2025 Search Trends and Tips for Marketers from Industry Leaders

My viewpoint is first, please adopt IndexNow. IndexNow is this new protocol enabling you to have control of indexing in many search engines, offering you the ability to decide when content need to be indexed. Not only new content, but also updated content like when you update the price. You really want to reflect that quickly in the search engines.

When you delete content think of the experience customers get when they click back. This is a bad signal for search engines. So clearly IndexNow will help you to take control of your game.

The second thing is about taking control of quality. With all the AI solutions, people are generating a lot of content. We really care about quality to satisfy the user, making sure that this is content is of a high quality. All this technology is here to really help you. AI can help you to generate even better content if you align the content to match what customer queries and intent. We will reward that versus random content that we surface on the internet.

The third is and also a part of quality. You can help us decide which contents is meaningful by adding schema to help us deeply understanding the content and extract all the quality of your pages.

For 2025, the next most important thing is to really focus on conversion.

With search engine technology improving we may see less clicks moving forward. As search engines AI solutions improving their tech, it will be easier for them to satisfy the user intent. This means customers won’t have to iterate clicking many search results to find the best content. This will trigger less tricks per search. So really look at the funnel to maximize revenue you will get from search engines.

Search engines will increasingly display answers directly in the search results, potentially triggering fewer clicks. To address this, it’s important to focus on ensuring that your brand still provides value through compelling content that encourages users to visit your site for more information, even if the answer is already displayed in the search results. This strategy also applies to social media results, where users may see a quick answer but still want to visit your site for deeper insights.

To recap the five strategies for 2025:

1. IndexNow: Ensure that your information is properly indexed by integrating IndexNow with your platform for faster content updates and visibility.
2. Focus on Conversion Metrics: Prioritize conversion over engagement metrics. It’s essential to track how users convert (e.g., through purchases, bookings) rather than just how much they interact.
3. Schema Markup: Use schema to help search engines understand your content and improve its discoverability.
4. Leverage AI: AI is a powerful tool for moderating and generating content that aligns with customer queries, helping to improve your content’s relevance.
5. Zero-Click Search: Consider the impact of zero-click searches, where answers are shown directly in the search results, and strategize on how to encourage users to still visit your site for additional information.

Hi, I’m Danny Goodwin, Editorial Director of Search Engine Land and SMX. I’m here to share my two big trends for 2025.

First, building brand will be increasingly important. We’re seeing many brands rise to the top, and brand mentions will continue to grow in significance, especially with the rise of tools like ChatGPT search and AI Overviews.

Second, it’s essential to focus on optimizing for your users—the customers you want to attract. In 2025, it’s not just about Google; you need to think about other platforms where your target audience spends time. Whether it’s social media, forums, or other search engines, meeting your audience where they are and creating content for those platforms is a winning strategy.

So, find your users wherever they are, and ensure that you’re visible when they’re searching for the things you’re an expert in or the products you sell. Those are my two key tips for 2025.

Hey all, Pat Reinhart here from Conductor. The question right now is, what are the top three trends I think are happening next year?

Number one is something I’ve been talking about for a really long time, which is that companies need to be more specific. When you look at AI overviews and the rise of pass-based ranking, you’re seeing that most of those results are in those AI-generated overviews. I think most people need to differentiate themselves and not just speak from a “voice of God” perspective, if that makes sense—like saying, “Hey, the brand thinks this, the brand thinks that.” No, you need to focus on the individuals in your organization. Who are the people with the ideas, the thoughts, and the stats? That’s what you need to focus on.

That leads to my next point, which is number two: authorship. You need to highlight the entities within your organization. Who are the people behind the ideas? Again, you can’t just say, “This is what the brand thinks.” For example, instead of saying, “We have the greatest selection on Earth,” you need to say, “Steve from my company has the best idea, and he has all of this content indexed by Google that supports that.”

The third trend is user-generated content, particularly on platforms like Reddit and Quora. Many brands I’ve spoken with are venturing into Reddit, engaging directly with customers, and discussing their brands. A couple of tips I’ve heard: do not get into pricing discussions or arguments. People on Reddit can be volatile. That said, engaging on these platforms is going to be a big part of everyone’s 2025 strategy.

Bonus point: Everything happening with generative search engines. I don’t think we’ll see a lot of major shifts next year, especially with tools like Perplexity.ai and Search GPT, but they are certainly going to grow. Next year will be a learning year for everyone. Let’s take the time to understand that this is happening. Also, remember that Search GPT currently gets half the traffic of DuckDuckGo, which itself captures less than a percent of the overall search market. So, we’re still in a learning phase.

Don’t overhaul your entire strategy but do take the time to learn and understand that this is coming. And those are my three ideas.

