Is SEO Still Relevant in 2025? How to Adapt to AI Trends in Search
You may have noticed that now, when you type certain words into Google, something like this comes up:
They’re called AI Overviews (AIO), and they act a bit like a featured snippet, answering the user’s search with AI.
If you work in content or organic plays a big part in your marketing, this new development may be a little worrying. In fact, AI as a whole could be a little worrying. You’ve seen the LinkedIn posts that say “SEO is dead” because people will use an AI platform rather than Google for research, or because Google will move their entire model to AI results. So this may raise questions in your mind, like:
Will people still use Google in a few years and should we still be investing in SEO?
Does my SEO strategy need to change with AI overviews? What do I need to know?
How is AI impacting my content marketing moving forward?
As a content marketing agency that specializes in helping companies rank on and generate leads from Google, we’ve been keeping a close eye on AI overviews and how AI is impacting content. We’ve also asked a few marketing and tech experts for their thoughts on the current AI trends within search.
We’ll cover:
Is Google becoming a less relevant channel with people moving to AI now?
Should your approach change with AI overviews?
What can you do to adapt to AI overviews?
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Is Google becoming a less relevant channel with people searching via AI platforms now?
The biggest question content marketers and SEOs are asking is: will Google and SEO still be relevant in a few years?
At this stage, it’s too early to say what will be the norm in 3 - 5 years. We don’t fully know. We can, however, look at what has happened this year and what may happen in 2025. There’s already some very interesting research available on what is currently happening.
What the data says on current search dynamics
In May 2024, Datos, a Semrush company, did a very interesting study where they analyzed clickstream data from May 2023 to May 2024 to understand how AI is affecting search dynamics.
As you can see in the graph below, a few things stand out from the study:
Perplexity is the fastest growing AI platform, growing nearly 5x from 2023 to 2024 in website visits per month.
However, web users conducted 2,400 times more searches on Google than Perplexity in May of 2024.
So, Perplexity and AI platforms are growing rapidly. But Google is still very much the dominant platform for webpage visits (the graph above is just considering webpage visits, not actual searches).
For searches, Datos found that Google is still clearly bringing in the highest number and is very much the preferred platform.
According to the white paper, Google had 290x more search users than Perplexity in May. And it’s rising. The number of searches per month on Google actually went up by 10.4% in 2024.
As we can see above, Perplexity is clearly growing at a faster rate than Google. But if you want to rely on these findings, it seems it’s DuckDuckGo that is more of a threat than Perplexity.
It’s also interesting to note that most people use AI platforms as well as Google and other search engines.
According to the Datos study, 99% of those who use an AI platform also use Google, and 16.45% of the cohort that use Google also use an AI platform.
We have data to finally prove what everyone is saying: the noise around AI replacing search engines is bigger than its actual user base. There is great PR and a lot of buzz, but the reality is that these platforms are not as big as everyone makes them out to be.
So what does this mean if you’re a content marketer or investing heavily in content?
Google search is still clearly a leading channel. At this point, you would likely miss out on a lot of conversions and customers by not investing in Google than if you were to change strategy.
It is true that search habits are more fragmented
Search is getting more fragmented, and it is important to keep an eye on the role of the AI platforms and how your customers are interacting with them.
I very much agree with what Rand Fishkin says in his article breaking down the Datos study:
“Apart from doing a healthy amount of PR and brand marketing (so your brand name frequently shows up in the sources LLMs are likely to use as training data), I’d argue 99% of your efforts should go to sources of influence that already impact your audience and customers vs. those you theorize might one day impact them.
As we saw with the rise (and plateau) of mobile apps, the rise and fall of blockchain and NFTs, and the brief flirtations with the Metaverse, Augmented Reality (AR), and social audio (Clubhouse, et al), it’s far wise to wait until a platform is truly influential to your customers before trying to do marketing there.”
The most important thing is to go where your customers are. Yes, a few loud tech enthusiasts are using Perplexity, but are your customers using it?
If you start seeing your customers using AI platforms, then it makes sense to target those. But it’s a fool’s errand to try to predict where customers will be in 2 - 5 years. As we’ve seen plenty of times, there isn’t a big benefit of being influential somewhere before your customers get there.
There’s also a risk you could waste a lot of resources trying to predict where people are going and getting it wrong, rather than investing more in what already works.
As the white paper summarizes: “AI search is grabbing headlines, but it’s not the disruptive nemesis it’s been portrayed to be.”
Again, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep an eye on it and use AI platforms yourself. But it does mean that at this point in time, it’s still very much worth investing in SEO.
Ok, I’m still investing in Google and search. But should I change my approach to appear in AI Overviews?
Search is still very much worth investing in. But search itself is changing. We have new Google Core updates, new tools in Google Ads and AI Overviews. Here is what to consider before changing your approach to get the most of SEO.
What are AIOs?
