Google I/O 2025: What Businesses Need to Know

This week Google have told us exactly where search and ads and customer journeys are heading. And as businesses and leaders of small marketing teams, we need to act now so that we can still be ahead over the next few years. All this week I’ve been trying to watch as many of the keynotes and technical sessions as I could from Google’s I/O developer conference. And I did this so you didn’t have to. And over the next 15 minutes or so, what I want to do is try and unpack all the different announcements, and try and spell out exactly what actually matters from the announcements this week, and what actually is going to matter for you and your business over the coming years.

If we haven’t met before, my name is Jordan McFadyen, and welcome to For The Daring Growth Seekers podcast. And as I said in the intro there, Google I/O 2025 dropped some massive changes that I think are fundamentally going to reshape how customers are finding and interacting with businesses, not just this year, but for years to come as well.

If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a bit, or listening to some of the content that we’ve shared as part of our agency Done By Nine, then you would know that this is not a new thing. We’ve been talking about the fact that customer discovery is changing a lot, but the thing is that all these changes that we’re talking about, it’s not just going to be a someday type thing. It’s literally rolling out now. So as part of this developer conference this week, the big takeaway was that some of the announcements that they were talking about are literally being rolled out right now in the United States.

So if you’re a business owner, or you lead a small marketing team here in New Zealand or Australia, we’re actually in a great position, because we can actually watch all these shifts that are happening over in the States right now, and be able to learn from how other businesses are adapting and changing their marketing, and what type of data we can see out of there. So while everyone’s still debating whether AI is actually still a fad, I honestly think Google this week has made it crystal clear. They are moving all of their products to be AI focused.

And AI is not just a feature on Google search anymore. It is literally, and we’ll explain this in the podcast today, it’s literally changing how customers and users are going to be interacting with your business and your brand, and being able to buy products and services from you in the future. So the way that we market your services is changing right now, and American companies are facing this right this second. And so we can kind of learn from that. And I think that the companies here in New Zealand and Australia that can adapt quickly to what American companies are seeing with the change in customer discovery, you’re going to have such a significant kind of head start over those companies that don’t.

So the key things I want to get across in today’s podcast is understanding some of Google’s new AI search features, which will ultimately change customer discovery. Also having a look at what the changes actually mean for your local business and visibility, and how advertising is even evolving and changing with AI integration. And also we’ll have a look at some practical steps across this as well, about how you can actually prepare your business today.

But I think we’ll start with the biggest shift, which is how people are actually using Google search. It is fundamentally going to change it. It is changing right now. Remember, we are moving away from that old model of just going to Google. Remember back in the day, you would go into Google and you’d type in a couple of keywords, and then you’d be presented with a whole bunch of links of websites. You’d have a scroll through and kind of see which website you think is going to answer the best way based on your query. That’s all changing. That’s kind of null and void now.

Instead, search is becoming more conversational. It feels more like that you are using search to chat with an expert who has access to massive pieces of knowledge, and obviously the entire internet. And we are seeing that with even ChatGPT. ChatGPT, you can obviously use it to search the internet now. We’ve spoken about this in our workshop that we hosted a couple of weeks ago as well, where it’s now presenting both map packs and services and even products, as it would on a Google search.

And Google’s obviously seeing this. And so that’s why they’re rushing to release what they call AI Mode. Now, we’ve known about AI Mode for a bit, but the release of it has come really fast. It is only to people in the United States first, which, again, is a great advantage for us here in New Zealand and Australia. And what AI Mode does, it’s embedding a chatbot like ChatGPT directly into Google search. And it’s letting users ask more complex, multi-part questions, which then allows the AI to break down the questions and pull out the information from multiple different sources from around the web, to be able to give really comprehensive answers.

Now, we are seeing this at the moment in New Zealand and Australia with AI Overviews. So AI Overviews is coming up at the top of search results right now: the AI-generated summaries. And already they are being used by and served to around 1.5 billion people every single month across the world. So AI Overviews is something that we have seen, and we’re getting used to over here in New Zealand and Australia. But AI Mode kind of takes it that next step up. It’s kind of building an AI chatbot into Google search.

And it’s crucial now that we understand how this is going to affect your marketing and your website and the clicks that you get through to your website. We are going to see, and we have seen, significant drops in website clicks when even AI Overviews have appeared, across websites across the world. Because it’s now at a stage where your customer might not even actually visit your website to be able to get the information that they need.

So what does it mean for your business? It means that the goals potentially shift from just ranking high in a search result, which has always been like, they’re ranking in the number one spot, to actually becoming that trusted source that Google’s AI will use in its answers. And how that rolls out, we’re not entirely sure. But there are some things that you can obviously do. Your content needs to be easy for people to read, but most importantly also easy for AI to actually understand, and be able to cite your website as well.

