In this video, Kevin from Organic Growth breaks down the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) in 2025 – what a user sees.
The SEO Game is Still the Same—The Playing Field Has Changed
In the old days of SEO, we were all competing for the top 10 slots on page one of Google. That’s where businesses needed to be.
Guess what? That hasn’t changed.
We’re still competing for those top spots—but the way those slots show up in search results, especially in AI summaries, is different.
Example: How Perplexity AI Handles Links
Let’s look at Perplexity, an AI-driven search tool. Initially, I wasn’t a fan because of its tendency to hallucinate (like saying you could add glue to pizza sauce to thicken it). But they made an important change: they started showing links in their results.
- Each number in the AI summary corresponds to a specific link that remains consistent throughout the summary.
- At the top of the page, Perplexity lists the total number of sources (e.g., 32 sources in one example).
- This transparency in citing sources is something I really like.
Google has also evolved its AI Overviews to display source links, but initially, clicking any link would show the same set of results. Now, Google has improved this—when you click a specific part of an AI-generated answer, the related sources change accordingly.
The Takeaway?
- The number of links being displayed has changed.
- The way those links appear in AI search results has changed.
- But the fundamental competition for those top spots remains the same.
And that means the core SEO principles we’ve always followed—quality content, relevant links, user experience—are still what matter most.
SEO Beyond Links: Brand Mentions Matter More Than Ever
We’ve always known backlinks are a strong ranking signal. Links serve as external validation—Google doesn’t care what you say about yourself, but it does care what others say about you.
However, for years, Google has also been telling us that brand mentions are another critical form of validation. When you build your website, you’re not just creating content—you’re building your brand.
What Does This Mean in Practical Terms?
- Backlinks still matter.
- But brand mentions—when people talk about your business even without linking—are also powerful.
So, while AI-generated search results may look different, the real goal hasn’t changed: earning credibility, authority, and trust.
Final Thoughts: What’s Really Changed in SEO?
Yes, AI-driven search results look different. The way links appear in AI summaries is evolving.
But the core fundamentals of SEO have not changed.
- High-quality, relevant content still wins.
- Trusted, authoritative backlinks still matter.
- User experience, engagement, and brand recognition still play a major role in rankings.
As SEO professionals, we’re still in competition for a limited number of valuable links in search results. And the way to get there? By following the same best practices we always have.
That’s it for this video—thanks for watching!
A full transcript is below
Hi, this is Kevin with Organic Growth. Emanuel asked me if I could produce a video a month for his How About So marketing audience. And I agreed to, and then I didn’t follow through.
Primarily because I couldn’t think of something to say that hadn’t already been said hundreds, if not thousands of times already. But as I’m watching a lot of chatter on LinkedIn and Twitter about how generative AI is changing SEO, there is something that kind of bothered me, and hence this video. So this shows me querying for a statement.
The fundamentals of SEO have not changed in the era of generative AI. Now I’m not asking a question. I’m making a statement because I want to see what I get back.
And the Google AI overview agrees that while the core fundamentals of SEO, like quality content, relevant links, etc., etc., have not changed, it’s not entirely accurate to say that the fundamentals of SEO have not changed. And I want to push back on that concept a little, because I perceive the changes to be much more superficial than the general chatter on Twitter and LinkedIn seems to imply. So in the olden days, we were all in competition for the top 10 slots in a search engine result page, the 10 slots on page one.
That’s where you needed to be. So what hasn’t changed is that we’re still in competition for those top slots, but the way those top slots show up in an AI summary are different. This is perplexity.
And when generative AI first came out, I was not a big fan because of the hallucinations. The idea is that you could add glue to your pizza sauce to thicken it, you know, that kind of stuff. And then perplexity started showing links in their results.
So if you go through their AI summary, here’s a number four, and that takes you to a specific link. And in the perplexity AI summary, every number four is the same link. Every number two is the same link.
Four is getting a lot of traction here. Every number seven is the same link. And if you go back up to the top, you can see that there are a total of 32 sources, and they’re displayed down the list on the right.
And I really liked that because, well, initially it seemed to always be eight. And then when they moved from just regular generative AI to deep research, it’s a variable number. In this particular case, it’s 32, but I could see where the information came from, and I really liked that.
And then at some point, Google also started providing links in their output. And at first, I didn’t like it because no matter which link icon you clicked, you used to get the same set of links over on the right no matter what. So I couldn’t really tell what was the source of each part of the answer the way I could with perplexity.
But as you saw from my recent click-throughs, Google has changed it, and I’m going to say fixed it, so that when you click a specific link, the links over on the right change, which indicates that this part of the answer came from this webpage. So my main argument is, while the way these links are displayed to us and the number of links that are displayed to us has changed in the world of generative AI, the basic concept of we’re all in competition for a limited set of links has not changed. And the way that you have your content appear within that limited set of links is the same fundamentals that we’ve always been paying attention to.
Quality content, relevant links, user experience. Now, there’s only one more thing I want to add to this video, and that’s the way we talk about links. So, yes, links matter.
Links are a very important source of external validation. You can talk about yourself on the Internet all you want, and the various search engines don’t particularly care what you think about yourself. What they, and especially Google, seem to care about is what others think of you.
However, Google has been pushing on us for years now that it’s not just links. There’s another form of external validation that Google considers to be important, and that’s brand mentions. And they’ve been saying for years, when you build out your website, you’re building your brand.
You want there to be an association of whatever it is that you talk about with the name that you identify yourself with. So I just want to push the idea that while we are seeking links, from a broader sense, what we’re seeking is brand mentions. No, I’m sorry.
What we’re seeking is external validation of which links are a very important source and of which brand mentions are another very important source. That’s it for this video. Thanks for watching.
Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.
