Google’s Gary Illyes recently explained that Google’s search engine treats AI-generated images essentially the same as any other images and does not penalize sites for using AI images.
In a Q&A with interviewer Kenichi Suzuki and shared by Search Engine Journal, Illyes explained that AI-generated images have no direct impact on SEO or online rankings.
Instead, he suggested that any effect to rankings from AI-generated issues may be brought on by technical issues. He suggested that brands may even see increased traffic if they use AI to create unique images.
How Does Google Handle AI-Generated Content?
Google has largely been trying to take a nuanced approach to how it handles content made with AI. While the company has encouraged those who use AI-generated text content to ensure it is reviewed by humans, they have also taken steps to derank low-quality AI content.
At the same time, Google has not directly addressed how it handles AI-generated images.
About 10 minutes into the recent interview, Illyes was asked if Google would punish a site if some of their images were made with AI:
“Say if there’s a content that the content itself is legit, the sentences are legit, but also there are a lot of images which are relevant to the content itself, but all of them – let’s say all of them are generated by AI. Will the content or the overall site, is it going to be penalized or not?”
In response, Illyes emphasized that AI-generated images don’t affect SEO in any direct way.
“No, no. So AI generated image doesn’t impact the SEO. Not direct.
So obviously when you put images on your site, you will have to sacrifice some resources to those images… But otherwise you are not going to, I don’t think that you’re going to see any negative impact from that.
If anything, you might get some traffic out of image search or video search or whatever, but otherwise it should just be fine.”
In other words, the only major SEO consideration a site should have when using AI-generated content is ensuring the images are small enough and properly optimized to load quickly.
While brands should consider other potential issues you might encounter using AI-generated images, such as how your audience will respond, Illyes’s comments make it clear that Google won’t be punishing you simply for using AI to create your graphics or pictures.
While AI overviews upend much of how we look for information online, marketers have been split on how to respond. Some say that traditional SEO is all that is necessary to get your site cited by Google’s AI overviews, while others have been arguing that a new “SEO for AI” is needed. Now, Google has weighed in.
During a talk at Search Central Live, Google’s Gary Illyes, told attendees that AI search tools don’t mean marketers need to use a new type of optimization and that standard SEO practices are all that is needed to be included in Google’s AI overviews and AI mode.
While we were not present at the event, Google Search Advocate Kenichi Suzuki shared a detailed overview of what Gary Illyes discussed, including three main focus areas:
AI uses traditional SEO infrastructure and signals.
Content quality matters, but so does authenticity
Google has used AI in its traditional search for a long time.
How AI Uses SEO
Illyes emphasized that Google’s AI tools rely on the same basic systems and infrastructure used elsewhere by Google, including relying on the same search signals and indexing approach.
As Suzuki says:
“[Illyes] explicitly stated that there is no need for a new acronym or a separate discipline. The core principles of creating helpful, reliable, people-first content remain the foundation for visibility in all of search formats.”
Authenticity Matters
Gary Illyes said that while Google does not punish sites that publish content made with AI, it watches for signs of abuse, including sites that churn out tons of low-quality AI content or pages with deceptive information like fake author personas or AI-generated images presented as real.
Suzuki summed up Illyes’s statements, saying:
“Search Quality Raters are instructed to give the lowest possible rating to any content that is deceptive. This includes creating fake author personas with AI-gen images or churning out content that simply rehashes information from other sources without adding unique value or experience.”
Google Has Been Using AI For a Long Time
Throughout his presentation, Gary repeatedly emphasized that Google’s use of AI goes back years before the current surge in generative AI tools. Specifically, Illyes pointed to Google’s MUM system as a form or predictive AI to understand the intent behind queries.
While the introduction of MUM did cause some shifts in how we approach SEO in general, it did not call for an entirely new optimization discipline, just as new generative AI tools do not require a new “SEO for AI”.
The Takeaway
While AI is undeniably making us change some aspects of search engine optimization, it doesn’t call for your business to adopt “GEO” or “AI SEO” or any other separate approaches to optimization.
Instead, it is essential that you adapt your current SEO strategies, focus on providing content that provides real value to readers, and develop strategies to cement your authentic authority in your field.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/pexels-rccbtn-15406292-1.jpg7201280Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2025-08-01 16:30:292025-08-01 16:30:31Google Says You Don’t Need Special SEO For AI Overviews
TikTok is rolling out new generative AI tools that will allow brands to create unique video content based on just their product images or short text prompts.