And this goes back to those fundamentals. We talk about the fundamentals a lot, but I think it’s good for us to remind ourselves that fundamentals are still key with everything that we’re discussing here. How do you demonstrate your expertise, your experience, your authority and your trustworthiness? Google calls this EAT, E-E-A-T. It’s about sharing these real-world stories that you have, customer experiences that you have in the real world, and building credibility that then allows AI to actually recognise and reference in its AI Overviews.

Remembering as well now that tools like ChatGPT and all that, they’re allowing you to be able to essentially create a business just overnight if you wanted to. So what’s really going to separate those cowboy-type businesses and your business is the fact that you’re going to be able to show and demonstrate your experience, your expertise, your authority, your trustworthiness, customers trust you, you’ve got an authoritative voice in the marketplace. That’s what Google’s going to preference over time. So those fundamentals are really key.

The second section I want to have a look at is Google is also introducing what it calls Deep Search and also Live Search. And this is powered by something that they call Project Astra. Now, Deep Search is providing incredibly thorough responses to really complex questions. So this is going for massive, detailed, cited reports. So think of this as like AI doing really comprehensive research for your customers, or about your customers, or for your business.

Then Live Search is where things get really interesting. So they also spoke about Live Search, where users will soon be able to interact with Google search in real time using your device’s camera. Point your camera at a product in a store, or out and about. You’ve got a friend, or you spot something: oh, I really want to see where I can purchase something like that. Live Search instantly then finds that product online. It compares all the prices that you should be looking at. You can read reviews right on it as well.

It means that your images, your videos, they need to be really high quality, well tagged for visual recognition. Thinking about your physical products, your locations. They also need to be easily identifiable, linked back to your online presence. Again, it’s going back to those real fundamentals. How are you actually linking all these fundamentals about your location and the images that you use, the descriptions that you’re using, making sure that you’re really taking the time and effort to make sure that all of those pieces are connected interchangeably?

Because search is also becoming incredibly personalised as well. So the other big thing that we learned this week is that with user permission, AI Mode, so we discussed that already, AI Mode will be able to access data from other Google products. So if you’ve got a Gmail, for example, you’re going to be able to get more tailored results from AI Mode. Even if you use Google Drive, you’ll get more tailored results using AI Mode for your searches. You can actually give AI Mode the option to be able to use your Gmail history and use your Google Drive history, to really build that persona about who you are, what you do, and how you interact with products and services and people online.

So the key takeaway here is building direct relationships with customers. Collecting your own first-party data is going to become incredibly valuable over time. So we need to continue being able to do that, and being able to collect that first-party data, that’s like email addresses, things like that. That is going to become more and more valuable over time.

So the next thing that we learned this week, that’s going to affect a lot of us listening here as well, is that local search is actually becoming really specific as well. So Google’s moving beyond broad city searches, and it’s really getting down to micro neighbourhoods. So especially if you’re in a larger city, your business needs to be optimised not just for, let’s say, Auckland or Sydney or Melbourne, but really for specific neighbourhoods, especially if you’re focused on local searches, even getting down to street names, local landmarks, that type of thing.

So you’re going to make sure, again, that your website, your Google My Business profile includes specific neighbourhoods, street names. If you’re serving multiple areas, making sure that you’re creating those different, and citing those different locations where you’re able to service as well. And it’s going to be around detailed quality reviews that become more and more important. And that’s going to become more and more important than ever, with Google’s AI now being able to pull specific excerpts from reviews into your search results.

So that means we need to encourage customers to continue to leave detailed feedback, and respond personally to reviews that you get on your Google My Business as well. Really, again, going back to the fundamentals, building up that trust over time as well. So I want you to consider how your entire online presence, this includes your social media, the review sites, Google review sites, your directory listings, everything, your entire online presence is contributing to how Google’s AI is going to understand you, your brand, your business, and how it’s going to recommend your brand based on searches.

So really think about, are you targeting a really small area, like you just want to focus on a suburb within Auckland, depending on the business that you are, or are you trying to go for a larger area? How do you tell Google, and how do you tell AI models, that you service these different areas? It’s with different content, it’s with using your social media, it’s using Google reviews, and obviously your Google My Business profile as well.

Now, the next one is advertising. Let’s chat about how advertising is changing this week as well, some big changes, because this is going to potentially affect your marketing budget, hopefully in a good way though. But Google is making its ad tools smarter; it’s more automated. It’s about how do we use AI to optimise your ad spending for your search campaigns. They have rolled out what they call AI Max. Now, we’re going to talk more about AI Max on a future episode as well, but AI Max is going to start rolling out globally, and it’s a way of being able to use AI for advanced search term matching, and what they call dynamic ad text.

