Beyond Google: Rethinking SEO for AI and Visual Search in 2025

Apr 8, 2025

As web developers, a big part of our job is creating websites where content can be found easily. SEO is really important, affecting everything from our CMS to how fast pages load. When AI became popular, my colleagues and I worried that people would stop using Google and go to things like ChatGPT. But my recent trip to beautiful Vienna made me think we were wrong.

We hadn't planned our trip well, so we looked online for things to do. I tried searching on Google and in AI tools: "What to do?", "Where to go?", "Must-see things." But some of my friends just looked on TikTok. They watched a few videos and then said, "Oh, check this out." It wasn't just what it was, but the pictures and videos made it interesting. Then, with the name of the place or cafe or bar from the video, they easily found what they wanted.

This showed me something important: AI isn't necessarily taking people away from searching. Instead, AI is making search in videos and personalization on platforms like TikTok so good and easy, and sometimes it gives better results.

Of course, there are privacy issues. But maybe search is changing from text to other formats, and it's hard for web developers to keep up. Big platforms might be the main winners in this new kind of search.