Navigating the Future of Search

Key Insights from Google’s Deep Dive Asia Pacific 2025 (Day 1)

This week, Google’s Search Central Live: Deep Dive Asia Pacific brought together marketers, developers, and SEO professionals from across the region for a three-day exploration of how Search is evolving in 2025. Day 1 opened with a packed agenda led by Google’s Search Relations team and industry experts, offering clear signals on where organic search is heading and how we can adapt.

If you’re a solo marketer juggling multiple channels, these insights are especially relevant. Google is undergoing a transformative shift, but the core principles of SEO still hold. Here’s what you need to know from Day 1.

“SEO has died every month since 1997... and yet, here we are.” - Gary Illyes

The Search Landscape in 2025: A Moment of Transformation

Search has always been a moving target. But in 2025, we’ve hit an inflection point. Generative AI is changing not just how users search, but what they expect to see in return. From multimodal inputs to personalised experiences, Google is adapting rapidly to meet these needs.

According to Liz Reid, Google’s VP of Search, “Search is never a solved problem.” With over five trillion searches annually and more users relying on voice, image, and conversational queries, the future of search is increasingly diverse, intuitive, and dynamic.

Key changes shaping Search today:

• Multimodal inputs: Users are searching with images, voice, and natural language—all in one session.
• Personalisation: Search is becoming more tailored, with AI predicting intent and offering inspiration even before users ask.
• Content diversity: Forums, UGC video, and authentic perspectives are prioritised in results.
• Visual search: Google Lens grew 65% year-on-year, with commercial intent behind many of those queries.

Generative AI and the SERP: What’s Changing (and What’s Not)

AI is deeply embedded in Google’s infrastructure, from understanding queries to ranking results. What’s new in 2025 is how AI surfaces that information, through features like AI Overviews and AI Mode, which expand the user’s journey with summarised insights and follow-up questions.

Importantly, these AI features do not require separate optimisation efforts. As Gary Illyes put it, “If you know how search works, you will understand how AI features work.” Good SEO remains good SEO.

That said, a shift in mindset is needed:

• From rankings to presence: Think beyond the top 10 links. The SERP is now a layered experience, including AI summaries, rich media, people-also-ask boxes, and social signals.
• From keywords to entities: Embrace entity-first content design. Use schema markup and ensure your brand is connected to recognised concepts and categories.
• From formats to flexibility: Videos, images, structured data, and community engagement all contribute to discoverability.

Crawling, Robots.txt, and Crawl Budget: Still Essential in an AI World

Despite all the buzz around AI, foundational SEO remains just as critical. Googlebot still underpins both traditional and AI-enhanced experiences. Understanding crawl behaviour is key to ensuring your content is discoverable and indexable.

Highlights from the crawl-focused sessions:

• Crawl budget is driven by both crawl rate limit (how much Google can crawl) and crawl demand (how much Google wants to crawl).
• If your site has fewer than 1,000 pages, crawl budget is rarely a concern, but issues like duplicate URLs, filtering parameters, or calendar pages can burn valuable resources.
• HTTP status codes have different impacts:
  • 2xx = consumes crawl budget.
  • 3xx = consumes per redirect hop.
  • 4xx = doesn’t affect crawl budget but impacts indexing.
  • 5xx = slows crawling and consumes budget.
• Robots.txt is evolving from simply restricting access to influencing purpose-driven crawling, especially with AI content usage in mind.

Notably, Google confirmed they will not support a proposed LLM.txt standard to control AI training, citing limitations in effectiveness and potential for misuse. Instead, robots.txt will likely carry future directives for AI usage preferences.

Automation, AI, and Organic Discovery

Several lightning talks explored how AI is being integrated into content strategies and workflows. A key takeaway: AI should support your strategy, not define it. Whether you’re experimenting with content creation tools or refining processes with automation, keep human expertise at the core.

Insights included:

• Maturity model for AI integration:
  • Experiment (low-risk tests like blog drafts)
  • Operationalise (dashboards, scalable workflows)
  • Strategise (forecasting, roadmap planning)
• Content that wins in 2025 is grounded in experience. As one speaker put it: “The first ‘E’ in E-E-A-T stands for Experience - and that’s no coincidence.”
• Design for discoverability: Think presence, not just ranking. Structure your content to be visible across formats and surfaces.

What This Means for You: Key Takeaways

“If you know how search works, you will understand how AI features work.” - Gary Illyes

1. Don’t chase the algorithm, focus on quality. AI features are built on the same principles as Search. Stick to clear, helpful content grounded in expertise.
2. Review your crawl efficiency. Remove deadweight URLs, fix errors, and improve navigation to make the most of Googlebot’s attention.
3. Diversify your presence. Use schema, images, video, and user engagement to show up in more places across the SERP.
4. Keep humans in the loop. Whether using AI to scale or test content, human insight and lived experience are essential for relevance and trust.
5. SEO is not dead. Despite ongoing changes, it remains a vital and evolving channel. As Gary Illyes joked, “SEO has died every month since 1997... and yet, here we are.”

Looking Ahead

Google Search is evolving fast, and Day 1 of Deep Dive Asia Pacific 2025 made one thing clear: the fundamentals of good SEO still apply, but success now requires broader visibility, technical fluency, and a more flexible approach to content strategy.

For solo marketers managing organic performance, this is a great time to review how your website is structured, how your content is being crawled, and where your visibility could grow.

Need a fresh perspective on your SEO strategy? Book a free SEO Health Check with Altitude Search and start scaling new heights in 2025.