The recent rollout of AI Mode by Google was welcomed by the internet community with equal measures of enthusiasm and criticism. While some said that this would mark the end of an era of the internet and the beginning of a new one, others were concerned about the effects it would have on the SEO workforce.
Google’s new AI Mode, currently only available in English to US searchers, is an upgrade from AI Overviews which was introduced earlier this year. People living outside the US regions can use a trusted VPN service to access Google AI Mode.
What Is Google AI Mode?
Searchers choosing the AI Mode would be presented with an AI-powered tab with a ChatGPT-style interface, powered by Google’s large language model (LLM) ‘Gemini 2.5’ and Google’s ‘query-fan-out’ technique. This new model, built on AI Overviews, would provide extra depth, reasoning, and personalized responses to queries. It is touted to have a more human-conversation type, and multimodal interaction with the users.
According to Robby Stein, VP of Products, Google Search: “Using a custom version of Gemini 2.0, AI Mode is particularly helpful for questions that need further exploration, comparisons and reasoning. You can ask nuanced questions that might have previously taken multiple searches — like exploring a new concept or comparing detailed options — and get a helpful AI-powered response with links to learn more.” Users can also ask a follow-up question to learn more about a particular topic.
Will Google AI Mode Reduce Website Traffic?
The introduction of AI Mode by Google is sure to change the way searchers access and consume content in the World Wide Web. As most searchers, especially those performing generic searches, would be satisfied with the information that they get in the AI tab itself, they might not feel the need to click through the links provided.
This would result in what’s called the ‘zero-click search’ phenomenon. What this essentially means is that you would see a decline in your regular organic click-through-rate (CTR). Hence, even if your website gets featured on the search result, the probability of users clicking-through to your website would decrease.
According to a report by Gartner Inc., an American research and advisory firm: “… by 2026, traditional search engine volume will drop 25%, with search marketing losing market share to AI chatbots and other virtual agents.”
“Organic and paid search are vital channels for tech marketers seeking to reach awareness and demand generation goals,” said Alan Antin, Vice President Analyst at Gartner. “Generative AI (GenAI) solutions are becoming substitute answer engines, replacing user queries that previously may have been executed in traditional search engines. This will force companies to rethink their marketing channels strategy as GenAI becomes more embedded across all aspects of the enterprise.”
Organic search refers to the number of users who visited your website through unpaid search results. Organic search is always crucial to a website and is driven by SEO strategies, such as keyword targeting, content optimization, and link-building. Organic search delivers the most sustainable traffic, especially for long-term business growth. It is also beneficial in terms of ROI, credibility and connection to other marketing channels.
According to studies, approximately 53% of all web traffic comes from organic search, as of 2024. This puts organic search as the major source for web traffic, followed by direct traffic (25%), referral traffic (13%), paid search (5%) and social media (4%).
Organic search has the following advantages:
- Visibility: Your content becomes easily discoverable by making use of the correct SEO strategy.
- Authority and credibility: Well-researched and accurate content and gaining proper backlinks would help establish your brand as authoritative and credible.
- Engagement: By providing users with results that align with their interests, organic search can significantly boost engagement and conversion rates, with organic leads often surpassing those from paid channels.
- Timing and Relevance: Your message must be timely so as not to lose relevance and impact.
- ROI: Optimum quality content can position your brand as authoritative, which will in turn build trust and loyalty among your audience.
What It Means for the SEO Community
Many critics of AI Mode claims that this would be the death of organic search and the SEO practices as we know it now. Though Google defends their stance saying that AI Overview and AI Mode do provide links to websites along with the response for user queries, critics counter it asking why anyone will want to click a particular link to a website if AI already gives you the answer you were looking for. And if there’s no traffic coming into the websites, what’s the point of SEO practices and others?
Nevertheless, Google claims that AI Mode will become very popular considering users’ response to AI Overview. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, said at their developer conference: “As people use AI Overviews, we see they are happier with their results, and they search more often. It’s one of the most successful launches in search in the past decade.” Google refutes doomsday predictions for the open web by claiming that these new developments would not only make Search better but it’s what users want.
All speculations and arguments set aside, AI Overview and AI Mode is definitely changing the tides for web searchers. If what’s being mentioned across studies have to be believed, the AI Overview has definitely improved the quality of search though it has negatively affected the CTRs. It is only reasonable to assume that the Impact of AI Mode on click-through-rates (CTR) wouldn’t be so drastically different from that of AI Overview, though we would see an increase in the ‘zero-click’ phenomenon.
Hence, in this new age of AI-driven searches, unlike what critics claim, the relevance of SEO might become more important. It would no longer be about keyword density or semantic indexing but about the relevance and the quality of the content as the results are going to show up in a more human-like conversation style.
