SEO Insights: May 2025 Report
Another month goes by, and the headlines are, yet again, all about AI. All talk in the world of SEO is the fast-paced evolution of search, which is, in turn, necessitating a change in strategy to adapt to the “new Google”.
Last month, Google held its annual Google I/O developer conference where they announced a plethora of AI related products and changes to search.
We’ve already become accustomed to the AI Overviews which appear above the search results, and its new AI Mode which was originally in beta mode for users in the U.S. Following the conference, several key initiatives and changes were announced.
AI Mode has now been released out of beta mode and is available to all users in the U.S. When you search on Google in the U.S a new option appears:
The search results still default to the “normal” Google results, but now there is an option to select “AI Mode” which is more in line with how AI chatbots work, such as ChatGPT and Gemini.
During the conference it was quite clear that AI Mode is the future of Google and although this is currently only available in the U.S, as with any Google product, it will quite quickly appear in Google in the UK and other countries too.
My expectation is that within a couple of months we will see AI Mode appear in the UK and users will start to use it, with it becoming increasingly common in the months that follow.
We can also assume that after being available to users for a few months, AI Mode will then become the default option for the search results, with the “old Google” available as a separate choice.
As the old and new Google work in fundamentally different ways, it’s unlikely that they will keep both running simultaneously for long, and over time (probably in the not-too-distant future), the old Google will slowly be deprecated.
This is a significant change in how search works and what users expect from search. With the increased use of AI tools for answering user queries, it is natural for Google to go down this route too and develop its search engine in line with this change.
It is no secret that this shift to an AI-first setup will cause a reduction in traffic from search. Since AI Overviews have been introduced, this effect is already taking shape. At the moment, this shift is primarily impacting informational type queries, so conversions are not necessarily decreasing at the same rate.
In theory, the traffic from an AI search should be higher quality as the user has already carried out their research, courtesy of AI Mode, and is then more likely to buy or take an action on a website.
Search is changing fast and at Artemis we have been working towards this moment (and opportunity) for many years through our significant investment in R&D.
We have already been aligning our clients’ websites and SEO strategies to satisfy the ‘new’ Google. The reality is that, unfortunately, there will be many businesses severely impacted by this fundamental change.
However, with our deep understanding of how AI works, and the implementation of our ARTEMIS INTELLIGENCE® strategies, our clients will be well positioned to maximise the opportunities that arise during this era of AI search.
