Google Says You Don’t Need Special SEO For AI Overviews

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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: 

  1. AI uses traditional SEO infrastructure and signals.
  2. Content quality matters, but so does authenticity
  3. 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.

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Google Executives Say Falling Referral Traffic Are Sign Of Higher-Quality Clicks

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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.

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Google AI Overviews Appear In 13% of Searches

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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:

  • Science (up 22.3%)
  • Health (up 20.3%)
  • People & Society (up 18.8%)
  • Law & Government (up 15.2%)
  • Travel (up 14.3%)

For more, read the full report from Semrush here. 

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AI Content Gets Lowest Rating From Google Quality Raters

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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.

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Danny Sullivan From Google Explains How Small Sites Can Compete Against Giants

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Google Search Liaison Danny Sullivan spent time during a recent Google Search Central Live NYC event to give advice to small, independent websites wanting to rank in the search engine against big brand competition.

Does Google Favor Big Brands?

According to a report from Search Engine Journal’s Roger Montti, Danny Sullivan spent part of the event answering questions from attendees. Sullivan’s advice to small brands was inspired by one suh question asking if Google was moving towards primarily showing a shrinking number of websites – specifically, big websites. 

While Sullivan said he understood the perception that Google Search is designed to favor big brands or that big brands will always outrank smaller sites, he emphatically stated this isn’t the case. 

In fact, Danny Sullivan told the crowd that Google is specifically working to improve how it handles smaller sites and give them more opportunities to be successful. 

“We’ve been spending a lot of time (and we’re going to continue to spend a lot of time) to understand how can we do a better job on better understanding and perhaps guiding some of the smaller creators and small independent sites so they can be successful. It has been like a huge chunk of my time over the past year. And I’m not alone in it.”

Why It Feels Like Google Favors Big Websites

During his response to the question, Sullivan spoke at length about what leads big brands to rank well and why it is difficult to detach that from how search works.

“And I’ve seen where people do research and say, ‘I’ve figured out that if you have a lot of branded searches…’ That’s kind of valid in some sense.

But it’s not like you have a lot of big branded searchers or small branded searchers or whatever and you’re finding that correlates to your traffic. What it’s saying is that people have recognized you as a brand, which is a good thing. We like brands. Some brands we don’t like, but at least we recognize them, right?

So if you’re trying to be found in the sea of content and you have the 150,000th fried chicken recipe, it’s very difficult to understand which ones of those are necessarily better than anybody else’s out there.

But if you are recognized as a brand in your field, big, small, whatever, just a brand, then that’s important.

That correlates with a lot of signals of perhaps success with search. Not that you’re a brand but that people are recognizing you. People may be coming to you directly, people, may be referring to you in lots of different ways… You’re not just sort of this anonymous type of thing.

So, one thing I would encourage anybody, but especially to smaller and independent ones that are kind of feeling like the big brands are kind of getting it all is, are you making sure that people understand who you are?”

What Small Sites Can Do To Compete

Reaching the crux of the discussion, Sullivan said that helping users and search engines understand who you are and what sets you apart are crucial for competing against bigger brands.

“Anytime you ever have a question about what you should be doing to be successful in Google search and your answer is to ask if it’s a good thing for your readers, if you do that, you are aligning with the things we’re trying to do because we’re trying to send people to satisfying content so that they go, ‘This was great! This is wonderful, I loved it!’

So when they wind up on your website, probably for the first time and they don’t know you from anything and they’re coming from this crazy world where they don’t even know where the profiling for the author is, make it easy for them. Make it easy for them to come into the site and know exactly what you’re about.

I know the travel bloggers, you all have the thing on the side that says, ‘we love travelling the world…’ It’s like, OK, that’s fine and at least people know to expect that from travel bloggers and you’ve got it there.

But help them understand what’s unique or different about you, that makes you a brand. And that is a really good thing.”

It is never easy to be David challenging a Goliath in your industry, but there are ways to overcome. By defining who you are clearly and what sets you apart from the bigger names, you give Google a better chance of understanding your website and why it should be prioritized over well-established international brands. 

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March 2025 Core Algorithm Update Starts Rolling Out To Google Search

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Google has started rolling out the latest major core algorithm update to its search engine, according to an announcement from the company yesterday. This update is expected to take approximately two weeks to fully finish rolling out. 

In a LinkedIn Post from Google Search Central, the company said:

“Today we released the March 2025 core update to Google Search. 

This is a regular update designed to better surface relevant, satisfying content for searchers from all types of sites. We also continue our work to surface more content from creators through a series of improvements throughout this year. Some have already happened; additional ones will come later.”

This is the first core algorithm update of 2025, following the December 2024 core update. 

What To Expect

Unlike the last few core algorithm updates, Google has given very little information about what to expect from the latest rollout. This makes it hard to know what areas of search rankings are likely to be most affected by the algorithm update. 