They are AI generated responses to queries that someone types into Google, like this:
They appear above all search results, and AI gathers information from different sources online to generate the answers. Links to those sources appear on the right side of AIOs.
In the US, AIOs went live on May 14th, and in the UK on the 15th of August. As of time of writing, September 2024, AIOs are live in seven countries.
How will AI overviews impact SEO and content?
The biggest risk with AI Overviews is more “zero-click searches”. People getting their answers directly from an AIO will mean they won’t have to click through to any websites, potentially leading to a decrease in organic traffic, brand awareness and conversions.
Before we try to make any assumptions, let’s look at another study, this time by Advanced Web Ranking:
AI overviews show for 28.11% of SERPs (this changes regularly, so if you click on the link you’ll see the most up-to-date number).
In financial services specifically, it’s about 26.6%.
On average, an AIO is 169 words and 912 pixels.
Usually, an AIO includes 7.2 links when expanded.
Interestingly, keywords from health and safety niches are more likely to trigger AIO.
AIOs don’t show up for brand queries.
Five word queries trigger AI Overviews more frequently.
The most common terms that trigger an AI Overview are “how” or “best”.
When an AIO appears, it’s nearly always accompanied by “People Also Ask”.
From the research, it’s mainly informational queries that trigger AIOs.
What does this mean for your SEO strategy and how can you adapt?
Based on these two studies and our own experience helping companies acquire customers with content, there are two assumptions we make from AIO:
Top of the Funnel articles that answer questions like “What is a direct debit?” will get less organic traffic.
Ideally, you want your brand to appear within AIO or right below. Being position #4 now is like being position #6 two years ago.
Let’s look more closely at each assumption.
The first one is hard to dispute: if I get an answer to my question immediately from AIO, I won’t feel the need to click on other links. The negative side of this is that if your content marketing results mainly rely on organic traffic, you may start to see a decrease in performance.
However, there is a positive side to this. AIOs could also act as a filter for quality. Taking the “what is a direct debit” example above, if someone is new to direct debits and is satisfied with the AIO response, then they very likely won’t be interested in your product. On the other hand, a payment manager, for example, that is doing research on direct debit providers, is a lot more likely to do in-depth research and then click on other results.
This is just a theory and AIO hasn’t been around enough to have some data to prove this. But it is possible that AIOs will decrease traffic, but increase the quality of conversions.
The second assumption has been true for quite a while now. Search results are no longer a list of 10 blue links: you now have Google Maps, Google Shopping, images and a lot of different types of results that take up most of the space. With AIOs, the SERP has become even more crowded.
This means that if you want to make the most of search, you really want to focus on getting to position #1 and adapting your SEO strategy to what is currently ranking on the SERPs. We dive into how to do that in the section below.
How will AIO impact conversions?
On our side, we haven’t seen an impact on conversions or traffic. For the UK, it’s too soon to tell as AIO was just launched recently in August (and in August there is generally a dip in traffic). For the US, so far we haven’t seen much of a dip in traffic or conversions. You can see below that both traffic and conversions are still on a positive trajectory for one of our clients:
Organic traffic to the blog from February to September 2024, for one of our US clients:
Although there was a slight dip in June (could be from AIO?), the trend is still an overall increase.
Lead form conversions from the blog from February to September, for one of our US clients:
Interestingly, conversions did not take a hit in June and have continued to increase. This data is just from one client so we can’t make any assumptions, but it may be proof that quality of conversions will remain or even increase with AIO.
We checked with a few other people to see what they’ve seen with AIO. Here’s what Ajdin Perco, Head of Content at Animalz, a content marketing agency for the SaaS industry that works with dozens of clients in the US, said:
“We haven't seen AI Overviews meaningfully impacting (in either positive or negative way) organic traffic visits for most of the brands we work with. We did observe that some of our clients are getting an increasing number of visits referred from LLM engines (like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, etc.).
But in general, there haven't been any catastrophic search traffic drops caused by AI Overviews and most brands are continuing to grow their search traffic when they publish new quality content. We are helping clients adapt to the rise of AI tools and AI innovations (like AI Overviews) in different ways. For some clients, we help them diversify their content efforts by creating different types of cross-funnel SEO assets but also by exploring other distribution channels.
We also track for which queries are AI Overviews being triggered and then help clients optimize their content in case they aren't being cited. But we're still in the early days of adapting to AI Overviews and it remains to be seen what are the best ways to optimize content strategies in this new reality.”
Adapting to AIO: what can you do?
Based on the data, expert insights and our own experience, here are a few ways work with AIO as part of the current search landscape
Analyze the SERP and understand what to do to reach #1
As mentioned earlier, the days of 10 blue links are gone. Now, when you do a Google search, you’ll get “People also Ask”, news stories, map directions and videos. And now an AI Overview.
https://ahrefs.com/seo/glossary/serp-features
Which means that in order to reach #1, relying solely on written content isn’t enough now. This is where your SEO strategy may need to adapt. For example, if you see YouTube videos taking the first few positions, you may be better off investing your resources in creating a video rather than a long form article.