The new tools are a new part of the social platform’s Symphony suite, a collection of AI tools aimed at brands and content creators. Along with the existing Symphony suite features, TikTok introduced image-to-video and text-to-video options that allow you to create 5-second branded clips and a new Showcase Products feature.
The text-to-video and image-to-video features are built directly into TikTok, but are also being integrated with Adobe Express and WPP Open.
The Showcase Products feature is built into the TikTok app and lets you create lifelike videos featuring AI avatars that can hold products, demo apps, or model clothing. All it takes to create one is a visual of the product and a brief description.
Why Does This Matter
These new tools give brands the flexibility to create short but detailed marketing materials that would typically require an entire team and a sizable marketing budget to create. By integrating with other platforms, TikTok is giving brands more than just new ways to market on their platform – they are giving brands freedom to create for anywhere their brand needs.
Extra Details
TikTok says that all videos created with its AI tools will be clearly labeled and go through several rounds of reviews to ensure that unsafe or inappropriate materials are not being created.
Notably, these tools were released right as TikTok was facing a June 19th deadline to sell or divest from parent company ByteDance or be banned from the United States. However, President Trump extended the deadline by 90 days, giving the company more time to find a buyer.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tiktok_image_to_video2.png343600Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2025-06-20 16:57:472025-06-20 16:57:49TikTok Adds AI Tools To Create Videos Off Text Or Product Images
Based on an analysis of over 25,000 user searches, websites that rank at the top of Google’s traditional search results appeared in AI search answers at least 25% of the time.
This means that even in the era of increasing zero-click searches and decreasing clicks to search listings, SEO remains a crucial marketing strategy for brands looking to improve their online presence and reach more customers.
The Study
The findings come from Tomasz Rudzki, co-founder of ZipTie. In an attempt to determine if SEO was losing relevance in the AI age, Rudzki assessed searches from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI overviews.
What Rudzki saw was clear – sites that rank at the top of Google search results had 1-in-4 odds of being highlighted in AI overviews. The lower the sites were ranked, the lower their chances were of being included in AI responses.
As Rudzki put it:
“The higher you rank in Google’s top 10, the more likely you are to appear in AI search results across platforms. This isn’t speculation – it’s based on real queries from real users.”
While this is particularly of interest for Google, Rudzki said this pattern was consistent across all AI search platforms he evaluated, including ChatGPT.
How AI Search Engines Work
In his report, Rudzki uses information from Google to detail how AI search engines work.
Pre-selection: In the first step, AI systems select the pages they believe are the most relevant for a query. In most cases, this includes the highest-ranking pages for similar searches.
Content extraction: Next, AI tools parse the context of the selected pages and pull content directly related to the question it is answering.
AI synthesis: AI systems finally aggregate the information they have collected from across the web and package them in one easy-to-read response.
In the process of finding the most relevant and accurate information for a specific question, AI tools heavily favor the sites that are already favored by Google, just as most humans naturally favor the highest ranked sites in organic search results.
Why AI Sometimes Pulls From Lower-Ranked Sites
When exploring why AI tools sometimes pull information from pages that rank lower, sometimes even falling below the top 10 search results, Rudzki provided a few potential answers.
The first is search personalization. While a specific site may not typically be included at the top of the search results, there is a chance of it appearing higher in personalized search results.
The second, and perhaps more notable, reason is a concept called “query fan-out”.
Google’s AI documentation explains query fan-out like this:
“Both AI Overviews and AI Mode may use a ‘query fan-out‘ technique — issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources — to develop a response.”
In other words, when you ask AI a specific question, it may run several processes to ask questions about specific details of your question or related information. This means that while a selected page may not rank well for your specific question, it may rank well for a particular aspect that the AI system looked into.
SEO is Here To Stay
There is no arguing that AI tools are drastically changing how we search and access information. While AI overviews are tied to decreasing click-through rates on organic results, brands can still gain ground by positioning themselves as an authority that Google can rely on to provide accurate information. This not only helps mitigate lost traffic from zero-click searches, but can also improve your reputation and connect you with new potential customers.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/AI-Content.png12602240Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2025-06-06 14:24:222025-06-06 14:24:23New Research Shows SEO Is Key For Appearing In AI Overviews
Critics accuse Google’s increasing use of AI in its search engine of taking referral traffic away from websites, but Google’s executives say the issue is a matter of quality versus quantity.
In a recent press and Q&A event, Google’s executives argued that AI is improving the quality of search results (while largely avoiding the issue of decreasing clicks).
