Will AI Replace Google? What You Need to Know in 2025 

It’s undeniable that AI-powered search is on the rise. 

Tools like Perplexity, Claude, and ChatGPT are quickly becoming favorites among internet users. 

According to a survey by Higher Visibility, 71.5% of users regularly use AI tools to search the internet, with 14% reporting daily use. 

So, will AI replace Google? Are the days of traditional SEO about to be behind us?

The answer is not anytime soon, but habits are indeed changing. 

The same survey also found that 79.8% of users still prefer Microsoft Bing or Google for general information searches. 

Also, Google still accounts for 89.54% of the global search market, so they’re still #1 by a longshot. 

However, the fact remains that Google (and traditional search engines) are slowly losing ground. 

Back in 2021 (before the launch of ChatGPT), Google accounted for 92.05% of the search market, so its stranglehold is slowly beginning to unravel – and AI is partially to blame. 

Even Google has jumped on the AI-powered search bandwagon with its AI Overviews (which have become extremely prominent recently). 

What does this mean for marketers?

It means you should start to incorporate some GSO (generative search optimization) best practices into your marketing. 

That way, you can boost your visibility on search engines AND generative AI tools. 

In this guide, we’ll break down the hype vs. what’s actually happening with AI-powered search, including how to optimize for both.

Is AI Really Set to Replace Google? What’s Actually Happening 

Read a few hype-filled posts about AI, and you may start to believe that Google is on its way out. 

As we shared in the intro, though, Google is still the undisputed king of search, and that’s not set to change anytime soon. 

More importantly, AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity aren’t actually search engines. 

By that, we mean they don’t actively crawl and index the web like Google, Bing, and other search engines do. 

How, then, are they able to find answers to user queries?

By using Google and Bing! 

That’s right, these AI-powered search tools rely on traditional search engines to work. 

Perplexity uses Google (and a variety of other sources), and ChatGPT uses Bing to search the web. 

Why do they do this?

Well, the internet is an unfathomably large place, and it takes a lot of energy to crawl and index it. 

Google and Bing have been indexing the internet for decades, so they have a massive head start. 

It takes tens of millions of servers, mammoth amounts of real-time data, and extremely complicated ranking algorithms to truly establish a new search engine. 

AI chatbots and search assistants DO NOT have this infrastructure in place. 

Instead of indexing the web, they summarize it. 

Here’s a breakdown of what an AI search assistant like Perplexity or Claude does:

1. A user asks a question or requests information from the internet. 
2. The AI pulls live information from multiple sources that are already indexed (by traditional search engines). 
3. The AI uses an LLM (large language model) to provide an original response that summarizes multiple online sources. 

Here’s how that differs from a search engine like Google:

As you can see, much of what AI tools do relies on the infrastructure established by traditional search engines. 

Therefore, at their current capabilities, it would be impossible for AI search tools to replace Google because they still use it! 

AI’s current limitations 

AI tools also have some limitations and risks, including:

• Hallucinations. Sometimes AI tools can ‘make up’ information, which is referred to as a hallucination. This makes fact-checking AI outputs extremely important. It would be unfortunate to conduct an AI-powered search only for the tool to provide you with false information, so be wary. 

• Data freshness. If the AI tool you use doesn’t have real-time access to the web, it can only use its training data, which only goes up to a certain point. For example, when ChatGPT first came out in 2022, it was only trained on data up to 2021. Even with AI search tools that can access the web, they typically rely on APIs and open datasets, which may not contain the most up-to-date information. 

• Bias. Sometimes, AI tools can reflect the attitudes, assumptions, and beliefs of the developers who code them. Whether it’s intentional or not, you should be aware of the risk. 

For now, most AI tools work best as supplements instead of replacements, and that definitely applies to online searches. 

What AI is Changing About Search 

By now, it should be clear that Google and other traditional search engines aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. 

Truly competing with Google would cost billions of dollars and be extremely resource intensive – which are expenses most AI companies can’t justify if search isn’t their #1 focus. 

What AI IS changing about search is the way users discover information online. 

Pre-AI, a user would type a query into Google, and its algorithm would provide a curated list of relevant results from all over the internet. 

Besides the occasional featured snippet or knowledge bar, 99% of what users saw were blue hyperlinks:

This was GREAT for marketers because, to satisfy any type of search intent, users pretty much HAD to click on one of the web results to find what they were looking for. 

That gave site owners the chance to generate lots of traffic to their website, even for simple informational queries (like wanting to know the definition of a term). 

Granted, this is still very much the way SEO works. 

However, AI-generated summaries and overviews have caused an uptick in zero-click searches. 

Understanding the SEO impact of zero-click searches

A zero-click search occurs whenever a user finds the information they need on a search engine results page and DOES NOT click on any of the results. 

In the past, Google’s featured snippets caused a rise in zero-click searches. 

Featured snippets appear at the very top of the search results page, and they provide quick definitions and factoids that relate to user queries. 

Here’s what one looks like:

Here, this snippet provides a quick definition of digital PR. 

If that was all search users wanted to find out, they would probably leave the results page without clicking on anything (which is a zero-click search). 

Yet, featured snippets had the SEO benefit of linking to a single source, heightening the chances that users would click on it. 

In fact, targeting position zero has long been a successful SEO tactic. 