As a content marketing agency, one way we’ve also adapted is by doing Google Ads. In most search queries, you’ll see Google Ads are well above AIOs, maps, stories and videos. We’ve also found that investing in Google Ads is a great way to test keywords before targeting them with SEO, and generally build a more data-driven content strategy. You can read more about our thoughts here: Why We Changed Our Agency Framework (And How It Brings Better Results)
Our main point here is to make sure to adapt to the SERPs. If you see that videos now start appearing for a keyword that brings in a lot of conversions, it may be worth investing in video creation to make sure you retain that #1 position.
Rely less on TOFU content, consider investing more in BOFU content
It’s pretty obvious now that AIOs best use cases are for answering quick questions like “what time is it in LA”. Which means that if a lot of your content focuses on answering quick fire questions, your readers are more likely to be satisfied with an AIO answer.
However, this may not be so much the case with Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU) topics. A BOFU topic like “payment orchestration platform” indicates that someone is looking for a platform. Even though AIO does turn up in this specific example, this Bottom of the Funnel query will be from our target audience who is doing in-depth research and won't be satisfied with a surface-level summary.
Imagine it’s a recently hired payment manager tasked with turning around the payments function of a large commercial retailer and they’re setting their payments strategy. They are more likely to scroll through the results and keep clicking through to do their research. In other words, they are a lot less likely to be satisfied by an AIO response and land on your website and content.
However, you won’t be able to reach these types of users if you only create TOFU content and haven’t invested in content that targets prospects that are lower down the funnel. If you’re new to BOFU, we recommend reading this article where we go into more detail about how it works: What is BOFU (Bottom of the Funnel) Content and Why Is it Important?
Beth Gladstone, Freelance Marketer at bethgladstone.com, says it herself:
“Given that Google has actually rolled back the amount of AI Overviews you see in search I think we, as content marketers, have a bit of a grace period now. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be adapting our strategies but it’s become clear that AI Overviews are being used most often on TOFU informational queries and not the BOFU queries where users are ready to invest or make a decision.
As a result, I think some SEO budgets will be redirected from owning an area as an authority where clicks will become fewer, but the strategies optimized for lead conversion will remain (and will still work).”
Start optimizing content for AI platforms
We have seen in a few of our clients (and heard from others) that they are starting to see traffic come in from AI platforms. Although you may not want appearing on AI platforms as the main focus for your SEO and content, it may be worth optimizing your website and content to appear in those AI platforms.
How do you do that? Researchers from a few universities have started experimenting with “GEO” “Generative Engine Optimization”. According to their research, they found nine different strategies to optimize content for AI platforms, with the three top ones being:
Cite sources
Add expert quotes
Add statistics
Luckily, these are easy and simple adjustments to your content, and may help bring in additional traffic and conversions.
Here is what we’ve heard other experts say works:
Investing in brand and brand awareness will naturally help in appearing in AI platforms.
Getting listed on comparison platforms like G2 and Capterra will increase the likelihood of you appearing in a “best tool for X” search in an AI platform.
Increasing your digital presence via social media accounts and backlinks will help with digital brand awareness and therefore with appearing on AI platforms.
As with SEO in general, creating more content, investing more in digital marketing and brand awareness will naturally help appear in AI platforms.
Sara Taher, SEO Manager at Digital Sisco, also shares that it’s important to also focus on conversion optimization:
“As to how we can adapt, I think it’s time we dedicated some of our SEO efforts to conversion optimization, for 2 reasons:
On page user behavior can impact rankings, as we now know.
We cannot afford to lose users acquired through organic search due to bad on-page CRO. We work hard to attract organic traffic, so it's very important that we optimize the journey once users land on our site. This means ensuring clear CTAs, fast loading times, and content that aligns with user intent”
The future of search: Google is still dominant, but it’s important to keep an eye on customer behavior
How do we conclude? In terms of the future of search, the data shows that Google is still a key leader in search and that we can be confident to keep investing in SEO and search in 2025.
That may change in 2026 and beyond, but these changes usually take a while and it’ll only make sense to adjust strategy when there is clear evidence people are switching providers. As we’ve already said, the main objective is to target the platforms where your customers are.
In terms of AIOs, they may affect your organic traffic (although most people we’ve talked to haven’t seen that), but the jury is still out as to whether it affects conversions. If you’re worried about how it may affect your content marketing, you can:
Adapt your SEO to the SERP. Create videos instead of long form written content if those are appearing high for certain keywords.
Invest more in BOFU than TOFU content.
Start optimizing your content for AI platforms by including sources and quotes.
Big thanks to Beth Gladstone, Ajdin Perco and Sara Taher for your contributions!