How to Future-proof Your Brand
The age of stuffing keywords into your articles or blogs without adding any value to provide generic content is over. In the recent past, Google came up with core update including their March 2025 update to include several key factors:
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Other than Google’s AI Mode, there are other AI-model search tools that people use like ChatGPT, Perplexity etc. and optimizing for all these needs is what you call Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). This includes:
- Arranging content for easy readability for AI bots: This can be done by adding a table of content for long write-ups, using clear headings, summarizing key points and placing direct answers to common queries at the beginning of the content.
- Optimizing for semantic understanding: AI engines look for understanding the context rather than matching keywords. Hence, you should focus on bringing more clarity to your content by providing schema markups, incorporate long-tail keywords that would match with conversational style phrases that searchers would use, and take a multi-angle approach to your content.
- Establish search authority across engines: To make sure that your content is visible across different AI platforms, you should submit your website to IndexNow to ensure inclusion in Bing (that powers ChatGPT), monitor your brand-mentions in different AI-generated responses, include answers to common queries in your industry, and focus on comprehensive responses rather than keyword density.
Content relevance and quality
It is no longer easy to manipulate search rankings as Google now gives priority to content that is based on original research and insights. It is important for content creators to give more comprehensive answers to user queries that include first-hand experience and expert opinions. Google’s algorithm also screens content for AI-generated responses and gives importance to original and thoughtful analysis.
User experience optimization
Whatever you do with your website, it’s the users who finally need to benefit from and give verdict on its relevance. Hence, it’s important for you to make sure the users have a seamless and easy experience while they are on your website. Other than improving site speed, you must also give importance to its mobile and tablet responsiveness, implement conversion rate optimization (CRO), and make use of heatmap tools like Crazy Egg to understand user behaviors.
Optimize for revenue-driving keywords
While the traditional SEO strategy focuses on keywords to drive traffic to your website, the new age demands something different — we need to invest in more revenue-driving keywords. Studies show that 70% of clicks takes traffic to the top 5 organic search results, and that long-tail keywords are responsible for almost 69% of all search traffic. This also means that businesses should focus on conversion-driven keywords that would actually lead to sales or leads than just traffic.
Brand building also becomes important as branded searches grow, and hence investing in brand awareness becomes a priority. Also, it has been noticed that conversational search phrases result in more conversion and hence the need to optimize for long-tail keywords.
Establish E-E-A-T
Google now evaluates the quality of content by means of experience, expertise, authority and trust (E-E-A-T). Though they don’t directly affect rankings, they do help Google in determining the value of your content.
- Experience: Searchers tend to relate with first-hand experience and hence use first-hand perspective whenever appropriate. You can also provide unique insights that only people with first-hand experience could offer by including real-life examples and screenshots.
- Expertise: Create well-researched and accurate content and corroborate your findings by including citations and references from original sources. You can also collaborate with industry experts and present their opinions wherever necessary to build authenticity to your content.
- Authority: You can build the authority or credibility of your website by getting mentioned in industry publications, acquiring authoritative backlinks from other sources, developing thought leadership content, and publishing proprietary research and data.
- Trust: You can win the trust of searchers by securing your website (HTTPS), proper disclosure of sponsorships and affiliations, transparent information about your company, and proper contact details and privacy policies.
Leveraging third-party content
What others have to say about your brand is more relevant than what you speak of yourself. Leveraging third-party content like positive reviews by users of your brand, engaging with community forums like Reddit that discuss your brand, publishing customer testimonials and case studies, and responding to criticisms with positive customer stories, and more can go a long way in building your brand authority.
Multi-platform optimization
The more places you appear, the better you are seen – it’s as simple as that. Optimizing and including content that can find its way into multiple platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest etc. can boost the visibility of your brand. Following are the content types that perform well across platforms:
- Infographics and visual guides
- User-generated testimonials
- ‘How-to’ tutorials
- Short-videos (15-60 secs)
Controlling your brand message
Searchers’ perception and trust in your brand is directly influenced by the information they find in search results. Ensuring the narrative around your brand is accurate, compelling and positive is something important, and you can achieve this by creating a comprehensive ‘About Us’ page, providing answers to common FAQ questions, ranking your brand keywords, and making sure that your brand messaging is consistent across different platforms.
Why Partner with MedResponsive for AI SEO Optimization?
Having discussed the importance of AI SEO optimization for your website, the next step is to find the right partner to get going. This is where we can help you because we are not just another run-of-the-mill SEO company but are, what you call ‘AI-native thinkers’, and we have been keenly tracking and updating ourselves about the shift towards AI-enabled search.
Conclusion: SEO isn’t dying, it’s evolving
Though many have put forward doomsday predictions for the future of SEO with the introduction of Google’s AI-Mode, data speaks otherwise. There is enough proof to show why organic search is still important in 2025. Nevertheless, the nature of SEO and our approach towards it needs a change-over, and we must make sure it is aligned with the evolving AI ecosystem, new search platforms, and changing user behaviors.
