Google Search Central Live took place on March 20, 2025 in New York. Between artificial intelligence and SEO, the event revealed some secrets! Wondering how Google is reshaping the rules with its new approaches? Get comfortable — we'll tell you everything.
What to remember:
- Google's big Search event put AI in the spotlight.
- Danny Sullivan explained how AI Overviews and AI Mode work.
- We now understand why AI answer links have nothing to do with pages ranked by Google.
AI Overviews: when artificial intelligence redefines search
One of the highlight topics of this edition was the use of AI Overviews, those summaries generated by artificial intelligence that change how search results are presented. Search is no longer limited to the top 10 blue links!
If you’ve already tried AI Overviews, you noticed that the cited sources were different from Google’s top 10 blue links. According to Danny Sullivan, this is due to the technique of predictive summaries and the “grounding links.”
Predictive summaries
These summaries don’t just answer a specific query. They also anticipate your next questions. It’s like asking about the weather and receiving relevant links about the forecasts for your city over the next 10 days.
Danny Sullivan explains: the model used for AI Overviews is an overview that goes beyond Google’s top results. It consists of understanding a large number of results and result variants in order to provide a predictive summary in response to the search.
Grounding links
Sullivan also explained the importance of grounding links, those links cited as sources in the AI Overviews response.
Those links allow verification of the information in a single paragraph within Google’s complete response. That’s why they differ from Google’s top results: they address a subtopic of the user’s query and are therefore more precise and more contextualized.
Query Fan-Out: diversity serving results
During this conference, another intriguing concept was introduced: the query fan-out. A technique at the core of Google's latest innovation: AI Mode.
What exactly is it?
Query fan-out aims to understand synonyms and the overall meanings of a query. The goal? To provide you with more relevant results (as always). This process expands the search by taking into account a multitude of related queries, already covered by Abondance when “AI mode” was launched :
While the answer is being generated, advanced models are now able to identify and access a greater number of web pages than before. This technique makes it possible to display a wider and more varied set of content and links associated with the response.
The fundamentals of SEO remain
Do we need to rethink SEO completely with the arrival of AI? Not necessarily. Danny Sullivan emphasized that the fundamentals of optimization remain unchanged.
The key remains producing high-quality, relevant, and high-value content. You may be tempted to throw yourself headfirst into the new developments, but sometimes it’s better to keep your feet on the ground. Authenticity and relevance never go out of style, and that’s the main takeaway from this event. Now, get typing!
The article "SEO and artificial intelligence: what to absolutely remember from Google Search Central Live 2025" was published on the site Abondance.
