There Are No New SEO Trends in 2025 — AI Didn’t Kill SEO. Laziness Did
The year 2025 marks the rise of AI as a primary place for searching for information.
Google has introduced AI Mode, and other search engines have rolled out their own equivalents of this functionality. A significant number of people have abandoned Google altogether and moved to ChatGPT. And, frankly, that is a good thing. Every disruption is a stimulus for development within the rigid structures of global leaders. And that is undeniably healthy.
Various reports about AI keep filtering into my awareness. One of them is that this technology is extremely energy-hungry. In my view, this has two consequences.
First, in its current form, we are still firmly in the development phase of this technology. ChatGPT, for example, is now in version five. This is still not a finished product. I imagine that ChatGPT, at this stage, is something akin to CAPTCHA. CAPTCHA originally presented itself as an anti-spam security mechanism, while in reality it was a tool for teaching machines to recognise objects. In much the same way, we are now training AI.
Second, which follows directly from the first point: at present, a functional version of ChatGPT costs €23. I would bet money against nuts that very soon this price will get you an advertising-heavy, sales-driven version — while the genuinely functional, professional version, which consumes more resources, will become more expensive. Perhaps €30. Perhaps €50. Perhaps €100.
And this is where we reach the heart of the matter.
Many of us remember when star ratings began appearing in SERPs, and when blog posts displayed author avatars. Today, we see prices, stock availability, and all sorts of additional features.
Technically speaking, everything that has ever appeared in Google’s search results has already existed on the website itself. Anyone stubborn and curious enough can type in the name of any athlete and then filter the results by publication date. In a brutally simplified sense, Google’s search results are little more than a table with filtered parameters.
Returning to ChatGPT — and referring to other alternatives as well — we need to state this clearly: information about what can be bought, where it can be bought, and for how much, is already inside OpenAI. Google has it. Bing has it. Yandex has it too. That leaves Seznam. But knowing the Czechs, they will probably pull off something so bold that more than one data centre will go up in flames.
There is no doubt that ChatGPT will become a place where people begin their shopping journeys. This is already happening. And it will go much, much further — and it will happen quickly.
This is precisely why I believe that there are no new trends. ChatGPT appeared in 2022, and barely three years have passed, yet we already struggle to imagine the internet without AI.
Entrepreneurs rack their brains wondering what they should do to appear in AI-generated results. On the surface, the matter seems simple. The problem is that it requires honest work — and in the age of OpenAI, everyone is firing prompts and taking shortcuts. That simply does not work.
1. Make access easy for OpenAI’s bots
Does this sound familiar? Crawl-budget management. A website without a billion plugins constantly breaking one another. Code as clean as a sacrificial lamb in Jerusalem. Everything must be fast. Yes, this is technical optimisation: SSL, zero broken pages, a correct sitemap, a fast and efficient website, and Core Web Vitals in perfect condition.
Nothing new here.
2. Content optimisation
Panda — the algorithm designed to handle content quality — was launched on 23 February 2011. For Merlin’s beard! These are old, well-worn topics. Yes, there was E-A-T, which later evolved into E-E-A-T, and before that there was Bard, which used AI to “understand” text. My article about Google already knowing that one can be “free” and “free”, “liberated” and “not particularly dynamic”, has quite a long history behind it. The additional “E” in E-E-A-T is hardly a novelty either. If you have been running a website for more than a year, you have no excuse not to revisit your content.
But — for heaven’s sake — do not take shortcuts.
I understand that a sole trader or a small business may not have the budget for a copywriter to manage website content. Truly, I do.
But if there is no properly maintained blog, is the company poor — or is the owner?
Does that sound harsh?
Good.
If someone runs their own business, in most cases it is driven by passion. So what — they cannot afford to write two A4 pages about their own work? Is this financial poverty, intellectual poverty, or simply laziness?
And I will repeat this point, because it matters: AI-generated content may occasionally slip through in large organisations. If a central bank publishes a notice advising people not to tear banknotes or scrap tokens, that is fine — they genuinely cannot afford waste. Aggregators get a pass as well. If you have thirty identical 1.9 TDI Golfs on a forecourt, all showing 90,000 kilometres on the clock, that is fine too. You will sell them anyway.
But if your business succeeds because of passion and quality, this must be expressed on the website.
I would also happily place another bet that AI-generated content will soon cause disruption similar to that which followed the Penguin update in 2012. Penguin targeted links and wiped out a significant number of marketing agencies that relied on crude backlink spam.
3. Links and E-E-A-T
In my opinion, link-building will become increasingly important, and it will need to be done with flair and intention. A simple blast or the purchase of a few sponsored posts may no longer be sufficient. Subjectively speaking, this is what I enjoy most. Commitment to link-building is like a crystal-clear mirror that reflects how much a business owner truly cares about their website’s visibility.
So what actually changes in SEO?
Not the technology. Not even the expectations — those are simple: clients.
What changes is where those clients come from.
SEO is no longer limited to Google search results; it also includes YouTube, which is nothing new in itself. What is new is that Google is no longer growing, and an ever-increasing proportion of revenue now originates outside Google.
From my own, admittedly subjective perspective, Google’s changes are deeply demotivating. Search results are manipulated and censored. The second-largest search engine — owned by the same company — YouTube, has become a Goebbels-style propaganda tube, equal parts absurd and disturbing. Word filters make it difficult to find up-to-date journalistic material, and equally difficult to discover reports by emerging creators. YouTube became dysfunctional some time ago. Google Maps has followed a similar path. A product that once worked and grew thanks to its community now develops slowly and painfully. Map updates and location reviews either do not work at all or require the patience of a Buddhist monk.
This may sound like complaining, but at its core it is not. All these obstacles and frustrations are actually a good thing. The great dragon is beginning to choke on its own tail and will eventually sink to the bottom of some ocean. And since nature abhors a vacuum — even a digital one — new places will emerge where fortunes will be made.
ChatGPT already functions successfully as a search engine. I suspect that a serious competitor to Google Maps will emerge soon. I personally replaced YouTube with Rumble a long time ago. There is no point debating these changes — they are already a fact.
To conclude, I would say this: it is not SEO trends that are new, but the speed at which the entire environment is changing. The methods largely remain the same; only attention to detail is becoming increasingly important.
Because the devil is in the details.