That said, Google has given broad advice in the future about what to do if your rankings or traffic see a significant decline following a core algorithm update:

Avoid doing “quick fix” changes (like removing some page element because you heard it was bad for SEO). Instead, focus on making changes that make sense for your users and are sustainable in the long term.

Consider how you can improve your content in meaningful ways. For example, it could be that rewriting or restructuring your content makes it easier for your audience to read and navigate the page.

Deleting content is a last resort, and only to be considered if you think the content can’t be salvaged. In fact, if you’re considering deleting entire sections of your site, that’s likely a sign those sections were created for search engines first, and not people. If that’s the case for your site, then deleting the unhelpful content can help the good content on your site perform better.

For more information about recovering from a core algorithm update, Google suggests reviewing its advice for creating content that is reliable and helpful for your users.

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Google Shopping Study Shows How To Rank Your Products Higher

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A new study has revealed the factors that Google Shopping uses to rank products.

By assessing over 5,000 Google Shopping keywords, Jeff Oxford from 180 Marketing showed what factors matter the most to the e-commerce search engine and how brands can improve their own rankings. 

Website Authority Matters

The study found that website authority strongly correlates to higher rankings in shopping results. This contributes to major brands having a significant presence, with Amazon dominating top results. More than half (52%) of the studied keywords had Amazon listings at the top. 

Reviews and Pricing Drive High Rankings

Google considers product prices and user reviews heavily when ranking products. 

Products priced at or below the average for a category and query were most likely to appear in top results.

Similarly, products with high reviews consistently filled the top shopping results, while stores with a rating below 3.5 stars tended to languish further down the listings. 

Backlinks are Rare but Have a Big Impact

The study made the shocking discovery that the vast majority of product pages (98%) seem to have no backlinks whatsoever. Despite this, the few pages that did have backlinks seem to rank higher than those without. This presents a major opportunity for e-commerce brands looking for a leg up.

Pair Meta Descriptions With The Right Keywords

While meta descriptions were largely tied to improved rankings, the researchers noted that pages with exact-match keywords in their descriptions consistently saw the best results. 

The report indicates these meta descriptions were the most impactful on-page product ranking signal, however, it mentions that title tags and H1 headers with similar keywords also had a positive effect on rankings. 

Shipping and Return Scores Affect Rankings

Google Shopping keeps track of stores’ shipping, returns, and website quality metrics and uses them to rank websites. 

The report says that stores need “Exceptional” or “Great” scores for their shipping and returns performance or they are unlikely to appear in the top 10 product results. 

The Takeaway

Google has not commented on the study and is unlikely to provide details about how it ranks products any time soon. Until they do, the study from 180 Marketing gives the best guidance available for e-commerce retailers wanting their products to rank better in Google Shopping.

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Google Ads Exec Talks AI and Major Developments Coming in 2025

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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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Google’s CEO Gives Wide-Ranging Interview On The Future of Google and Search

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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:

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Googles Latest Core Update Finishes Rolling Out

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If your website has seen a big drop in traffic within the past month, there is a chance you’ve been hit by the latest Google core update. The update started rolling out on November 11 and has now been confirmed to be finished as of December 5, 2024. 

Compared to other core updates, this one does not seem to be the most impactful. Early analytics as the core update rolled out did not show the level of volatility in search results typical of most core updates. Still, Google confirmed that this was a core update aimed at improving search results quality and decreasing the prevalence of irrelevant results across the platform. 

As Google said about the update:

“This update is designed to continue our work to improve the quality of our search results by showing more content that people find genuinely useful and less content that feels like it was made just to perform well on Search.”

Interestingly, Google specifically emphasized in private communications with Search Engine Land that the update would not be restoring rankings to pages affected by the September 2023 helpful content update. 

What To Do If You’ve Been Hit

Google didn’t provide much information about the core update, so currently it is difficult to gauge what types of sites are likely to have been affected or what specific steps can be taken to remedy your site if you’ve been hit.

The search engine does provide some broad advice about responding to loss of rankings following core updates generally:

  •  Avoid doing “quick fix” changes (like removing some page element because you heard it was bad for SEO). Instead, focus on making changes that make sense for your users and are sustainable in the long term.
  • Consider how you can improve your content in meaningful ways. For example, it could be that rewriting or restructuring your content makes it easier for your audience to read and navigate the page.
  • Deleting content is a last resort, and only to be considered if you think the content can’t be salvaged. In fact, if you’re considering deleting entire sections of your site, that’s likely a sign those sections were created for search engines first, and not people. If that’s the case for your site, then deleting the unhelpful content can help the good content on your site perform better.

It will likely be months until Google releases another core update, so any changes to search results in recovery from this update may take a while to occur. This goes to emphasize the importance of staying on the good side of Google, using approved SEO strategies, and trying to avoid any potential penalties before they occur.

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