At RiseUp, we saw 2025 change the shape of SEO more than any single update cycle could. This was not just a year of ranking volatility. It was a year when search behaviour, search layouts, and search measurement all moved. Google confirmed three core updates and one spam update across 2025, while AI Overviews grew into a mainstream search experience and AI Mode pushed search even further towards conversation, comparison, and task completion. For businesses relying on organic visibility, that meant one thing. SEO stopped being a blue-links-only discipline. It became a broader visibility, trust, and conversion job.
Here is what defined SEO in 2025 from our perspective, and what we think businesses need to do now to stay visible in 2026.
AI search stopped being experimental
AI Overviews were not a side feature in 2025. They became part of the search reality. Google said AI Overviews had grown to more than 2 billion monthly users across more than 200 countries and territories by July 2025. At the same time, independent tracking showed that AI Overview visibility rose sharply during the year, peaking in summer before settling back, and by early 2026 BrightEdge was reporting AI Overviews on nearly half of tracked queries. The message is clear. AI-generated summaries are no longer something marketers can ignore.
What mattered most was not just where AI Overviews appeared, but what they did to the click journey. Google says AI Overviews are designed to help people get to the gist of a topic quickly and explore supporting links, and it also says clicks from AI Overview results can be higher quality, with users spending more time on site. In practice, though, many awareness-stage searches now end without the same volume of traditional clicks because the answer is partially resolved on the results page. That means we can no longer judge informational content by rankings alone. We need to judge it by whether it earns visibility, trust, assisted conversions, and brand recall.
AI Mode changed how people search
AI Mode mattered because it pushed Google from answer engine to task assistant. Google launched AI Mode more broadly in 2025, then brought it to the UK, describing it as a way for users to ask longer, more complex, and more specific questions using text, images, or audio. Google also said AI Mode passed 100 million monthly active users in the U.S. and India alone and expanded to more than 180 countries in English. That is a major behavioural shift, because the search journey no longer starts and ends with one keyword. It can now unfold as a multi-step conversation.
For us, that changes the way we build content. We need clearer pricing, clearer specifications, clearer service pages, stronger FAQs, and better proof points. We also need pages that answer the follow-up question, not just the first question. Google's own guidance has been consistent here. There is no special AI schema or separate optimisation playbook required for AI Overviews or AI Mode. The same fundamentals still apply: helpful content, strong page experience, accessible text, crawlability, structured data that matches the visible page, and up-to-date business information.
Google still rewarded the fundamentals
One of the biggest lessons from 2025 was that AI did not replace SEO basics. It made them more important. Google's Search Status Dashboard shows three core updates in March, June, and December, plus the August spam update. Google's Search Central guidance still centres on helpful, reliable, people-first content, and its AI search guidance repeats that same message. In other words, the fundamentals did not disappear just because the interface changed.
At RiseUp, we saw the same patterns show up again and again. Sites with clear topical focus, stronger internal linking, fewer duplicate or overlapping pages, and more obvious signs of real expertise were simply easier to trust and easier for search engines to understand. Google has explicitly said to focus on unique, non-commodity content that fulfils people's needs, and that advice matters even more in AI search because generic copy is easier than ever to reproduce. When every competitor can generate a passable article in minutes, the real differentiator becomes lived experience, original insight, and commercially useful detail.
That is why we would still audit a site in 2026 much the same way we did in 2025, but with stricter standards. We would prune thin pages, merge overlapping content, tighten internal links, improve page speed, and make sure the most important commercial pages answer intent immediately. SEO is still a technical, content, and experience channel. It just now operates inside a much more crowded search interface.
AI-generated content raised the quality bar
We do not see AI as the problem. We see lazy publishing as the problem. Google's guidance is clear that using generative AI is not automatically against its rules. The risk comes when businesses use automation to produce large volumes of low-value content that exists mainly to manipulate rankings. Google's documentation specifically warns that scaled content abuse can violate its spam policies, regardless of whether the content was written by a human, AI, or both.
That matters because 2025 made content inflation very obvious. More businesses published more pages, faster. But more content did not mean more authority. In our view, the winners were the brands that used AI to support research, structure, ideation, and workflow, then layered in original examples, expert review, proprietary data, and a clear point of view. That is the balance we expect to matter even more in 2026. Use AI to move faster, but never let it replace brand knowledge or human QA.