The session included statements from several executives, such as Jenny Cheng (Vice President and General Manager of Google’s Merchant Shopping operations), Sean Downey (President of Americas & Global Partners at Google), and Nicky Rettke (YouTube Vice President of Product Management).
Does AI Reduce Traffic To Websites?
Numerous studies have found that Google’s AI overviews have significantly reduced click-through rates to both organic and paid listings, leading to significant reductions in referral traffic. The trend has brought down CTRs for nearly every type of search, but non-branded informational searchers have been most heavily impacted since the introduction of AI overviews.
Ahrefs, Advanced Web Ranking, Similarweb, and many others have independently verified that this trend is happening and seems to be getting worse as Google has increased how frequently it shows AI overviews.
What Google’s Execs Have To Say
When asked about falling click-through rates in search, Google’s executives began by saying it is partially driven by an increase in follow-up searches while using AI-enhanced search.
“What we’re seeing is people asking more questions. So they’ll ask a first question, they’ll get information, and then go and ask a different question. So they’re refining and getting more information, and then they’re making a decision of what website to go to.”
As this happens, Google seems to believe users refine exactly what they are looking for, ensuring that their clicks are more valuable.
“When they get to a decision to click out, it’s a more highly qualified click… What we hope to see over time—and we don’t have any data to share on this—is more time spent on site, which is what we see organically in a much more highly qualified visitor for the website.”
Notably, even Google admits it cannot back up these claims with data.
What About Ads?
While the Google executives did their best not to directly address falling referral traffic for organic content, they did claim that CTRs on ad placements are stable overall. Despite AI overviews pushing paid placements further down the page, Google says clicks remain largely unchanged.
“When we run ads on AI overviews versus ads on standard search, we see pretty much the same level of monetization capabilities, which would indicate most factors are the same and they’re producing really the same results for advertisers to date.”
Again, however, the company declined to share any data on the issue.
What About AI Mode?
Don’t expect anything to improve with the new wide launch of Google’s AI mode. Along with doubling down on AI features in search, this new mode, Google has made referral traffic from AI mode untrackable.
When someone clicks through to your website from within AI mode, it is currently not being recorded in Google Search Console analytics. At best, some tools seem to be capturing when clicks occur, however, they are shown with no attribution. In most cases, however, they seem not to be registering at all. This will only serve to muddy the waters while websites deal with seeing less traffic from Google.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Google-Page-Experience-Desktop1.jpg343720Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2025-05-23 17:12:472025-05-23 17:12:49Google Executives Say Falling Referral Traffic Are Sign Of Higher-Quality Clicks
It may feel like Google’s AI overviews are appearing on practically every search you make on Google Search. New analysis, however, shows that while the number of searches that include AI may be increasing, overviews are in fewer search results than you may think.
An analysis from Semrush indicates that AI search overviews appeared in just 13.14% of all U.S. desktop searches made in March. While that number seems low, it is a 102% increase from the 6.49% of searches that included automated overviews in January.
AI Has a Big Impact for Being So Rarely Shown
The relatively low number of searches with AI overviews emphasizes how much of an impact AI is already having on people’s search behavior. Since they started appearing in search results, auto-generated overviews have been cited as the cause for significantly decreasing click-through rates and decreasing organic traffic from search results.
How much of these shifts in Google search behavior is actually caused by AI is also contested by some in the industry who say falling organic traffic and CTRs are related to other changes in search or have been overstated.
For example, the latest report indicates that although AI overviews generally have higher zero-click rates (ie, they do not lead to a click on a search result), zero-click rates have actually declined overall. This would indicate that the search feature does not necessarily contribute to more zero-click searches.
AI Overviews are More Likely For Specific Types of Searches
According to Semrush’s analysis of over 10 million keywords, AI search overviews were most likely to appear in searches for fact-based and uncontroversial content. However, there are signs that Google is also expanding AI to other, more competitive types of searches.
Here’s a breakdown of where AI overviews appeared:
88.1% of overviews appeared on informational searches
8.69% of overviews appeared in commercial searches (up from 6.28%)
1.43% of overviews were included in navigational queries
The report also identified 5 industries that were most likely to trigger overviews in search:
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Google is bringing its AI overviews to its sister platform, YouTube.
In an announcement, the company said it was testing showing AI overviews similar to those already seen in Google search results. These overviews will choose the most relevant clips from videos it believes are relevant to a search.
