Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews Updates: What You Need to Know
Google’s AI Mode and AI Overviews Updates: What You Need to Know
Grant Effinger, Senior Director of Strategy • Intero Digital • March 6, 2025
SEO friends, grab your survival kits — Google just dropped another update.
The latest announcement includes new developments in AI Overviews and introduces AI Mode, a new search feature designed to make search more helpful and shake up how users interact with results. (You can join the waitlist here.)
The key takeaway? Google is taking its AI Overviews a step further and is leaning even harder into AI-generated summaries, which means clicks are about to get weirder.
Let’s dive into the update and take a look at what it means for your strategy going forward.
What Are AI Overviews and AI Mode?
- AI Overviews is Google’s way of summarizing key information in search results. Instead of just showing a bunch of blue links, it’ll generate quick, AI-powered answers based on multiple sources.
- AI Mode is an experimental opt-in feature available to Google One AI Premium subscribers. It uses the Gemini 2.0 model to provide even deeper AI-driven responses, process real-time information, and support multimodal queries (text, voice, and images). Think of it as Google Search meets ChatGPT — but still in beta.
Here’s why this matters for SEO:
1. AI Overviews Is Changing Click Behavior
Remember when Featured Snippets started cannibalizing clicks? AI Overviews takes that to the next level. Because Google is now summarizing entire answers at the top of the page, fewer users scroll down to traditional results.
But it’s not all bad. The clicks that do happen tend to be higher-quality. These users are often further down the decision-making funnel, meaning they’re more likely to convert.
What to do:
- Create clear, authoritative, conversational content that Google sees as trustworthy enough to feature in AI Overviews.
- Prioritize structured data. Google loves content that’s easy to parse.
- Target complex, nuanced queries that AI summaries can’t fully address.
2. AI Mode = Fewer Clicks and More Competition
Unlike AI Overviews, which just summarize key points, AI Mode actually analyzes multiple sources in real time and generates more advanced responses. This means users might never even need to leave Google.
It’s basically Google saying, “We’ll take it from here,” which — shocker — means fewer click-throughs to your website.
What to do:
- Prioritize generative engine optimization (GEO) by creating detailed, expert-driven content that AI finds valuable.
- Focus on optimizing your content for long-tail and high-intent queries. Users still need deep, reliable content for complex topics.
- Stay on top of Google Labs updates to see how AI Mode evolves (because, let’s be real, they’re going to keep tweaking it).
3. Big Changes Are Coming in E-Commerce and Local SEO
AI Mode is shopping-friendly and integrates real-time data, meaning it could prioritize Google Shopping listings, local business details, and product reviews over traditional organic results. If you’re in e-commerce or local SEO, you need to be paying close attention.
What to do:
- Keep your Google Business Profile and product feeds fully updated and optimized.
- Use structured data to make sure your prices, reviews, and availability info are up-to-date.
- Monitor how AI Overviews and AI Mode handle local and shopping queries (your competitors certainly will).
4. AI Overviews Is Sticking Around, so Adapt
Google might be testing AI Mode with a limited audience, but AI Overviews? As far as we can tell, it’s here for the long haul. If you haven’t already, start adjusting your content strategy now.
How to get started:
- Create fact-based, well-structured, and credible content that’s optimized for generative engines. That’s what will perform best.
- Strategically distribute your content across multiple platforms, ensure it resonates with your various audience segments, and make sure it meets AI-driven systems’ ever-evolving demands. As our very own VP of SEO Christina Adame writes in Search Engine Land, “The more places your content appears, the more opportunities AI has to recognize, elevate, and share it, expanding your reach and influence.”
- SEO and GEO will continue to become more about feeding Google the “right” structured data, so make sure yours is up-do-date and optimized. (Here’s how.)
- Clicks won’t disappear, but they’ll concentrate on high-authority sources. So create high-quality, evidence-backed content that builds your brand’s authority and credibility in the eyes of AI-driven search platforms.
We are watching SEO evolve in real time. AI Overviews and AI Mode aren’t just updates — they’re Google’s first true step toward replacing traditional search.
Will this become reality? Only time will tell. But as marketers and SEOs, our job is to stay ahead of the curve. So now is the time to start optimizing for AI-driven search — AI isn’t going anywhere any time soon.
