cIt started with us going to AI and asking questions. And now AI is coming to us and meeting us where we are. From my testing, I noticed that websites are nowhere near being ready for this shift because structurally almost every website is broken.\u201d<\/p> <\/blockquote>
The Single Biggest Thing That\u2019s Changed<\/h2>
I started by asking Slobodan what\u2019s changed in the last six to nine months that means SEOs need to pay attention to AI agents right now.<\/p>
\u201cEvery major tech company has launched either a browser that has AI in it that can do things for you or some kind of extension that gets into Chrome. Claude has a plugin for Chrome that can do things for you, not just analyze web pages, summarize web pages, but actually perform operations.\u201d<\/p>
When ChatGPT first launched in 2023, making AI widely accessible, in parallel with how we started typing basic queries in search engines 25 years ago, we asked AI questions. We are now becoming more sophisticated and fluid with our prompting as we realize that AI can do so much more than [write me an email to politely decline an invitation].<\/p>
Agents represent an even bigger shift to a different dynamic, where AI can complete tasks on our behalf and run complex systems. [Check my emails and delete any that are spam, sort them into a priority group, and surface what needs my immediate attention and provide a qualified response to anything on a basic query, plus make appointments in my calendar for any meeting invites].<\/p>
Understanding and taking advantage of the possibilities is something we are all trying to figure out right now. What we should be aware of is that most websites aren\u2019t built or ready for this agentic world.<\/p>
Websites Are Becoming Optional, Or Are They?<\/h2>
I have a theory that brand websites are becoming hubs, the central point that connects all of your content assets online. But Slobodan has gone further. He\u2019s written about websites becoming optional for the end user, with pages built by machines for machines and the interaction happening through closed system interfaces. I asked him to expand on that vision and what kind of timeframe we\u2019re realistically looking at.<\/p>
\u201cFirst I\u2019ll say that this is not fully happening today. This is still near to mid future. This is not March 2026,\u201d he clarified. But the signals are concrete.<\/p>
\u201cGoogle had a patent granted in January that will let them use AI to rewrite the landing page for you if your landing page is not good enough. And then we have all these other companies including Google that announced Gemini browsing for you inside Chrome. So we have an end-to-end AI system that does everything while humans just wait for results.\u201d<\/p>
He was careful not to overstate it. People still like to browse, read, and compare things. Websites aren\u2019t disappearing.<\/p>
\u201cJust the same way as mobile traffic has not killed desktop traffic even if it\u2019s taken a bigger share of traffic overall, higher percentage of overall traffic while the desktop traffic is staying flat in terms of absolute numbers, I think this is another lane that will open where things will be happening without a human being involved in every step.\u201d<\/p>
His timeline for this: \u201cWithin a year we can have this become a reality. Not majority, but if Google starts rewriting landing pages using AI, we will see this happening probably 2027, if not sooner.\u201d<\/p>
When Checkout Becomes A Protocol<\/h2>
Slobodan has written that checkout is becoming a protocol, not a page. If an AI agent can buy on your behalf without ever loading a brand\u2019s website, I asked, \u201cWhat does that mean for how brands build trust and differentiate when the customer never sees their site?\u201d<\/p>
\u201cIf you\u2019re building trust in a checkout page, you\u2019re doing it wrong. Let\u2019s start there. That I firmly believe. This is not to do with AI. This was never the right place to build trust,\u201d he responded.<\/p>
Slobodan pointed to every Shopify checkout page that looks identical. \u201cThere\u2019s no trust built there. It\u2019s just a machine-readable page that looks the same for everyone, for every brand. You\u2019re supposed to be doing your job before the user needs to pay you.\u201d<\/p>
This is where he referenced Jono Alderson, and the concept of upstream engineering. \u201cMoving upstream and doing work there and not on the website is the only way to move forward for anyone whose job is optimizing websites. That\u2019s SEO, that\u2019s CRO, that\u2019s content, that\u2019s anyone doing any kind of website work.\u201d<\/p>
He best summarized by saying \u201cYour website is a part of the equation. Your website is not the equation. And that\u2019s the biggest structural shift that people need to make to survive moving forward.\u201d<\/p>
What SEOs And Brands Should Actually Do Now<\/h2>
I asked what SEOs and brands can practically start doing to transition over the next year. His answer reframed how we should think about the website itself.<\/p>
