SEO news - May 2025

Google AI Overviews are now used by over 1.5 billion users each month

During Google’s Q1 2025 call, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai revealed that Google AI Overviews now have over 1.5 billion users every month. It is coming up to a year since they were launched, on 14/05/2025 to be exact. From initially only being available in the US, they have now been rolled out to over 100 countries. It is clear from Sundar Pichai’s speech that Google expects to see their usage continue to increase.

They expand the types of question that Google can answer. Traditional search is focused on answering keyword-based queries, where users would input one to four words. Now, AI based search engines can answer conversational question style searches that traditional search engines struggled with.

Semrush publishes their study on AI Overviews

Semrush have published the results of their recent study on the growth of Google AI Overviews. They analysed over 10 million keywords together with the accompanying clickstream data for US desktop users.

The key takeaways from the study:

• AI Overviews appeared for 13.14% of all queries in March 2025, up from 6.49% in January.
• 88.1% of queries that triggered an AI Overview were informational.
• The verticals that saw the largest growth were Science (+22.27%), Health (+20.33%), People and Society (+18.83%) and Law & Government (+15.18%).
• Queries that triggered an AI Overview have a higher zero click rate.
• Zero click rates declined marginally after AI Overviews were introduced.

Their survey finishes by posing the question, is search heading towards a post-click world? As search becomes more generative, do we need to start focusing on presence as opposed to position?

There is no doubt that search is changing at what feels like a possibly faster rate than at any time previously. SEO is having to adapt. We cover GEO (Generate Engine Optimisation) in a recent blog post.

Google denies search traffic is decreasing

Google issued a statement denying that search queries are declining.

This was in response to Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, who was testifying in the US Justice Department’s lawsuit against Alphabet, Google’s parent company, claiming that AI search engines will replace traditional search engines such as Google. Google’s share price dropped by 7.51% following his claim.

In response to this, Google issued a short statement saying that they are continuing “to see overall query growth in Search”, including “an increase in total queries coming from Apple’s devices and platforms”.

33% of Google users stick with Bing after a two-week trial

A study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that 33% of Google users who tried Bing for a fortnight continued to use it after the trial. The authors of this study conclude that this challenges the idea that people use Google because it’s the search engine with the best results, instead people use it out of habit.

Google updates their Search Quality Rater Guidelines

Google have made several updates to the Search Quality Rater Guidelines.

The most noticeable changes are about spotting deceptive content that was created to fake E-E-A-T credentials. They have added the following:

• A website claims to be the personal website of a celebrity, but the website is actually created to make money for the owner of the website without the permission of the celebrity. For example, the page may have false testimonials for a product and is created for the sole purpose of getting users to click on monetized links or buy the product.
• A webpage or website with deceptive business information. For example, a website may claim to have a physical "brick and mortar" store but in fact only exists online. While there is nothing wrong with being an online business, claiming to have a physical "brick and mortar" (e.g. fake photo, fake physical store address) is deceptive.
• A webpage or website with "fake" owner or content creator profiles. For example, AI generated content with made up "author" profiles (AI generated images or deceptive creator descriptions) in order to make it appear that the content is written by people.
• Factually inaccurate and deceptive information about creator expertise. For example, an author or creator profile inaccurately claims to have credentials or expertise (e.g. the content creator claims falsely to be a medical professional) to make the content appear more trustworthy than it is.

Another change worth noting is about identifying how much effort was put into creating content.

• The MC (Main Content) is created with little to no effort, has little to no originality and the MC adds no value compared to similar pages on the web
• The MC is created with so little effort, originality, talent, or skill that the page fails to achieve its purpose.

This is a response to SEOs who are using AI to scale up their production of content they add to sites. If they are getting any benefit from doing this, it is likely to be short lived. This is very likely going to be the target of Google’s next core update.

ChatGPT Search adds shopping features to ChatGPT search

ChatGPT have announced that they are adding new shopping features to ChatGPT Search.

When ChatGPT determines it is relevant to a search, products will be displayed in a visual carousel. These will link through to external websites where you can buy the item. ChatGPT will access intent based on the query and other available content such as instructions or criteria supplied by the user.

These will be organic results and not sponsored or paid ads.

ChatGPT have said that structured data will play an important part in determining which products they choose to show. This is another good reason to make sure you use schema on your website. It is a good reason to add price, product description and review schema to your products.