The Evolution of AI in Search and What it Means for SEO

Navigating User Behavior, Result Generation, and SEO Measurement in an AI-First World

User Behaviour

AI vs. Traditional SEO

SEO Considerations

Measurement

Understanding the AI-Powered Search Landscape

Online search is getting a major upgrade with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Search engines aren't just lists of links anymore. They're becoming smart helpers that understand tricky questions, pull info together, and give you answers directly. Let's see what these AI tools are.

Large Language Models (LLMs): The Brains of the Operation

LLMs are deep learning models trained on vast datasets, enabling them to perform a wide array of natural language tasks. They understand context and relationships between words far better than older systems.

  • Generate coherent, context-relevant text.
  • Translate languages & summarize complex info.
  • Answer questions directly.
  • Create multimodal content (text, images, code).
  • Power conversational chatbots & AI search features.

Google's Gemini, for example, is a multimodal LLM capable of processing and generating information across different formats, significantly impacting how search intent is understood and satisfied.

Gemini 2.5 Highlights (Google I/O 2025)

Powering AI Mode & AI Overviews in the United States (check our latest whitepaper, What's Next at Google Marketing Live to read more about Gemini Highlights). 

Thought Summaries: Clarity on reasoning.

Deep Think Mode: Enhanced reasoning for complex queries.

Designed Assets 2 (70)
Designed Assets 2 (71)

Google's AI Overviews

These are AI-made summaries that pop up at the top of search results. They gather information from different websites and Google's own knowledge graph to give you a quick idea about a topic.

Designed Assets 2 (77)

Links to supporting web resources are included, determined by Google's systems. Standard SEO best practices are key for consideration.

Google's AI Mode

An advanced AI search experience for comprehensive, AI-powered responses and deeper exploration via follow-up questions. It uses a "query fan-out" technique, deconstructing complex questions into subtopics and searching simultaneously.

Key Feature: Query Fan-Out

  • Deconstructs complex queries.
  • Searches for answers to all parts at once.
  • Synthesizes information from web, Knowledge Graph, Shopping Graph.
  • Aims for holistic topic understanding.

Supports text, voice, and image queries, tackling multi-part questions that previously required multiple searches.

How AI is Changing the Way We Search

The integration of advanced AI is fundamentally altering how users interact with search engines, from how we ask questions to what we expect to find.

Designed Assets 2 (69)
Designed Assets 2 (68)
Designed Assets 2 (67)

What's Next with Search Marketing?

Succeeding in an AI-first world

The foundaiton of SEO is built upon trust, authority and credibility. This sentiment has not changed, but the way it's executed has.

Our latest report explores the AI-powered search landscape, and how to gain visibility on LLMs.

Designed Assets 2 (84)

How AI Generates & Ranks Results Differently

AI search tools like AI Overviews and AI Mode don't just rank web pages like old search engines did. They build answers and pick information in new ways.

Information Synthesis via "Query Fan-Out"

Instead of just ranking pages, AI systems synthesize information. The "query fan-out" technique is central to this process:

Designed Assets (9)

This mechanism aims to build the "best answer" by integrating data from many relevant sources, not just finding the "best page".

Designed Assets 2 (76)

Source Selection: Why E-E-A-T is a Big Deal

Source selection prioritizes relevance, quality, thematic coherence, reliability, and direct addressing of user intent. E-E-A-T is critical:

Designed Assets (8)

Content that is easily parsable, citable, and demonstrably trustworthy is favored. Clarity, logical structure, and evidential support are key.

Diminishing Role of Isolated Keywords

AI prioritizes entity-based authority and user intent over exact keyword matches.

Designed Assets 2 (75)

SEO focus shifts to topical authority and E-E-A-T signals over keyword targeting or pure backlink volume. In many ways, this was always true for SEO strategies, AI Search has re-emphasized the need for it.

SEO Considerations: Adapting for an AI-First World

The goal of SEO is evolving from mere keyword ranking to ensuring content is discoverable, interpretable, and deemed valuable by AI systems for inclusion in synthesized answers. This requires strategic adaptation.

Content Strategy Evolution

  • Prioritize comprehensive topic clusters for conversational queries.
  • Structure content for easy parsing by AI (headings, concise answers, lists, structured data).
  • Amplify E-E-A-T: unique insights, real-world experience, authoritative creators, clear sourcing.
  • Create deep, original content that AI would want to use as a source.
  • Build deep, interconnected resources around core topics.

Technical SEO for AI Interpretability

  • Maintain clean site architecture and fast site speed.
  • Implement robust structured data (schema markup) to communicate explicitly with AI.
  • Ensure "AI-readiness" for agentic capabilities (e.g., clean APIs, adherence to protocols like MCP).
  • Focus on unambiguous understanding of entities, attributes, and relationships by AI.

Multimodal & Cross-Platform Optimization

  • Optimize images (alt text, filenames), videos (transcripts), and all media with AI-understandable metadata.
  • Leverage platforms like YouTube for content distribution.
  • Develop cross-platform SEO to diversify traffic and build authority.
  • Ensure information within diverse assets is accessible and integrable by AI.

Measuring What Matters: What to Look For Now in SEO Analytics

Traditional SEO metrics are becoming insufficient. Now, success can mean being mentioned in AI answers, not just getting clicks. We need a new way to look at things.

Designed Assets (6)

Evolving SEO Measurement: Key Performance Indicators

Ranking / Visibility

  • Traditional Metric: Keyword Ranking (specific position)
  • AI-Centric Metric: Visibility in AI Overviews/Mode, Share of Search, Brand Mentions in AI

Traffic

  • Traditional Metric: Organic Sessions, CTR
  • AI-Centric Metric: Qualified Organic Traffic (from AI), Brand Search Volume Trends

Engagement

  • Traditional Metric: Bounce Rate, Time on Page
  • AI-Centric Metric: Session Depth, Return Visits, Dwell Time, Scroll Depth (for AI-referred)

Conversions

  • Traditional Metric: Goal Completions (volume)    
  • AI-Centric Metric: Conversion Rate from AI-traffic, Lead Quality Score, Assisted Conversions

Authority

  • Traditional Metric: Domain Authority / Backlinks    
  • AI-Centric Metric: Topical Authority Score, E-E-A-T Signal Strength, Quality of AI Citations

The focus shifts towards "conversion quality," aligning SEO metrics more closely with tangible business outcomes rather than sheer traffic volume.

Meet Our Expert

Adithya Hemanth, SEO Lead

Experienced digital marketing professional with a demonstrated history of managing end to end SEO activities - Adithya specializes in helping clients improve their search experience, and outperform. 

Adithya's Key Advice: "Be helpful, reliable, technically sound, and demonstrably authoritative to not just be found, but to 'become the answer'.

Designed Assets 2 (81)

The Incubeta Approach

The foundation of SEO is built upon trust, authority and credibility. It's about putting the user at the centre of all that you do, creating compelling content that answers a question. This sentiment hasn't changed - but the execution, and measurement has.

AI is reshaping search into an intelligent reasoning layer, and success demands continuous learning, strategic agility, and a focus on genuine user value. Authentic brand authority, strong E-E-A-T signals, and high-quality, uniquely human content will be key differentiators.

At Incubeta, we call this the Search Experience. Offering clients a mature organic strategy that focus on relevant, engagement, authority and experience. To enhance this offering and expand on our capabilities we recently acquired Shout Bravo, an organic content marketing partner that enables us to deliver growth for our clients in the AI-powered future of search.

For more information on Search Experience and how you can get the most out of your search marketing, fill in the form and ask our experts what the evolution of AI in Search means for your businesses, and how Incubeta can help you outperform.