\u201cIf your website was your storefront, and it was for decades, people come to you, people do business there. It needs to be a warehouse and a storefront moving forward or you\u2019re not going to survive. Simple as that.\u201d<\/p>
\u201cWe had all those bookstores that were selling books in the \u201990s and then Amazon shows up and then you need to be a warehouse. You need to exist in two planes at the same time for the near future at least. So focusing only on your website is the most wrong thing you can do moving forward.\u201d<\/p>
His main area of focus right now is what he calls machine-first architecture. The principle is to build for machines before you build for humans.<\/p>
\u201cYou don\u2019t build your website for humans until you\u2019ve built it for machines. When you\u2019re working on a product page, there\u2019s no Figma, there\u2019s no design, there\u2019s no copy. You start with your schema. What is your schema supposed to say? What is the meaning of the page? You start with the meaning and then from that build into a web page as it\u2019s built for humans.\u201d<\/p>
He compared it directly to the mobile-first shift. \u201cThat did not mean no desktop. That meant do the more difficult version of it first and then do the easy thing. Trust me, it\u2019s a lot more complicated to add meaning and structure to a page that\u2019s already been designed than to do it the other way.\u201d<\/p>
And it extends beyond the website. \u201cIf you\u2019re saying something on your website, you better check all of your profiles everywhere online, what people are saying about you. It\u2019s everything everywhere all at once. But this is what optimization has become and what it needs to be.\u201d<\/p>
I also put to him the argument that optimizing for LLMs is fundamentally different from SEO. His response was unequivocal.<\/p>
\u201cHard disagree. The hardest possible disagree. If you were doing things the right way, working on the foundations and checking every box that has to be checked, it\u2019s not different at all.\u201d<\/p>
Where he sees a difference is in the speed of consequences. \u201cWith AI in the mix, you just get exposed much faster and the consequences are much greater. There\u2019s nothing different other than those two things.\u201d<\/p>
This echoed something I\u2019ve felt strongly. The cycle is moving more quickly, but there\u2019s so much similarity with what happened at the foundation of this industry 25 to 30 years ago, which I raised in my SEO Pioneers series. We\u2019re feeling our way through in the same way. And Slobodan agreed.<\/p>
\u201cThey figured this out once and maybe we should ask them how to figure it out again.\u201d<\/p>
Vibe Coding Is A Trap, Deep Work Is The Moat<\/h2>
For my last question, I put it to Slobodan that he\u2019s said vibe coding is a trap and deep work is the only moat left. For the SEO practitioner feeling overwhelmed, what\u2019s the one thing they should actually do this week?<\/p>
\u201cIt\u2019s really the foundations. I hate to give the boring answer, but it\u2019s really fixing every single foundational thing that you have on your website or your website presence.\u201d<\/p>
He\u2019s watched the industry chase one shiny tool after another. \u201cThere\u2019s always a new shiny toy to work on while your website doesn\u2019t work with JavaScript disabled. Just ignore all of that until you\u2019ve fixed every single broken foundation you have on your website.\u201d<\/p>
On vibe coding specifically, he was precise: \u201cI don\u2019t like the term vibe coding. It just suggests that you have no idea what you\u2019re doing and you\u2019re happy about it. That\u2019s the way that sounds to me. The concept of AI-assisted coding, it\u2019s there. It\u2019s great. It\u2019s not going away.\u201d<\/p>
\u201cBut just focus on what you should be doing first before you use AI to do it faster.\u201d<\/p>
What resonated with me is how well this applies to writing, too. AI is brilliant at confidently producing a draft that, at first glance, looks great. But when you actually read it, you realize it\u2019s just somebody confidently talking nonsense.<\/p>
Slobodan nailed the core problem: \u201cYou need to know what good is and what good looks like. Because AI will always give you something. If you don\u2019t know enough about that specific thing, it will always look good from the outside. And there\u2019s a reason why everyone is okay with vibing everything except for their own profession, because they try it and they see that the results are just horrific.\u201d<\/p>
Build For Machines First, Everything Else Follows<\/h2>
The one thing to take away from this conversation is to build for machines first, then humans. Not because human user experience won\u2019t matter, but because getting the machine layer right first makes the human layer better.<\/p>
Your website is no longer the only version of your business that people, or agents, will encounter. The brands that treat it as part of a wider ecosystem rather than the whole ecosystem are the ones that will come through this transition in the strongest position.<\/p>
Watch the full video interview with Slobodan Manic here, or on YouTube.<\/p>