2025 is here and it’s time for some predictions on what the new year will bring to the SEO and digital marketing landscape.
Let’s jump right in.
The TikTok ban in the U.S. holds
I just don’t see this thing going away. Congress and TikTok have both had months to act on this. If a sale is not in place already, I don’t see one getting thrown together in such a short amount of time. These things take time to negotiate.
January 19 is fast approaching.
Instagram is probably the best positioned app to take advantage of the vacuum this will cause, but I wouldn’t be surprised if something new jumps into the market too. Google wishes YouTube Shorts would fill the void, but they have never caught on in the same way.
Google will go to war with mass generated and low quality AI content
We have already seen some signs of the first part of this with them going after sites that are mass producing hundreds or even thousands of pages in a very short amount of time. It’s nearly impossible to have any editorial control at that scale, so it makes sense for Google to go after this sort of content.
I think they will also go after a lot of low quality AI content.
What do I mean by low quality AI content?
I mean the type where people are just going to ChatGPT or their AI writing tool of choice (Jasper, Ryter, CopyAI, etc.) and telling it “You are an expert on hunting muskrats with 15 years of experience hunting the furry bastards. Write a 1,000 word article about the best tips for hunting muskrats.”
Don’t tell me Google cannot detect AI content.
Long before anyone knew who OpenAI was, Google was one of the leading AI companies in the world, and still is. If they want to detect it, they can. If anything, it is more a problem of computing power and resources than whether or not they can do it.
But even without writing complex scripts to identify AI generated content, there are obvious footprints.
Anyone who has been working with generative AI over the past few years, even at a moderate level, can quickly identify these outputs, usually in just the first few sentences.
It would not be hard for Google to target it.
Hell, just set a filter that excludes any article that talks about the fast-paced world of, delve into, or comprehensive guide in the first two paragraphs and you catch 75% of it right there.
I think they will be very mum about what exactly they targeted, and they will do it at a large enough scale that it scares people away from using AI to publish any sort of content.
And much like when Penguin first launched, there will probably be a lot of collateral damage.
AI LLM models are going to start to contract
I saw this mentioned somewhere in another newsletter somewhere, and I have to agree.
If we don’t soon have a major breakthrough in quantum computing, I think we may see one or more of the popular LLM models out there shutdown or be acquired by a competitor. If not in 2025, certainly in 2026.
The costs associated with running these LLMs at scale is not sustainable. They have been kept afloat by billions of dollars being invested in them, but at some point, they need to start making money.
It will be hard for some of them to justify their subscription price over competitors offering the same thing. It will come down to which ones offer something different or which ones do a better job of marketing.
I think we will start to see acquisitions coming, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Google at the forefront of an acquisition if they see the right opportunity.
Google will continue to test ways to monetize AI overviews
At the end of last year we saw Google experimenting with ways to monetize AI overviews. One of the best and most sensible ways I saw was with product placements.
If you did a search for something like how to refinish an interior door, at the end of the AIO, you might see links to products like sanders, primer, paint brushes, etc.
They are going to continue to find new ways to add ads into the AIOs, which could be an opportunity for advertisers.
Informational search traffic is going to largely die
This has already started to happen. Between AIOs, featured snippets, and Reddit threads there isn’t much space left for websites to snag a piece of the pie on broad informational searches.
Why would someone click through to a website to find the answer of when such and such releases or how do I… if the answer is presented right in front of them?
What does that mean for you?
Two things:
- First, I think it is still a good idea to publish broader informational content that is relevant to your business. It provides internal link opportunities and is good for the overall topical authority of your website. You just have to readjust your expectations for search performance for this sort of content.
- The second thing it means is to put a bigger emphasis on middle of the funnel (MOFU) and bottom of the funnel (BOFU) content.
While this may feel like a step backwards for many websites out there, ultimately SEO goals should be focused on conversions, not traffic.
I know some people will argue that top of the funnel content can lead to conversions, and while that is true, it is at a very, very small rate.
And for those of you who were building made-for-AdSense (MFA) type sites that relied heavily on these sort of searches, I don’t know what to tell you.
I’m sorry, but you are largely SOL. It’s time to pivot or to spend the next 18-24 months turning those type of sites into respected brands that can still compete for traffic from those type of searches.
Affiliate websites relying on organic search traffic are done
This one is hardly a stretch, since it has largely happened already. Like MFA sites, affiliate websites that rely on organic search traffic are going to disappear.
You can still build a very successful affiliate website, but you need to either:
- Rely on traffic channels outside of organic search or…
- Build a huge, recognizable, and trustworthy brand that does real, detailed reviews and recommendations of products. Gone are the days of just generating articles that are “The Top 10 ….” and throwing together a list of products you find that happen to be sold on Amazon.
I know a lot of affiliate marketers have been wiped out and more will be in the future, so I don’t say this to be callous, but overall I think this is a good move by Google.
It was getting nearly impossible to find trustworthy reviews in Google.
Let’s be honest, if you wanted to see reviews for the latest piece of software, tech gadget, or power tool, whose opinion do you want to see? Whose would you trust more?
Established experts in the industry who have been doing this for years, or some unknown blogger who is better at SEO than they are at understanding the product they are reviewing?
I know that is a bitter pill for affiliates who saw their income disappear to swallow, but I think for anyone not directly affected by this change, it is easy to see why Google went in this direction.
Thank you to all of my subscribers to The SEO Pub. Wishing all of you a happy and propserous 2025!