I definitely think that businesses should take a close look at referral traffic because I really believe that AI search engines will continue to grow and drive traffic. You should pay attention to which pages are getting traffic and for what reasons. This brings me to another point: when you look at your own site, you should, of course, focus on user experience, good internal linking, and all those things. But what I also truly believe, and what I showed yesterday in one of my presentations at Lucian, is the importance of ranking everywhere. It doesn’t matter if it’s Google, Bing, Perplexity, or ChatGPT Search—the key is they create a good user experience. They have an FAQ section, good interlinking, and are featured on trusted sources like G2, TrustedRadar, or even good publisher websites.

I really think that for next year, companies should understand that there will be more diversification in where people are going and what kinds of questions they will ask. I don’t think there will be a replacement for what people do on Google because it’s a habit we’ve had for the last 25 years.

It’s difficult to pinpoint one or two big trends because we’re in such a dynamic space right now. ChatGPT search was just launched a few weeks ago, and I’ve already seen an increase in traffic to some websites. It’s hard to predict what next year will bring. Perplexity is growing and is likely to raise another funding round, which could bring new features that make it more attractive to use. So, yes, I think we are in the most exciting time we’ve had in many years. For me, it’s a bit like when Google came up and changed the game, impacting AltaVista, Yahoo, and so on. Those were crazy days!

So, I think companies and brands need to think more diversely next year because it’s not just about one search engine anymore.

To recap: Think beyond Google. Understand where your business is coming from, and consider all the different channels, including ChatGPT. Also, focus on user experience, which is the foundation of everything.

My name is Ray Grieselhuber. I’m the founder and CEO of DemandSphere.

1. Understanding the visual impact of various SERP features and AI overviews. It’s important to recognize how these features will impact a searcher’s experience, particularly whether or not they will even see organic rankings. This is a crucial metric to measure, and it can be done using tools like pixel data, fold analytics, and other metrics that fall outside the realm of traditional SERP analytics.
2. On the flip side, traditional organic rankings are still very important. These rankings are being used to guide retrieval-augmented generation systems that are appearing in both Google AI overviews and various AI search engines, such as ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, Perplexity, and others.

These are two different paradigms that you need to balance simultaneously.

Everybody’s going to talk about how 2025 is finally the year that AI makes a difference, and that’s true. Things are going to change because of what everyone is trying to do with AI, but AI is not quite there yet. Especially in the automotive industry, car dealers love to chase the new shiny object. What’s the new, cool thing that I can do? So, 2025 is going to be about getting back to basics and not forgetting the foundational stuff that hasn’t really changed since Google came about. Everyone’s forgetting the basics and trying to do all these other esoteric things or using ChatGPT to make something faster and more efficient. But if your content is garbage, your site’s not optimized, and your Google Business Profile (GBP) is not optimized, none of the other flashy stuff matters. So, I’m telling everyone in 2025: get back to the basics, be a marketer, and don’t get distracted by all the new AI stuff and all the tools.

Also, specifically for car dealers in North America, Google has rolled out review alerts in the UK. It is live in the UK. I’m under NDA with Google, so I can’t say anything, but a smart person would make the assumption that this will roll out worldwide. Google is becoming more aggressive in fighting fake reviews, so it’s highly likely this will roll out globally. What’s happening is that when Google detects suspicious review activity, meaning a lot of positive reviews that are likely fake, Google will pull those reviews from the business profile and pop up an alert with a big red exclamation point in a triangle that says, “We want to let you know that this business has had reviews removed recently for suspicious review activity,” which means no one’s going to trust anything that’s left. If you have a really bad situation and you’ve egregiously crossed the line, Google will put a review block on your profile, meaning you won’t be allowed to get any new reviews for a period of time, which is probably at least 30 to 60 days. So, that’s incredibly important to pay attention to.

Also, in the United States, the FTC has updated its laws around review manipulation and fake reviews. So, all the things that Google has said you can’t do in the past are now illegal at a federal level in the United States. Having friends or family leave a review for your business, buying fake reviews, posting fake reviews, or even using a widget that displays reviews on your site from a third-party site are violations. For example, if the widget is set to only show four- and five-star reviews and not all of your reviews, that’s also in violation of federal law. Buying fake social media followers is now illegal as well. So, you need to go read up on the FTC’s updated rules around reviews and review manipulation because you don’t want to get caught and made an example of. They’re not going to come after a small business; they’re going to go after a big business where they can make a big flashy fine of hundreds of thousands of dollars. You don’t want that to be you.

Wonderful. So, you said something about getting back to basics. Let’s dive deeper into that. It’s about having a very strong technical foundation, high-quality content, and schema markup. Just optimizing your title tags, H1 headings, content, and alt text — these are super basic things. For example, if I tell you, “Hey, guess what? When you’re optimizing a page on your site, you need to use the same keyword in the title tag, H1 heading, alt text, and content,” you’re going to laugh at me because you’ll say, “We’ve known that for 20 years.” But you’d be surprised how many dealers don’t understand that. They’ll put oil change, car service, and other things all on the same page, which is very confusing both for humans and for Google.

