Welcome to our special AI edition of the May 2025 SEO News Recap! This month, we’re diving deep into Google’s new AI Mode, its advanced features like Deep Search and agentic capabilities, and its implications for search traffic. We also explore the ongoing impact of AI Overviews (AIOs), the evolving trust in AI content, potential AIO integration into YouTube, and more! Also, don’t forget to check out our latest installment of ROI Answers to find answers from our experts to commonly asked SEO questions.
Google AI Mode is Live in the US
During its annual I/O event on May 20th, Google announced that AI Mode was moving from Labs to live. Over the next few weeks, the company will roll it out across the United States with a new tab on the Search home page.
AI Mode runs on Gemini 2.5 and reportedly can do more advanced reasoning, multiple searches at once, and provide deeper answers than AI Overviews. It works by using what Google calls a “query fan-out technique, breaking down your question into subtopics and issuing a multitude of queries simultaneously on your behalf.” The answer returned is a combination of hyper-relevant content that should match the question.
Google said, “As we get feedback, we’ll graduate many features and capabilities from AI Mode right into the core Search experience.”
The tech giant also introduced Deep Search in AI Mode. Anyone who has been following AI news will recognize the name, as it’s not very original. The tool “can issue hundreds of searches, reason across disparate pieces of information, and create an expert-level fully cited report in just minutes, saving you hours of research.”
Additional features introduced in the same announcement:
- Search Live will allow you to talk in real time with Search using the video capabilities of Google Lens to solve problems and learn more about what your camera is focused on.
- Agentic capabilities will let you ask AI Mode to do something like finding the best tickets to an event, and it will save you time by searching popular event vendors like Ticketmaster and StubHub to find them.
- AI Mode shopping experience combines Gemini’s capabilities with Google’s Shopping Graph to help you find the product you’re looking for, try it on virtually, and use the new agentic capabilities to purchase using Google Pay.
- Personal context in AI mode will offer suggestions based on past searches – not a new thing to Google, but useful in the new mode.
- Custom charts and graphs for visualizing data. You don’t have to create your own spreadsheet to compare sports and financial information in real time.
What do these new features mean to you? To be used as a source by AI Mode, your site needs to be technically sound; provide unique, helpful content; and if you have products to sell, Google needs to have them in its Shopping Graph. If you’re unsure how your site measures up, reach out to start the conversation!
Internal Document: Search Decline is Inevitable
It’s purely speculation on our part, but maybe the reason Google is rushing AI Mode from Labs to live is based on information recently uncovered by Search Engine Land. An internal document summarizing takeaways from a meeting of Google executives in October stated the belief that Search traffic’s decline will happen, and they needed to plan for its inevitability. With the concern that ChatGPT would take the traffic, they discussed accelerating the monetization of Gemini with Ads.
Not Everyone Trusts AI Content
While AI Overviews (AIOs) have been known to dramatically decrease clicks, new research suggests this isn’t the case for B2B buyers. TrustRadius reports “72% of B2B buyers see AIOs during their research” and found that “90% of its respondents click on sources to verify the information.”
What does that mean for you? It means not everyone trusts AI content at face value and aiming for that top spot in SERPs is still incredibly important. How do you do that? Book a meeting with our SEO team to find out.
AIOs in YouTube Searches, Too?
It may be a possibility soon. YouTube is testing the feature on a limited number of English-only, US-based searches for Premium members.
How would it work? When a user searches YouTube, AI would scan relevant videos and show clips it decides are most useful to the search query. A handful of relevant clips would appear in a carousel within the search results.
YouTube says this will help users discover more content, especially product and location-specific videos, but we have our reservations since AIOs have been shown to negatively affect click-through rates. Will video creators experience the same declines as the rest of us? Only time will tell.
AI Overviews: The CTR Decline Continues
New data is in, and it’s clear: Google’s AI Overviews are consistently driving down click-through rates for organic results. New data from Ahrefs reveals a 34.5% lower average CTR for top-ranking pages when an AI Overview is present, compared to similar informational keywords without one. Many websites have seen clicks decline since AI Overviews launched last May. On the SEO Team, we have seen a similar trend for pages ranking in the top organic positions. Since AIO Overviews are only increasing, we are continuing to help our clients show up in these results to turn this new challenge in the organic space into an opportunity to increase brand visibility.
