How Google’s AI Search is Changing SEO in 2025
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is constantly evolving, yet the main objective has always about understanding and optimising for search engine algorithms. Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has transformed how Google, and other search engines, rate and evaluate content. Google relies on RankBrain and BERT SGE (Search Generative Experience) as new methods of delivering results. This means SEO strategies need to adapt in order to maintain your visibility and ranking.
Search engines continue to advance, understanding capabilities through numerous AI-powered technologies Google has released over the past few years. Google developed RankBrain in 2015, designed to implement machine learning for search results rankings. Through understanding user search intent, Google has modified the ranking process using data gathered from search queries, determining a relevancy score.
BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), on the other, understanding the meaning of words, processing long-tail conversational queries. This language expertise ensures result accuracy, especially when it comes to answering complex questions and conversational queries.
Then there is Search Generative Experience (SGE). This offers instant answers in search results, using the latest AI technologies. It has changed how Google operates, answering questions directly on the search results pages, rather than providing a list of website links, which has resulted in “Zero Click Searches,” completely transforming SEO as we know it. You have probably seen SGE at work when searching on Google, it comes up above the paid and organic results, as an AI Overview.
SEO has been the focus on keywords. Keywords are words and phrases used by your audience when searching on Google, and on other search engines. AI search has changed SEO by focusing on user intent, rather than keywords. RankBrain and BERT focus on query purpose rather than matching keywords. As a result, current successful SEO campaigns are focusing on creating useful and valuable content, providing answers to users questions in a conversational tone, meeting all search types.
With the advancements of Google's AI search, businesses today need to enhance their SEO efforts. Google pays a lot of attention to E-E-A-T principles, which stand for Experience, Expertise Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. You can build your online credibility through high quality and valuable content with expert contributor information, and authentic references, establishing trust. The E-E-A-T principle identifies websites and content as valuable and credible sources of information, increasing your ranking in search results.
In today’s AI search world, on-page optimisation needs to include schema markup, also referred to as structured data. Structured data helps you tag essential components, enabling you to improve your chance of appearing in rich snippets. Rich snippets boost visibility, awareness, and success.
AI is playing a major role in Google's search, changing SEO rapidly. From the introduction of AI-powered algorithms to encouraging E-E-A-T, and schema markup, you can expect some more changes as these AI-powered search algorithms continue to evolve. Ensuring you follow SEO best practices, focusing on user intent, producing high quality and valuable content are all effective ways to align with AI search, helping you increase your chance of appearing in rich snippets. If you need help aligning with the new Google's AI search, get in touch with the talented team at Genie Crawl today.
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