The getting back to basics part is crucial. I’m telling car dealers to take their blinders off because they’ve been in the automotive industry their entire careers. They know everything about buying a car and how a dealership runs. But the general public only buys four or five cars in their lifetime. If someone has never bought a car before and doesn’t understand the process, and if you don’t have the answers on your website explaining how the process works, you won’t capture that customer. You need better content on your site that truly answers the questions customers are asking. That’s where dealers have missed the mark. They’ll put up one page for the service department that says, “We service your car,” with a bullet-point list of services like oil change, tire rotation, etc., and that’s all they have. Then they wonder why they don’t rank for service terms because they’re not following the basics.

Another thing to focus on is discovery and conversion. Many dealers we talk to don’t want to invest in blog content because they think it won’t sell cars. But they forget that if you’re only putting content on your site that’s focused on “buy a car right now,” you’re targeting the extreme bottom of the decision funnel. You’ll only show up in search results when someone is looking to buy a car today. The most recent data from Google shows that the average new car buyer in the U.S. conducts 27 separate research sessions before converting on a website or showing up at a dealership. So, if you focus only on the bottom of the funnel, you’ve got to have discovery-focused content on your blog — that informational content that doesn’t immediately result in conversions but helps later by bringing more eyeballs earlier in the funnel.

To explain this to dealers, I ask, “Would you put a billboard up on a really busy street?” They answer, “Yes.” I then ask, “Do you expect everyone who sees the billboard to call you?” They say, “No.” That’s how blog content should be viewed as well. It’s not meant to generate conversions right now, but it will bring conversions later because you’ve captured more attention earlier in the process.

I would say there are four components that I would focus on.

The first one is visibility — just making sure your business and all of your locations are accurate and can be found by anyone searching. You need to know where they’re searching, what they’re searching for, and ensure that your content and information are delivered to them.

The next thing is making sure that you are monitoring and understanding how they’re engaging with your listings. Depending on whether you’re a very visual brand, like a restaurant, where people want to see the products you offer, that means having lots of videos and photos that are rich and engaging. You want to make sure that they are clicking on your listing and able to find their way to actually do business with you.

The third component is reputation. Reputation is incredibly important for businesses in general, but from a search perspective, it’s essential to understand what reputation means. Of course, it’s great to have high reviews and to respond to reviews, but it’s also important to understand that your reputation is how future customers will judge you. It’s not just a number — it shouldn’t just be a metric. It should be something your business truly understands, including how you’re perceived in the market. If you’re launching new products or services, understanding your reputation helps you know how users are perceiving you.

The last one, and my favorite, is conversion. This is something all brands care about — you want to make sure people are clicking. Are they booking appointments? Are they calling you? Are they clicking for driving directions to your location? Are they starting their order online or making a reservation? Anything you can do to remove friction and make it really easy for users to engage with you is going to be incredibly important. All of those buttons should be above the fold and visible everywhere users can find you.

To sum it up: consistency for discovery, then experience, reputation, and conversion. Conversion also includes engagement. You won’t have good conversion if there’s no engagement. You need to be interesting enough for users to click on, and then you need to make the experience completely easy.

So, number one is really focusing on targeted content. Instead of topic-based content or strictly keyword-based topics, you should focus on finding the targets you want to reach. These targets aren’t too dissimilar from the keyword research you used to do, but it’s truly about understanding your audience. What is that audience looking for? The goal is to create content and assets that cater to their needs, which sometimes might lead to non-SEO activities. For example, if that group prefers video content, then you need to build video. If they prefer podcasts (which is something I do), then you need to create podcasts, right? So, knowing your audience and building targeted content for them is number one.

Number two is that we fundamentally need to rethink what technical SEO is. Technical SEO is not what it used to be, and one of the things we’re advising a lot of our partners and clients on is that they need to start thinking about making the world smaller, not bigger. What are the actual content assets that are truly generating leads, as opposed to just traffic or brand awareness? These are three segments we don’t spend enough time talking about: leads, traffic, and brand awareness. If you evaluate your content and website pages based on those three buckets, it’s totally different than just looking at how many clicks you get in Search Console.

The last piece of advice is to rethink your data infrastructure. GA4 is not as useful as it used to be. I’m sorry, I hate to say it, but it’s just not. Google Search Console hasn’t evolved in probably a decade, so thank you for that. We need to start thinking about how we build data, how we use data, and where we house our data to generate our own insights, because Google isn’t going to give it away anymore through GA4.

And finally, the first point I completely forgot: targeted and discoverable content.