To stay visible and competitive, businesses must now be AI-ready. This means understanding generative AI in search, shifting user behaviours (think chatbots and voice queries), and integrating AI into your content strategy. In this updated 2025 guide, we’ll explore the latest trends from the past six months, learn how to adapt your SEO strategy for the AI era and ensure your content is primed for both human and AI audiences.
AI is Changing Search – Is Your SEO Ready?
Search engine optimisation (SEO) isn’t dead – but it’s certainly evolving. Google’s introduction of generative AI into search results is a prime example. Instead of simply listing websites, Google now often displays an AI-generated summary (formally known as Search Generative Experience, now just “AI Overviews”) at the top of the results page. These AI summaries pull information from various sources to answer the query directly.
For businesses, this means your content could be surfaced as part of an AI-generated answer, if the AI trusts your content. This shift has big implications for visibility. Users might get their answer from the overview without ever clicking your link. In fact, early data in 2025 confirms that these AI overviews can significantly reduce click-through rates (CTR) for traditional organic results.
Two separate studies (by Ahrefs and Amsive) found that when Google shows an AI overview, the top organic result’s CTR drops by 15–35% on average (searchengineland.com). Ahrefs observed a 34.5% drop in clicks to the #1 result for queries with an AI overview, while Amsive saw an average 15.5% decline (with losses up to 37% when a featured snippet was also present).
In short, if your site isn’t part of that AI-generated answer, you’re likely to miss out on a chunk of traffic. On the flip side, appearing within an AI overview can be a big win, essentially claiming a coveted “position 0” in search. Sites featured in Google’s AI summary not only remain visible but may become the go-to authority that the AI itself “recommends”.