Measurement got harder, so value matters more
Another major shift in 2025 was measurement. Google's own documentation says traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is rolled into the standard Web search reporting in Search Console, and it recommends combining Search Console with Analytics to understand the full value of visits. That is important because AI search does not always behave like classic search. A page may earn fewer clicks, but better ones. It may also influence conversion paths without being the final click.
We also saw traditional SERP tracking become less straightforward. Google stopped supporting the old results-per-page parameter that many tools relied on, which made some rank tracking and visibility reporting less dependable. At the same time, Google kept blending more formats into the search experience. For us, the takeaway is simple. We need to care less about vanity keyword counts and more about revenue metrics, lead quality, assisted conversions, branded search growth, and share of high-intent visibility.
This is also where SEO and paid media moved closer together. Google expanded Search and Shopping ads in AI Overviews on desktop during 2025 and started testing ads in AI Mode. Its help documentation now confirms that existing Search, Shopping, and Performance Max campaigns can be eligible to appear inside AI Overviews. That means organic and paid increasingly compete, and complement each other, inside the same AI-led journeys. We do not think it makes sense to manage them in silos anymore.
Search visibility now stretches beyond Google
2025 also made one thing very clear. Search behaviour is no longer confined to Google. OpenAI says ChatGPT now serves more than 800 million users every week, while BrightEdge reported that AI search visits were growing quickly even though traditional organic search still drove the bulk of referral traffic and the majority of conversions. So while Google still matters most, it is no longer the only discovery layer worth thinking about.
That does not mean businesses should panic and try to optimise for every platform separately. In most cases, the same work still pays off across the board. Strong technical SEO, helpful content, structured data, clear brand messaging, and trusted third-party mentions all improve your chances of being understood by search engines and AI systems alike. BrightEdge's research makes that point directly. Major AI engines still depend on traditional search infrastructure and web content, so robust SEO now creates compound returns across multiple discovery platforms.
Local SEO stayed essential, but trust signals mattered more
For local businesses, 2025 reinforced something we have been saying for a while. Local SEO is not just about having a page for a town name. Google says local ranking is mainly shaped by relevance, distance, and prominence. In practice, that means your Google Business Profile, reviews, categories, opening information, imagery, and local landing pages all still matter.
As AI search expands, that local trust layer becomes even more important. Google's own AI guidance tells site owners to keep Business Profile and Merchant Center information up to date, and to support text content with strong imagery and video where relevant. So for 2026, we would not separate local SEO from brand operations. Review generation, profile completeness, accurate business data, and location-specific proof points should all sit inside the same visibility strategy.
What we are preparing for in 2026
The direction of travel is obvious. Search is becoming more conversational, more visual, more blended, and more competitive, and that is exactly how we are planning for 2026.
First, we are putting more emphasis on brand demand. When users search for you by name, compare you directly, or look for proof around your reputation, you are in a much stronger position than when you rely entirely on generic informational traffic.
Second, we are building content around decision-making, not just discovery. That means stronger service pages, better product detail, richer FAQs, clearer comparison content, and more visible proof such as reviews, case studies, and expert commentary.
Third, we are treating structured data, internal linking, and technical hygiene as non-negotiables. Google has been very clear that there is no separate AI optimisation checklist, but there is a strong case for making your site easier for machines to interpret and easier for users to trust.
Fourth, we are measuring SEO as part of a wider performance framework. Search Console, Analytics, CRM data, paid search data, and on-site behaviour all need to sit together. The more AI changes the click path, the less useful single-metric reporting becomes.
Finally, we are pushing harder on originality. In 2026, the safest SEO strategy is not more content for the sake of it. It is better content, clearer positioning, stronger UX, and a more recognisable brand.
At RiseUp, that is how we see the next phase of SEO. Not as a fight for ten blue links, but as a connected visibility strategy built on trust, clarity, and measurable commercial value. The businesses that win will be the ones that adapt early, publish with purpose, and treat SEO as part of a broader growth system rather than a channel in isolation.
