If you’ve been keeping an eye on digital marketing trends, you know that Google’s AI updates are shaking up the search landscape — fast. From RankBrain to Search Generative Experience (SGE), and now Gemini, AI Overviews, and AI Mode, Google continues to roll out changes that shift how content is discovered, ranked, and displayed.
For marketers and business owners, this evolution means new opportunities — and new challenges. Let’s take a look at where we’ve been, where we are, and what’s ahead, so you can build a plan that works with Google’s future, not against it.
A Look Back: Google’s Key AI Milestones
Google has been integrating AI into its core search product for nearly a decade. Here are a few major turning points:
- 2015 – RankBrain: Google’s first major AI system, helping interpret search queries, especially those the system hadn’t seen before.
- 2019 – BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers): Improved Google’s ability to understand the context of words in a sentence, enhancing natural language processing.
- 2021 – MUM (Multitask Unified Model): Designed to understand complex search needs and generate more nuanced answers across formats and languages.
Each step brought us closer to more conversational, context-aware search results — setting the stage for today’s biggest shift yet.
Present Day: SGE, Gemini, and AI Overviews
In 2023 and 2024, Google introduced the Search Generative Experience (SGE) — its first large-scale integration of generative AI into search. That beta experience evolved into what we now see more broadly in the form of AI Overviews.
What Are AI Overviews?
AI Overviews are the generative summaries that now appear at the top of many Google search results. Powered by Gemini, these overviews synthesize information from multiple websites to answer complex queries in a conversational tone. They appear above the traditional “blue links,” changing the dynamics of how and where people click.
For example, a search like “best time to visit Charleston for fewer tourists” might generate a paragraph with weather data, crowd trends, and travel tips — all without requiring users to click into a single site.
Why AI Overviews Matter
- Reduced clicks: Many users get their answers from the overview itself.
- Increased competition: Fewer visible links on page one means tougher organic placement.
- Opportunity for visibility: If your content is cited as a source, it can gain exposure — but getting there requires high authority and clarity.
In essence, AI Overviews are the everyday version of what SGE started. While SGE was experimental, Overviews are now a default part of the search experience for many users in the U.S.
What’s New: AI Mode and Google Marketing Live 2025 Announcements
At Google Marketing Live 2025, Google introduced a major update to the search experience: AI Mode. Building on the foundation of AI Overviews, AI Mode offers a more dynamic, interactive way for users to explore topics.
AI Mode: Search Becomes a Conversation
AI Mode transforms the traditional search engine into a chat-powered experience, allowing users to go deeper with follow-up questions and receive context-aware, multimedia responses. Think of it as a personal AI assistant built right into Google Search.
Here’s an example:
- A user might start with: “Best time to visit Charleston for fewer tourists.”
- Then follow up with: “If I visited in January, where should I stay?”
- Instead of starting a new search, Google’s AI Mode carries the context from the previous query and generates tailored suggestions for January travel — including hotel types, neighborhood recommendations, and considerations for off-season visits.
This example shows how AI Mode keeps the conversation going — offering layered, personalized insights that wouldn’t surface in a typical list of links. For marketers in industries like travel, hospitality, healthcare, and retail, it creates new touchpoints for visibility and engagement.
The Future of Google Search: A Recap
Google’s AI transformation isn’t just coming — it’s already here.
- AI Overviews have been live (formerly under the experimental “SGE” label) and are now widely rolled out across Google Search in the U.S. These AI-generated summaries appear at the top of results, providing quick, synthesized answers to complex questions.
- AI Mode is actively rolling out, offering a chat-like search experience that remembers previous queries and allows for deeper, personalized follow-ups — with ads beginning to appear inside those experiences.
- Gemini, the large language model powering both, continues to evolve and shape how content is discovered and displayed.
This means:
- Traditional blue links are being pushed further down the page
- Click-through rates may decline for some search types
- The battle for visibility is shifting toward becoming the source Google’s AI draws from
- Ads are being more deeply integrated into conversational and generative search environments
Google is no longer just a search engine. It’s becoming a generative answer engine — one that rewards content that’s clear, trustworthy, and aligned with user intent.
What It Means for Your Marketing Strategy
To keep pace, you need to do more than “optimize” — you need to educate, engage, and earn trust.
Here’s what that looks like:
- Expert-driven content: Google favors trusted sources with depth and nuance.
- Clear structure: Use headers, bullets, and schema markup so AI can easily digest your pages.
- Multimedia: Gemini loves visuals. Add images and videos where appropriate.
- Brand authority: Build a recognizable presence across platforms so your site is more likely to be cited.
How to Plan and Adapt
🧩 Refresh your content – Make sure it answers real questions and includes helpful, up-to-date info.
📊 Track performance – Use Search Console to monitor impressions and experiment with featured snippets.
📣 Invest in other channels – As AI reduces click volume, email, paid media, and social become even more important.
🚀 Watch AI Mode rollout – Keep an eye on how it affects your category. What shows up in those conversations? Are competitors being cited?
Final Thoughts: The Future of Search Is AI-First
AI Overviews are changing the top of the funnel. AI Mode is redefining how users explore information. And Gemini is the engine powering all of it.
At TargetMarket, we’re helping brands prepare for this next phase of digital discovery — creating content and campaigns that work with AI, not against it.
Want to future-proof your digital strategy? Let’s talk.
