How Search Is Changing in 2025
Ranking on Google isn't the be-all and end-all of digital marketing
The way searchers find products is completely transforming.
Google are still the titans of search. But they’re losing their market dominance — and have even dipped below a 90% market share for the first time in a decade. It turns out, people are looking for answers elsewhere.
So, how can your business stay visible in the ever-changing world of digital marketing?
Here’s what we’ll go over this time around:
The death of the “10 blue links” experience. Gen Z reports scrolling through lists of search results as “slow, generic and outdated”. Search interfaces are turning more conversational — and, as it turns out, Google agrees!
It’s all about Answer + Action. Raw keyword stuffing is a thing of the past; the way we provide information has to become more conversational too.
The role AI is playing in all of this. The opportunities brought around by AI Search are a land grab, and businesses who don’t act quickly will get permanently left behind.
Let’s go into detail.
AI Overviews are killing clicks from Google
It turns out, Google have been slowly bleeding their market share for a while.
Changing user habits, lousy ad-filled experiences and failure to innovate have caused people to turn elsewhere.
Add the pressure of alternatives like Perplexity and you have a real recipe for disaster — so much so, Google have been forced to implement a similar user journey themselves.
AI Overviews were just the start. It’s moving onto Google’s AI mode, which recently released in the UK and is likely to soon be the default experience.
The end result? AI is going to play a huge role going forward, and that particular genie isn’t going back in the bottle.
Here are some of the big implications of that.
#1: Traditional SEO is no longer enough
Search Engine Optimisation isn’t dead. But it’s not the whole picture anymore.
Many people insist it isn’t changing. After all, the same strategies which led sites to rank on Google will continue to work…
But I’m here to tell you it’s wrong to see it so simplistically.
A study by Ahrefs found that AI Overviews reduce the number of clicks from Google by 34.5%.
That’s about a third of your traffic gone — not because your SEO wasn’t good enough, but because Google cannibalised your site’s information and answered the query itself. And from the users’ perspective, with instant answers at the tips of your fingers (literally), why bother trawling a long list of links?
In Semrush’s terms: they’re turning Google into both a search engine and an answer engine. Writing thousands of blog posts as top-of-funnel lead capture won’t bring anywhere near the returns it used to.
Though this isn’t to say SEO is useless.
I’ve been hard at work implementing the fundamentals of SEO into my own eCommerce site, London Canvas. The moment I appeared in the first page of Google? Suddenly ChatGPT and Perplexity knew who I was.
But how should we get chatbots to send potential customers our way? It’s all about how we differentiate ourselves.
A huge part of this is in your site’s EEAT signals (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) which I’ll write about in detail at a later point.
Another big part of it is how your brand appears elsewhere online.
This brings us neatly to the next section.
#2: Your leads aren’t looking in the same places you are
Pick your favourite keywords.
Even if you’re ranking #1 on Google for all of them, it’s useless if your target market isn’t using Google in the first place.
Especially in the case of Gen Z, they’re looking to platforms where they can see products recommended by people they trust, such as:
Reddit,
TikTok,
YouTube (to be fair, technically still Google),
Instagram…
…and yes, AI chatbots.
People don’t usually think of Amazon as a “search engine”; it’s not the first place I’d go to research something like Byzantine history. But the millions of searches they do get each day are from customers with very high intent to buy.
Most of them are cutting Google out of the equation entirely.
The solution here is to show up where your buyers are looking.
Especially in the case of Reddit, it’s a community which massively favours authenticity above anything. If Redditors are talking favourably about your brand, the benefits are multi-faceted:
You’ll get traffic from people who read trusted recommendations of you and naturally go on to look you up.
AI and search engine crawlers which notice positivity about your brand will receive a huge trust signal. They’re more likely to cite your work or recommend your offers in other people’s searches.
As Neil Patel of NP Digital puts it, SEO going forward will stand for “Search Everywhere Optimisation”. This is both about marketing in the correct places, and also signalling to AI crawlers your brand is trustworthy.
Which brings me to…
#3: AI Search is reshaping people’s buying decisions
If your products aren’t being recommended by ChatGPT, you’re being left behind.
Getting content and products recommended by AI is going to be paramount for any marketer. You could be teaching how to train dogs or describing why your brand’s kibble for puppies is the healthiest. In either case, the best content under the sun isn’t doing anything if people aren’t reading it.
And if you aren’t leveraging AI Search as a discovery engine, you’re leaving a lot on the table.
As much as it sucks, we’re not just writing for humans anymore. We’re also writing for the AI bots which are helping them make choices.
But why the emphasis on AI Search?
Imagine the typical research-to-action journey.
User loads up Google and types in a query.
User clicks a link in the first few results and reads through the website.
User might go back to the SERP and click another link, or start from Step 1 with a new query.
Repeat a few times.
Eventually, when the user has enough info, they might buy, sign up, or take another action.
AI compresses most of this into a single step.
There’s another critical thing to note here: people trust the recommendations given to them by the likes of ChatGPT and Perplexity. Any leads coming to you from these sources are more likely to convert since the heavy lifting has already been done.
Needless to say, this is an advantage you’ll want to snap up for yourself.
So how should you prepare your site for AI?
So far, Google have weathered the onslaught of AI Search tools extremely well.
Their name was once synonymous with finding things online, and people have been using it for free for decades.
But now, even at a cost of $20/month, people are getting used to other sources of information because their outputs are better and more tailored. Even on free tiers, people are finding better and easier answers compared to classic Google.
Conversational, AI-powered interfaces have become the mainstream. So with that in mind, here are 4 tips on how to prepare your site for them.
Stay on top of your traditional SEO. Keywords and backlinks are still worthwhile; if you aren’t visible to search engines, you’re not visible to AI.
Keep your content machine-readable. Make your headers and subheaders conversational rather than just targeting keywords. Use clean, semantic HTML as well as structured schema to help both AI and search engines crawl and understand your site.
Strengthen your EEAT signals. Include first-hand experience. Link out to reputable sources, and make your expertise on any topics obvious. Consider: what makes you qualified to talk about this topic, and why should readers (human or otherwise) listen to what you have to say?
Perhaps most importantly, spread trust signals for your brand across the web. Get people to leave you reviews on trusted third-party sites like TrustPilot. Instigate authentic discussion about your brand on forums like Reddit. LLMs are pulling data about your brand from across the web, not just your site.
If that felt brief, don’t worry. I’ll be revisiting these points in-depth at a later point (so make sure you’re subscribed!)
The early mover advantage is huge
AI systems are built on patterns.
When and if you can successfully position your brand with AI, people will start to trust you more. And these trust signals are a compounding effect; getting cited once makes you more likely to get cited again and again, both by AI and by humans.
And the earlier you can secure this advantage, the harder it will be for competitors to dislodge you.
The time to act on this is now. And remember to subscribe to Seen By Search if you want to be kept in the loop.
Until the next one — stay visible!
-tommy
Written by Tommy McDevitt, a Senior Engineer with 10+ years experience. Now advising eCommerce businesses about SEO and Digital Marketing. Want to work with me on your online visibility? Let’s see what we can achieve together!