The new era of Search: Navigating Google’s AI evolution

During Google's annual developer conference, we heard a lot about AI. The headline announcement being that the new Gemini 2.5 Pro is leading the popular coding leaderboard, with an ELO score of 1415. 

Google demonstrated intelligent advancement across its AI models, improving output across assisting capabilities, generative media and complex solutions - the ultimate vision is to build a universal AI assistant that will perform everyday admin and multitask for you - “making us more productive and enriching our lives."

What is AI Mode? How it compares to AI Overview

At the I/O developer conference on May 20th, Sundar Pichai announced a new tab within Google Search named AI Mode - now launched to all U.S searchers. 

AI mode results look like an amplified version of AI Overview. You may be familiar with AI Overview, it’s the AI summary that appears at the top of Google when you search certain queries. These new generative search summaries were introduced to the UK in late 2024, presenting a new opportunity to be cited at the top of search. Whilst this positively encouraged longer search queries, it also became problematic amongst the SEO community, noting a reduction in link clicks as blue links were pushed further down the page.

Currently AI Mode sits on a new tab meaning that it won’t interfere with the main page of search. Liz Reid demonstrated how AI Mode offers a more chat-like experience designed for more complex query strings. Meaning unlike AI Overview’s one-shot summary, you can ask follow-up questions to improve the output. Much like how searchers utilise the Gemini app or other AI chatbots such as Chat GPT and Perplexity. 

AI mode will also offer a more personalised experience, tailoring results based on your search history, calendar and email activities. Users will be able to ‘opt out’ of this feature.

Google is layering AI Mode’s capabilities, announcing that Project Mariner and Project Astra will both be coming to AI Mode in Labs this summer. This offers deeper search and real-time live searches with your camera. You will also be able to book appointments, restaurant reservations and event tickets.

AI Mode Capabilities:

• Personal context 
• Deeper Research
• Analysis & visualisation
• Live multimodality
• New ways to shop

The AI shopping revolution: Redefining how people shop

We’re no stranger to Chatbots, they’ve been evolving since the 1960s, with the first being Eliza created by Joseph Weizenbaum. During 2024 we saw huge shifts in AI Search.  Perplexity AI surprised many of us, partnering with Shopify,  offering ‘buy now’ options within search results. They also introduced ‘snap to shop’, which, much like Google Lens, allows you to use your camera to identify objects for sourcing product listings. I’m sure we will see a lot more of these features within AI Chatbots.  

Google's AI Mode is poised to elevate this further, promising a more advanced shopping journey with smart guidance and reliable product data. Features such as virtual dressing rooms and an "agentic checkout" - enabling price tracking, drop notifications, and direct purchasing - aim to increase conversions, though discussions raise concerns of encouraging price wars.

AI Mode in online shopping:

• Automatic price tracking - smart notifications

• AI-driven product visualisation - interactive virtual dressing room

• AI-assisted purchasing (agentic checkout) - tailored to user-defined criteria

AI Mode vs ChatGPT:

While not initially designed as a shopping platform, ChatGPT's advanced conversational skills have made it a surprisingly effective shopping advisor, and OpenAI is actively working to enhance its capabilities for a more shopper-friendly experience. 

In my example from ChatGPT, I have queried, “I am an adult female and would like to purchase a new stylish backpack for everyday use. It must be waterproof, sleek in design and within a budget of £30- £70. I also need next day delivery”. - The results produced top recommendations based on my demographic, budget and delivery requirements. I’m encouraged to expand on my query, ask more questions regarding each product, or when clicked provided a “buy now” CTA. No ads appear within this search. Community is important here, citing YouTube and Reddit reviews beside listings.

How to optimise and rank in AI Search

Adapting to AI-driven search doesn't mean discarding existing SEO fundamentals but rather evolving and enhancing them. A critical first step is understanding how your audience utilises these new search modalities and tailoring content to meet their nuanced, often conversational, query patterns.

Google's guide on ranking in AI Mode or AI Overviews: 

• Unique and satisfying content. Google prioritises content that meets user’s needs. Longer query strings require original, non-generic content that both search users and your existing audience will find useful. 
• Ensure a great on-page experience and accessibility. Pages must meet Google’s technical requirements, so that Google can find them, crawl them efficiently, index and consider them for featuring in results.  High-quality content alone isn’t enough; users will be frustrated if the landing page is cluttered and difficult to navigate. Consider how your content displays on different devices. Do your pages have good core web-vitals? Understanding page experience. 
• Manage your visibility preferences. Make use of nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet, or noindex to set your display preferences.
• Ensure matched structured data. Enhance your website’s visibility by using structured data. This helps Google understand your content with a machine-readable format and feature it as a “rich result”. When using structured data, ensure you adhere to Google’s Guidelines and that all marked-up content is visible on your webpage and that it is validated.
• Go beyond text. Google’s AI technology now facilitates multimodal searches, allowing users to initiate queries with an image and a question - for best results, support your content with high-quality images and videos.  Ensure that information is up-to-date within Google Merchant and Google Business.
• Evolve with your audience.  Search is constantly evolving to meet users’ ever-changing needs. This has led to significant transformations, from the traditional “ten blue links” to incorporating visual content, videos and news content, as well as adapting from desktop to mobile-friendly interfaces and handling multimodal queries. This brings a lot of opportunities for website owners to be visible within the competitive search landscape. AI Overviews and AI Mode also present links in diverse ways and feature a broader array of sources, encouraging users to explore web content further. 
  
  

Reporting in a zero-click landscape

With more AI Search methods being introduced, such as Gemini in Chrome it is becoming increasingly more difficult to report on SEO efforts.  Google has claimed that clicks from AI Overviews offer more valued traffic, mainly translated through conversion reporting and intent.

Through my own experimentation targeting AI Overviews, I have often turned to visibility reporting. The main metric being impressions, with my objective to primarily increase brand visibility within the share of voice.

The SEO community pushed back after the launch of AI Mode due to lack of help with reporting. This has now been rectified as Google confirmed it will be introducing AI Mode to Google Search Console. 

Traffic from AI tools such as ChatGPT and Perplexity is usually hidden within your referral reporting in GA4. We can split this out via creating a new channel group and adding a condition to match exact domains or subdomains associated with AI tools and services. 

Whilst the traffic might be low right now, this could be a good reference to report back on and compare to the AI tool trends within organic search. 

Key takeaways:

• AI is central to Search's future: Google is deeply integrating advanced AI models like Gemini to transform search into a more intuitive and assistive experience.
• AI Mode vs. AI Overviews: AI Overviews provide quick summaries on the main SERP, while AI Mode offers a separate, interactive tab for complex, conversational, and personalised search experiences.
• SEO strategies must evolve: Success in AI search requires a focus on high-quality, user-centric content, robust technical SEO, structured data, and adapting to new query types and multimodal search.
• Shopping is being revolutionised: AI Mode will introduce advanced e-commerce features, offering personalised guidance and streamlined purchasing, requiring businesses to adapt their online retail strategies.
• Reporting is adapting: While "zero-click" scenarios pose challenges, Google is working to provide more clarity, with AI Mode data expected in Google Search Console, aiding in the measurement of SEO efforts in this new environment.
  
  

Ready to see how Search and AI-enhanced strategies can elevate your brand's success in 2025?