May has been a busy month in the world of Google Ads and SEO. You’ve probably seen a lot of Google AI-heavy headlines, lots of chat about GEO, and not been sure what it means for your marketing. It’s been a lot to keep on top of even for people who live and breathe it – so here’s a big fat Google round up of what you need to know.

AI In Everything, Everywhere All At Once

Google is leaning into layering AI answer-generation on top of its traditional search model, rather than replacing click-based search entirely. The result is a hybrid system that monetises both sides of the internet search: attention, and companies wanting attention

Searching for information in Google is more likely to trigger an AI Overview, which will encourage you to ‘continue exploring’ or ‘dig deeper’ with AI mode, which is essentially their Gemini model in search. 

This supports Google’s renewed push into AI ad formats, in order to be able to provide relevant ads triggered by conversational exchanges within AI Mode.

This means that traditional Search Ads are evolving as ad placement evolves. Keyword targeting is still central, but Google is giving more weight to contextual and semantic signals alongside them. 

New ad inventory is going to be critical. If you’d not adapting, you’re at real risk of being left behind. 

In the meantime as this is being phased in, life is getting increasingly competitive for ads outside of AI Overviews. AIOs can reduce visibility for some queries, including ads, even if the quality of clicks that eventually happen can be higher.

Organic Challenges

If you’re not running Google Ads, your organic content is still affected. An increasingly mobile-first internet means that a particularly chunky AIO could mean your ad won’t get seen at all if a scroll doesn’t happen. (You’ll still get that impression though, because we haven’t moved away from vanity metrics yet)

This reduced visibility overall also tends to push down click through rate. CTR is still a great metric to monitor for relevancy, it’s just getting kicked in the kneecaps right now.

However, not all is lost. A recent study saw that not only were users with searches that triggered AIOs more likely to stay on the SERP longer, they were more likely to scroll down the page and up again to pay more attention to the results – an interesting premise for brand awareness and intention. Well, for those results on the first page / top 6 results, that is.

Another Update

We’ve had a number of updates from Google this year already, a Discover update in February and a Core and a Spam update in March. And another core update was announced for May too!

This means you can anticipate a drift in rankings which will stablise about a month after the update finishes. You may want to slightly increase the cadence of your new content publishing to help get you back on track sooner.

Final Slice

Google’s AI shift isn’t going away, and pretending it’s a temporary blip won’t help your bottom line. But AI isn’t the silver bullet either – it’s as well as, not instead of. Think of it as adding a proper pinch of salt to your dish to bring out the true flavour, not swapping out all the ingredients.

The plays that worked last year still matter, they’re just no longer enough on their own. Adapt your content and ad strategy to the new AI surfaces, keep doing the fundamentals well, watch real business outcomes rather than vanity metrics, and you’ll be ahead of the curve when the noise settles.