Avoid Low Value, Filler Content
We’ve known for a while that Google doesn’t want to see mass-produced AI-generated content, but now we know that Google’s quality raters will look for that type of content and mark it as the “lowest” rating.
With this, Google has also redefined what it considers to be a spammy webpage, applying its new rules to all content types (text, images, audio, and videos), and including “paraphrasing, embedding, and reposting from other sources with little to no effort, originality, or added value for your visitors.”
So, make sure any content you produce is helpful for your site visitors, is relevant to your website, provides value, and is unique from other sources on the web.
The Gaming of AI Overviews Results in Spammy Answers
In a recent LinkedIn post, Lily Ray, Vice-President of SEO Strategy and Research at Amsive, pointed out the rampant flaws in AI Overviews, including continued hallucinations and incorrect answers, even contradicting correct Knowledge Panel information. They are also easy to game, evidenced by quoted listicles and outdated information that, for example, say a brand is the best at a service in an article on its own site. The lack of corroboration would likely cause issues in traditional search, but Google currently has no answer for it in AI Overviews.
Ray went on to argue that this type of manipulation should not work in AI Overviews. Google has spent years fighting spam on the internet (see above), and yet, it’s often highlighted in the most prominent position on the SERPs. Google brags that everyone loves the feature, so shouldn’t they be more careful about what it shows?
Does this mean we should all write a listicle announcing our products and services as the best in the industry? No. As with all other gaming in the history of Google, the company will eventually figure out the fix for spam in AIOs, and then the effort will backfire when the site is suddenly considered spammy. Stick to writing helpful content highlighting your experience and expertise and let the rest take care of itself in the long run.
First-Ever UX Study of AIOs Provides Insights
If you’ve read this far, you know that AI Overviews cause a decline in click-through rates for websites listed as sources and most other sites listed on the first page of SERPs, except for most B2B queries. A recent study confirmed this information and took things a step further by following users through their thought processes when presented with AIOs in answer to certain types of queries. Here are a few of the takeaways:
- Clicks on desktops are affected more than on mobile devices.
- Most users don’t make it past the top third of the AIO panel.
- The farther a user does scroll, the more likely they will trust the information.
- People aged 25-34 on mobile devices are more likely to trust an AIO than other users.
- Users often use Reddit, YouTube, or forum posts to validate their trust in an AIO answer.
There’s much more to the study, and we highly recommend reading it!
Apple Intelligence Will Use Gemini
Google recently confirmed that Apple plans to add Gemini and other generative AI tools to Apple Intelligence by the end of 2025. Apple Intelligence is a system built into newer Apple platforms that combines generative AI models with an understanding of your personal context to provide a variety of features while protecting a user’s personal data. This could provide another avenue for tools like Gemini to recommend brands and services to a user.
ChatGPT Search Updates Include Shopping
In late April, OpenAI started including shopping features in ChatGPT Search across multiple industries, including fashion, beauty, home goods, and electronics. The results are powered by data from external sources, not ads or affiliates. The organization issued a call for companies to make their products discoverable, and the process starts with signing up to be notified when feed submissions open. To be eligible, you must also ensure you haven’t opted out of OpenAI’s search crawler.
ChatGPT added multiple citations for responses, allowing you to learn more about its answers and verify the information it provides. This is similar to AI Overviews’ user interface but improves upon it by listing the source in a button that you can hover over for a preview of the linked page.
ROI Answers: SEO FAQ of the Month
Q: What is GEO and how is it related to SEO?
A: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) refers to optimizing a website to be found and understood by generative AI tools like Gemini, Perplexity, and ChatGPT. GEO is AI-powered and relies on content that is structured for AI processing, easy readability, and comprehensive and direct answers.
If you want to compete with other sites for visibility in an increasingly AI-intensive search environment, GEO should be your next step. Contact your ROI Revolution SEO team to learn more!