AI Overviews, though, are different from featured snippets. 

They feature summaries of multiple online sources. 

Also, AI Overviews contain far more detailed information than featured snippets. 

This heightens the chances that users will find what they need and leave without visiting any of the sources. 

The whole point of engaging in SEO is to get users to click through to your website, so zero-click searches can be quite frustrating for marketers. 

Research by Ahrefs found that click-through rates (CTRs) drop by 34.5% whenever a search keyword triggers an AI Overview, which is definitely concerning.

The news isn’t all bad, though. 

You can build brand awareness and credibility by getting cited regularly by AI tools. 

Your target audience will likely start to notice that your brand keeps popping up to answer their questions. 

This can foster a sense of trust that convinces them to give your products and services a shot. 

A focus on longer, more natural-sounding search keywords

AI tools are also changing the way users communicate with search engines. 

Since they feature LLMs and NLP (natural language processing), AI-powered search assistants can understand normal human speech patterns. 

So, instead of searching for something like, ‘best pizza st. petersburg,’ as they would on Google, a user might type:

“Where can I find the best pizza in St. Petersburg?”

Essentially, people talk to AI search assistants as they would a friend or colleague. 

Thus, marketers should target longer, more conversational keywords if they want to appear in more AI citations. 

How to Optimize for AI-Driven Search 

A new subsect of SEO has begun to form recently called generative search optimization (GSO), which is all about improving your brand’s visibility on AI tools. 

Since users are flocking to AI-powered search assistants and chatbots, it goes without saying that they represent a chance to connect with your target audience. 

The good news is there’s a lot of overlap between best practices for SEO and GSO, so you won’t have to learn an entirely new playbook. 

Create helpful, citation-worthy content 

First and most importantly, the BEST thing you can do for your SEO, GSO, and customer experience is to create people-first, high-quality content. 

Your pieces should:

1. Answer your audience’s questions 
2. Teach them new skills 
3. Inform them of new updates in your field 
4. Entertain and educate 

Google’s E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) system plays a vital role here. 

Strong content conveys first-hand experiences, demonstrates expertise, and attracts links from relevant websites. 

This, in turn, builds trust with search engines AND generative AI tools. 

You should back up every content piece with keyword research to ensure the topics you write about are what your audience is currently searching for online. 

Our free keyword planner is a great tool to help with this process if you don’t have a subscription to any paid tools, so don’t hesitate to use it! 

If you’re able to publish high-quality content for topics that matter to your target audience, you’ll:

1. Rank higher on search engines like Google 
2. Appear in more AI citations 

That’s a true win-win! 

Build backlinks on authoritative websites 

Link-building is a tried-and-true SEO best practice that also applies to GSO. 

The more trusted websites that link to your content, the more AI tools will trust your brand and use you as a source. 

For backlinks to impact your SEO and GSO, they have to be:

• High-quality. Always check a website’s Domain Authority and Domain Rating scores to ensure it’s worth your time. 

• Relevant. If a website links back to yours, it has to hold some type of relevance to your content. Google’s algorithm devalues irrelevant backlinks, so don’t waste your time building links on websites that don’t relate to yours. 

As ChatGPT notes in this response, AI models pull information from the web, and backlinks are what shape the web:

Focus on topical depth and natural language phrasing

If you want your content to stand out to search engines and AI tools, you have to cover topics like no other website. 

By that, we mean:

1. Providing 100% original insights 
2. Going into more detail than other websites 
3. Including supplementary resources (tables, charts, images, infographics, etc.) 
4. Teaching skills that other websites haven’t touched on yet 

Long-form content reigns supreme here, so do your best to create in-depth pieces that provide lots of value to readers. 

At the same time, avoid keyword stuffing and use natural language. 

Remember, your goal is always to create content for people first, and search engines (and AI tools) second. 

Keep track of your brand’s visibility in AI tools (ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.) 

Lastly, you need ways to keep track of your brand’s visibility in AI tools. 

Right now, analytics for platforms like ChatGPT aren’t available (since OpenAI doesn’t share its API yet). 

However, it is possible to track your mentions manually. 

AI Overviews are easier to keep track of, and you have several options for doing so. 

Ahrefs enables users to view when they appear in AI Overviews by selecting its SERP features filter in the Organic Keywords report. 

From the drop-down list, select AI Overviews:

Now, you’ll get to see which AI Overviews you appear in as a source (notated by the star symbol):

Keyword.com also offers an AI Overview tracking tool, and it has a 14-day free trial. 

Will Google Integrate More AI or Fall By the Wayside?

Google has been adapting to AI rather than losing major ground to it. 

After all, they knew the AI revolution was coming even before ChatGPT took over the world. 

They’ve been in the AI game for a long time now, with SGE, Gemini, Bard, and now its prominent AI Overviews. 

Basically, SEO isn’t dying, it’s evolving. 

Blended search results, AI-generated summaries, and natural language queries are likely here to stay, and that’s just fine. 

As marketers, it’s our job to remain agile and adapt to new search features, and AI is no different. 

Our prediction?

Google isn’t going anywhere, but it probably will continue to integrate more generative AI features into its search product, so the best thing you can do is start implementing GSO best practices sooner rather than later. 

Do you want to learn how to future-proof your SEO and GSO?

Don’t wait to book a free strategy call with our expert team to make it happen!