How Will This Impact YouTube Click-Through Rates
Despite seemingly trying to avoid the issue during a recent earnings call, Google can’t hide that its AI overviews are reducing click-through rates in search results and sending less traffic to other websites.
With this in mind, it is reasonable to be concerned that YouTube is similarly pulling users away from fully watching videos from creators in a way that may reduce viewership and revenue to content creators.
What To Expect From YouTube AI Overviews
For the current test, only a small group of U.S. YouTube premium features will be eligible to see AI overviews for English-language search results.
When searching, these users will be shown a collection of relevant videos and highlighted clips that it believes are most relevant. The clips will be shown in a carousel within the search results, letting users quickly browse the selection.
For now, YouTube is using AI overviews on two specific types of searches:
Product research (such as users looking for info about the best noise-cancelling headphones)
Travel and local discovery (for example, when users search for information about museums to visit in a specific city)
Throughout the test, YouTube says it will be collecting user feedback which it will use to determine whether to expand this feature to more users.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/youtube-logo2-1.jpg190707Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2025-04-25 17:33:442025-04-25 17:33:45AI Overviews Are Coming To YouTube In New Test
New directions given to Google’s quality raters tell them to look for signs that a page’s main content is AI-generated or otherwise made using automated tools. If a page is found to be primarily made with AI, according to Google’s John Mueller, raters are asked to rate it as “lowest quality.”
Though this policy shift was apparently part of the January 2025 Search Quality Rater Guidelines update, Mueller first publicly revealed it this week while speaking at Search Central Live Madrid.
Why This Matters
Though Search Quality Raters do not directly affect Google’s search results, their work is used to improve Google’s algorithms. The way they are asked to rank pages typically reflects Google’s overall internal guidelines.
Here’s what Google had to say when they updated the raters’ guidelines in January:
“As a reminder, these guidelines are what are used by our search raters to help evaluate the performance of our various search ranking systems, and their ratings don’t directly influence ranking. The guidelines share important considerations for what content is helpful for people when using Google Search. Our page on how to create helpful, people-first content summarizes these concepts for creators to help them self-assess their own content to be successful in Google Search.”
If Google is instructing its raters to give AI-generated content, it is a sign that the company is hardening its stance on AI content and moving to reduce its presence in search results.
AI content has always been a risky prospect when it comes to SEO, but this is the one of the most significant signs we’ve seen from Google itself that AI-generated content may be unwelcome in search results.
According to Brendon Kraham, the vice president of global search ads and commerce, Google Ads is gearing up for an AI-led “seismic shift” in how people use the internet.
In an interview with MediaPost, Kraham recently discussed Google Ads’ plans for 2025 including how it plans to adapt to the growing integration of AI in nearly every facet of technology.
Why AI Is The Focus In 2025
Kraham says we are in the middle of a transformation in discovering information and interacting with businesses that is even bigger than the mobile revolution.
As he said:
“We’re in the midst of a massive shift toward AI, and frankly, it’s even bigger than the mobile revolution was. It’s about using AI to fundamentally improve how people search for information and connect with businesses.”
Google has to adapt to this on multiple fronts.
“For users, this means getting better answers to their questions, whether they’re simple or complex. From a business perspective, this AI-powered approach is going to drive a significantly better ROI for advertisers.”
How Kraham Sees 2025
When asked about his predictions for the new year, Kraham lays out three main areas that Google is focused on moving forward.
The evolution of search behavior beyond traditional keywords
“This means moving beyond simple keywords and embracing a multimodal search landscape where visuals, context, and even our surroundings play a crucial role in how we find what we need. For marketers, this means adapting to a more nuanced understanding of consumer behavior, where capturing attention and fostering genuine engagement will be paramount.”
The development of AI-powered creative tools for marketers
“This new era of search and ads means we will witness a surge in marketers embracing AI-powered tools — not to replace their creative spark, but to amplify it. Imagine personalized creative solutions that scale effortlessly, unlocking new avenues for expression and delivering measurable results.”
Integrating enhanced measurement capabilities across all digital channels
“Third, in 2025, measurement will be everything. Marketers will need to get laser-focused on their data, figuring out how to connect the dots as users move between searching, streaming, scrolling, and all those different ways of interacting online.”
Google has already been aggressively pursuing the development of AI tools in every area of its platform. Kraham indicates this is only going to accelerate further in the coming year, with new AI developments coming for Performance Max ads, Demand Gen ads, and Google Search products.
