SEO will continue to be important!
At breakneck speed we have had a lot of changes in recent times. The ways of searching are changing, both structurally in search engines and in clicks (web interaction), through AI that promises to turn everything upside down.
But make no mistake, SEO will still be important.
AI Overviews: artificial intelligence technology integrated into Google's search engine
We've been seeing it in search results for a while now. It's that summary that appears at the top and is marked as AI.
If you don't want it to appear, you can deactivate the option "Turn this experiment on or off" on the Google Labs page in the AI Overviews experiment section.
AI Mode: the future epicentre for Google
And here we have the new Google Search Mode (new feature in Google Search Labs), Google's most powerful AI search experience.
AI Mode turns search queries into interactive conversations and with this new feature Google wants to put the brakes on ChatGPT.
New features are being rolled out within AI Mode:
Deep Search: designed for when a quick answer is not enough (to deal with the competition)
Search Live: will allow using the mobile camera to interact with reality in real time.
Project Mariner: search will no longer be passive and will be able to interact for you (restaurant reservations, ticket purchases, etc.)
Complex data analysis: it will be able to interpret tables and graphs on quantitative topics and return visualisations generated on the fly.
Google Ads: it is directly integrating ads from Performance Max, Shopping or Search campaigns with broad match in AI Mode and AI Overview
New shopping experience (taking it one step further): in addition to all the previous functions, there is a virtual clothes fitting, which will allow you to upload a photo and see yourself wearing the clothes you have chosen.
These two experiences will reportedly become even more accurate with the integration of the Gemini 2.5 model.
But make no mistake, SEO will still be important
And with all these changes, how do I still appear within IA Mode and IA Overview?
Of course, Google has published a guide with recommendations on how to keep your content relevant and worthy of appearing in the results of these two functions.
Content: unique and valuable content designed for people not keywords
Page experience: fast loading, responsive and with relevant content at the core
Crawling and indexing: make sure it can be crawled and indexed by Google
Structured data: structure the data well, so that it is true to the visible content.
Multimodal searches: accompany text with relevant images and videos.
Beyond the click: measure beyond the click, users coming from these functionalities are much more qualified.
And don't forget that AI Overview has 1.5 billion monthly users.
Many of the links on AI Overview don't lead to web pages, they link to new Google searches.
The content they use is the content of the web pages they are supposed to link to, they create AI loops (IAO loops). These loops take away between 15% and 40% of clicks in the organic results (traffic) and loss of visibility.
In principle Google is monetising this with ADS.
(Source: Sistrix)
