Search engines have incorporated AI features to keep up with the rapid changes in the digital landscape, so what are the most important developments?
AI Platforms
Google Gemini, ChatGPT and Copilot all are new and preferred search methods for their users, based on a study, 66% of these platform users consider them better than all traditional search engines. At the same time, Google still controls 93% of the market share among browsing tools. Has serious competition between the two truly begun?
Image: ChatGPT Gets Googled More Than YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, between 2024 - 2025
Source: Ahrefs Datacenter
The New Search Method
By 2025, manual task execution has significantly declined. Even fundamental activities like online search have become exponentially faster, marking a pivotal shift in how users interact with the web.
What are Zero-Click Searches?
A zero-click search occurs when users get instant answers directly on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), without visiting any external site.
Nowadays, 60% of global searches end without a click, according to the latest insights from SEOBazooka.
Featured snippets provide concise answers on top of search results, changing how users interact with content online.
How AI Snippets and AEO Are Changing Search
The goal of this tactic is to structure your content so that AI engines can easily extract and present it as answers to specific user queries.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) ensures that your brand becomes part of AI-powered discussions, making your brand visible even before users visit your website.
If your brand isn’t part of these AI-driven responses, you could be invisible in the next generation of search.
Is SEO still necessary, when and where?
Marketing experts are weighing all possibilities. While keywords are still a fundamental part of SEO, they’ve become far more sophisticated. This shift suggests that the balance of power between traditional search engines and AI is starting to tip in favor of artificial intelligence.
In our next article, we'll lay out the steps you can take to keep your digital marketing strategy ahead of these changes.
SEO Recommendations for the AI Era
Key best practices encompass:
- Understanding User (Search Intent): Align content with user search intent (are they looking for product details or reviews?), try tools such as Ahrefs.
- Leveraging (Long-Tail Keywords): Use longer, specific keyword phrases like "best Asian restaurants in Kuwait" to reduce competition and attract qualified visitors using multiple generation tools.
- Implementing (Semantic SEO): Enrich content with related terms, not just keywords, to help search engines understand the topic. Benefit from these tools.
- Optimizing for Zero-Click Searches: Featured Snippets now suggest content that follows quality, backlinks, user experience parameters, along with E-E-A-T guides (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness).
- Staying up to newest updates like reels format: with short videos showing as a tab in Google search results, marketing with video content (Reels, YouTube Shorts and TikTok) is now a highly effective strategy. Benefit from these tips for YouTube shorts.
- Using Schema Markup - Employ indexing patterns and templates to let the browser know the nature of your brand and detail its specifications. Use this platform to help in structuring your data.
Users arriving via AI summaries are often more niche and qualified, offering higher-quality lead generation, which opens doors for better targeting.
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Written by: Abdullah Ammar
Edited in March 2026