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In a wide-ranging interview with The New York Times, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said he expects that search will “change profoundly” in 2025 led by advancements in AI and increasing competition from AI search, social media, and hardware advancements.
Below, we’ve collected highlights from the interview that may give us a peak at Google’s plans for 2025 and beyond.
Google Aims To Be a Leader With AI Development
When asked about where Google is today in comparison to the rest of the market, Pichai emphasized that the company is in the early stages of developing radically powerful new AI tools. Additionally, he emphasized that AI developments that may not seem connected to the company are largely built on the back of research and development made possible with Google’s open-sourced technologies.
“Look, it’s a such a dynamic moment in the industry. When I look at what’s coming ahead, we are in the earliest stages of a profound shift. We have taken such a deep full stack approach to AI.
…we do world class research. We are the most cited, when you look at gen AI, the most cited… institution in the world, foundational research, we build AI infrastructure and when I’m saying AI infrastructure all the way from silicon, we are in our sixth generation of tensor processing units. You mentioned our product reach, we have 15 products at half a billion users, we are building foundational models, and we use it internally, we provide it to over three million developers and it’s a deep full stack investment.
We are getting ready for our next generation of models, I just think there’s so much innovation ahead, we are committed to being at the state of the art in this field and I think we are. Just coming today, we announced groundbreaking research on a text and image prompt creating a 3D scene. And so the frontier is moving pretty fast, so looking forward to 2025.”
Using AI To Enhance Search Instead of Replace It
Increasingly, AI is viewed by many as a competitor to traditional search, leading the interviewer to ask what Google is doing to protect the “blue link economy” in order to not “hurt or cannibalize” its search engine and the market around it.
In response, Pichai discussed how AI has been a major part of Google’s development for longer than most people realize. Going back as far as 2012, AI has been part of Deep Neural Networks used to identify speech and images. Since then, artificial intelligence has been a core part of the search engine’s development.
“The area where we applied AI the most aggressively, if anything in the company was in search, the gaps in search quality was all based on Transformers internally. We call it BERT and MUM and you know, we made search multimodal, the search quality improvements, we were improving the language understanding of search. That’s why we built Transformers in the company.
So and if you look at the last couple of years, we have with AI overviews, Gemini is being used by over a billion users in search alone.”
Where Is Search Going In 2025?
Looking forward, Pichai says he believes Search will be radically changing – and soon. While he says that advancement is becoming more difficult because the easiest innovations have already been done, he still believes that people will be surprised at how much is coming in just the first part of 2025.
“And I just feel like we are getting started. Search itself will continue to change profoundly in 2025. I think we are going to be able to tackle more complex questions than ever before. You know, I think we’ll be surprised even early in 2025, the kind of newer things search can do compared to where it is today…
I think the progress is going to get harder when I look at 2025, the low hanging fruit is gone.
But I think where the breakthroughs need to come from where the differentiation needs to come from is is your ability to achieve technical breakthroughs, algorithmic breakthroughs, how do you make the systems work, you know, from a planning standpoint or from a reasoning standpoint, how do you make these systems better? Those are the technical breakthroughs ahead.”
Will AI Replace Traditional Search?
As increasing numbers of people seem to be relying on AI tools to get quick answers instead of using traditional search tools, some have suggested that AI could eventually replace search as we know it. At the same time, there are concerns that AI may be delivering less reliable or accurate answers, which Pichai believes will ensure that Google’s search tools remain relevant if not more valuable.
“In a world in which you’re flooded with like lot of content …if anything, something like search becomes more valuable. In a world in which you’re inundated with content, you’re trying to find trustworthy content, content that makes sense to you in a way reliably you can use it, I think it becomes more valuable.
To your previous part about there’s a lot of information out there, people are getting it in many different ways. Look, information is the essence of humanity. We’ve been on a curve on information… when Facebook came around, people had an entirely new way of getting information, YouTube, Facebook, Tik… I can keep going on and on.
…I think the problem with a lot of those constructs is they are zero sum in their inherent outlook. They just feel like people are consuming information in a certain limited way and people are all dividing that up. But that’s not the reality of what people are doing. “
The full interview touches on several other questions including potential upcoming regulations, how the search engine views its responsibility towards creators, and other Google platforms like YouTube’s future direction. You can watch it here or below:
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/GoogleRankings.png360640Taylor Ballhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTaylor Ball2024-12-20 17:30:372024-12-20 17:30:39Google’s CEO Gives Wide-Ranging Interview On The Future of Google and Search