AI Agents Take Over the SEO Playbook

The Prompt Economy was generous this week. Instead of the recent deluge of instructions and advice for developers, we saw some more practical applications for digital media and retail as agentic artificial intelligence (AI) continues to become a real factor for the end of the year.

One of the more interesting use cases came in the area of SEO and digital media. Search is moving from a keyword-driven exercise to an intent-driven conversation between users and intelligent systems. As Search Engine Journal explains, agentic AI doesn’t just respond to queries. It acts on goals, retrieves and tests information, and guides users toward outcomes it deems most relevant.

That means visibility is no longer about ranking on a results page but about being understood and trusted by AI models that now mediate discovery and decision-making. Brands must structure their content so these systems can interpret and recommend them with confidence, transforming SEO from a marketing function into a cross-disciplinary practice that includes product, data and experience design.

The article frames “agentic SEO” as a shift from optimizing for clicks to training systems that understand and act on brand information. Success requires strong data foundations — structured content, taxonomies, APIs, and feedback loops — to teach AI systems what a brand represents and why it’s credible.

Key metrics are evolving from search rankings to measures like retrieval share in AI assistants, trust signals, and inclusion in reasoning chains. Author Dan Taylor concludes that the winners in this new landscape won’t be those who automate content, but those who “help users and systems make better decisions at speed and scale,” redefining SEO as the discipline of influencing autonomous digital agents rather than search pages.

Also on the media side of The Prompt Economy, Thomson Reuters made some major moves for its professional division. The company expanded its AI portfolio with a suite of agentic AI products designed to help professionals automate complex, multistep tasks across tax, legal, audit and compliance.

The new releases include ONESOURCE+, described as an “intelligent compliance network,” and upgraded CoCounsel platforms for tax, audit, accounting and legal workflows. These systems combine advanced reasoning models with Thomson Reuters’ proprietary content and domain expertise to enable professionals to delegate entire workflows, from tax return preparation to document review, while maintaining transparency, audit readiness and regulatory compliance.

The company emphasized that its advantage lies in its integration of trusted professional content with agentic AI capabilities that learn and improve over time. ONESOURCE+ automates tax filing and product classification, while CoCounsel’s new “Ready to Review” and “Document Analysis” tools streamline tax preparation and auditing. On the legal side, CoCounsel Legal introduces next-generation agentic features for bulk document review and customizable workflow planning using Westlaw and Practical Law resources.

Together, these advancements aim to shift professional work from repetitive data handling to higher-value decision-making, positioning Thomson Reuters as one of the first companies to deploy enterprise-grade agentic AI systems at scale.

“We’re not just launching products, we’re enabling our customers to delegate complex work, reduce manual tasks, and focus their expertise where it matters most,” said David Wong, chief product officer, Thomson Reuters.

Retailing also has a new use case this past week, with an ambitious rollout at Mexico’s Liverpool department store. It has partnered with commercetools to integrate agentic AI into its digital shopping experience, marking one of the first large-scale deployments of autonomous retail agents in Latin America.

As detailed in Digital Commerce 360, the retailer’s chief digital officer, Antonio Guichard, said the shift reflects how customers now prefer to ask specific questions rather than browse endless product listings. The new system uses AI to understand intent, recommend products, and execute purchases in a single interaction — effectively transforming the eCommerce journey from “search and scroll” to “ask and act.” Liverpool, which operates 124 department stores and 186 Suburbia locations, aims to make online and in-store interactions feel seamless and responsive across its growing omnichannel footprint.

Industry experts cited the move as a sign that agentic commerce is becoming mainstream. Dirk Hoerig of commercetools said the partnership reflects how retailers must prepare their data, governance and checkout systems for AI-led journeys, while consultants like Dustin Engel and Joe Gagnon described Liverpool’s deployment as a turning point. Engel called it “the creation of a new commerce channel — the agent channel,” where trust and brand representation are as critical as price, and Gagnon predicted a new era of “one-interaction sales” that mirror Amazon’s one-click buying. Both argued that retailers adopting this model early will gain an advantage in speed, personalization, and conversion as consumers expect more conversational, friction-free shopping experiences.

“By deploying agentic AI, [Liverpool is] not just adding a chatbot; they’re enabling full-cycle interaction — ask a question, get an answer, buy in the same flow,” said Gagnon, CEO of Raynmaker.