Now, the other big keyword that’s come out is also keyword-less search. So moving away from advertising based on specific keywords, but more focusing on user intent. So one of the big changes is ads are now appearing in new places. The search and shopping ads can now appear directly within AI Overviews, and Google’s also testing ads within AI Mode conversations as well. So this is a massive shift.

We’ve been talking about this a little bit as well, as to whether Google and even ChatGPT were actually going to allow businesses to bid to get placed into those AI Overviews. So that’s looking like it’s likely, and the most valuable ad space is going to shift from those traditional top-of-page positions that we’re going for, to more about where can we get placements within AI-generated summaries. So again, this is where we need to think about how can we use Google’s tools to be able to create relevant advertising based on search intent.

The other big thing that I wanted to focus on was the rise of agentic AI. Now, this is where things get really interesting. Very disruptive as well, and still a lot of learning we’re going to do in this space. Google’s AI is aiming to act on behalf of users through what they call agentic AI. So they’ve got two projects set up, Project Astra and Project Mariner. So again, we’ve known about these projects for a while, but they are designed for AI to understand complex goals and actually be able to perform multi-step tasks. Think planning trips, researching products and services, or even actually going as far as booking appointments or filling in contact forms on behalf of a user.

This means that your customer might not always be a human clicking a link, but it could be an AI agent competing and completing the transactions on behalf of somebody. This is obviously a massive shift, and still trying to wrap our heads around how this could potentially work in terms of marketing. Does that mean we’re suddenly marketing to robots? Not entirely sure. But for your business, it means that the digital properties, things like your website, your booking systems, they need to be essentially getting ready to be agent ready: being structured so that machines can actually easily read and navigate your websites, and integrate with them for automated actions, essentially.

So it’s kind of like thinking of AI as a potential new type of customer. This is all very new ground, but, I don’t know, in the future we may be optimising for bot traffic. Having solid systems and solid websites that are going to allow for AI integration, and make your online processes be able to work with AI interactions as well.

So to wrap up, here are some of the key takeaways from the Google conference this week. Things that I kind of learned, things that I’m thinking about as I’m building out our marketing strategy, and things that I think you should be thinking about as well. Firstly, evolving that content strategy. Focus on becoming cited. A cited authority. Produce trustworthy content that AI can easily understand and reference. Structure the content to better answer complex questions as well that customers are actually asking. Again, I think we’ll do a whole other topic on this next week as well.

The second one is adapting your search optimisation. So remembering that we’re moving away from thinking about rigid keywords, but more trying to understand user intent, using hyper-local targeting with your search optimisation as well. Encouraging things like customer reviews, really detailed customer reviews, even trying to get customers to use certain keywords within their reviews. Ensuring, obviously, that your website’s optimal, loading quickly, a great user experience as well.

And also just thinking about how we can conduct an AI readiness audit. That’s the big one. Check how well your website, your content, your conversion process is structured for AI understanding. Make your calls to action very clear for both humans and potentially automated agents as well. It’s all very interesting, and we’re going to see how it’s all going to play out. But the changes from this week’s conference, again, I need to emphasise, they’re literally being rolled out now, with AI Mode being launched in the US. And this isn’t just a wait-and-see situation anymore. It’s an adapt-or-you-get-left-behind type of moment.

So the questions I want to be asking you today: is your business ready for a world where AI is making these purchasing decisions for your customers, on behalf of your customers? Are you even positioned to be a business that AI would even want to recommend? And if not, it’s time for you to make some of those changes to your marketing strategy, and really start to think about how Google is making these changes, and how they’re making them really fast at the moment as well, going back to some of those marketing fundamentals that we spoke about. How do you show their authority? Keep thinking about that E-E-A-T, thinking about that customer journey, because it’s changing constantly, and the way that businesses find you is constantly changing as well.

And that’s exactly why we’ve also created Done By Nine. We’re helping businesses across New Zealand and Australia navigate these AI-driven changes, and position themselves for success. If you would like to discuss with me or the rest of the team around how your business could thrive in this AI-first world, obviously you can head along to our website, donebynine.com, to learn more about how we can actually work with you and adapt your marketing strategy for the new reality. But also we run workshops all the time. We’ve got an AI-ready workshop that we’re running. You can find all the details of our workshops on our website as well, donebynine.com.

And if this episode has given you any insights, I’d love you to share it with another business owner who you think needs to be able to hear this message, and share the For The Daring Growth Seekers podcast, so that we can get on with our mission about trying to prepare as many businesses as possible for the changes that we’re going to see with the AI-driven era that we’re currently navigating. Thank you so much for joining us on another episode of For The Daring Growth Seekers. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. For The Daring Growth Seekers.