For many years, the name of the game in SEO was optimizing keyword rank and engagement in Google. In 2025, any SEO professionals sticking to that approach – no matter how effective they are in addressing it – are losing ground.
The new SERPs are about much more than keywords; they’ve evolved alongside a fast-changing buying journey that now incorporates AI content, social media content, video content, industry forms, and different expectations of different purchase stages.
In this post, I’ll examine how the SERPs have changed, how the modern buyer’s journey looks in 2025, and some strategic recommendations for how to optimize and measure your SEO accordingly.
How the SERPs have changed in recent years
Let’s check out a couple of visuals. First, the SERP in, say, 2019:
And some screenshots of the SERP today:
At a high level, the SERPs have shifted from simple keyword matching to AI-driven results, including AI Overviews, visual search, and interactive search experiences. Google is also pulling in related content from social media channels (Reddit, TikTok, YouTube) and industry forums, showing that contextual relevance and broad-based authority is what today’s users are engaging with.
Because so much of the content in today’s SERP is designed to keep users on the page, SEOs who are clinging to the old metrics are misaligned with today’s reality: SEO is about building brand presence, not impressions, and referral clicks.
The 2025 buyer’s journey
The old SERP reflected the old buyer’s journey, with the following behavior at the enduring stages of Awareness, Consideration, and Decision:
People in the awareness stage (brand-unaware, problem-aware) searched for broad, high-level information before moving toward specific products or solutions.
At the consideration stage, people would actively research options, compare products, and seek out reviews.
In the decision stage, people would spend time on product pages, read detailed specs, compare pricing, and look for discount codes before buying.
Every one of these stages required at least one separate search.
Today, the stages persist, but they’re bleeding into each other thanks in large part to heavily personalized, AI-powered SERP content that prioritizes context and intent.
At the awareness stage in 2025, AI-generated overviews, featured snippet boxes, and search suggestions give users instant answers - no need for multiple searches. Users are exposed to more personalized recommendations (influenced by search and behavior history) early in their journey, leading to a shortened path to decision-making.
Some of today’s users skip the consideration stage entirely, or combine it with the decision stage, if a compelling AI-generated summary, influencer recommendation, or strong SERP feature pushes them directly into purchasing readiness.
Others dive into research rabbit holes, consuming multiple content formats (videos, long-form articles, user-generated content) before making a choice.
The rise of zero-click behavior stems from AI SERP listings and user behavior that responds differently to LLM and AI – with those tools, users are more conversational and iterative. They are much more likely to use LLMs (like Gemini) to drill down and traverse different stages in the same session, using follow-up queries in a single “conversation” versus a new search for each next thought.
For instance, an LLM search journey might look like this:
Either way – whether compressed on the SERP itself or more meandering and multi-platform – user behavior is drastically different than it was a few years ago.
How to optimize your approach for the new buyer’s journey
Even with all the changes, the fundamental levers of SEO – content, technical SEO, and UX – are fairly static. But the way to approach them has changed.
On the content front, it’s vital to create multimedia content (video, interactive tools, AI-friendly information that can get pulled into summaries) that aligns with each stage of the buying journey.
On the technical side, elements like site speed and mobile indexing are still important, but initiatives like implementing structured data to appear in rich results, Core Web Vitals compliance, and voice search optimization must be part of the picture as well.
If you’re already optimizing for UX and conversion optimization with SERP-friendly landing pages with clear CTAs, that’s a great start. I highly recommend adding interactive elements to your site to increase engagement as well. And especially these days, as user behavior undergoes its most profound shift since users migrated from Yahoo to Google, SEOs must have a system of tracking user behavior to refine their content and search strategies.
How to measure performance in today’s SERPs
The new buyer’s journey carries different KPIs. I break them down as follows:
Awareness: Impressions, SERP feature variety, Click-Through Rate, brand visibility/prominence, site sessions
Consideration: Clicks, engaged sessions, top-of-funnel/middle-of-funnel lead conversions, brand engagement, engagement rate, time on site
Decision: Assisted conversions, purchases
While most of those metrics may look familiar, they must be supplemented with tools for tracking new SERP features, zero-click searches, and engagement. Here are my preferred new metrics to track – and why they matter in the new SERP experience:
Qualified Audience: When searchers move from Awareness to Consideration, they’re typically evaluating multiple options. Tracking how often they click through and remain on your site indicates stronger interest.
Lead Capture: Offers or content upgrades can help capture leads early, giving you an opportunity to nurture users toward a purchase.
Bounce Rate and Time on Site: Engagement metrics can reveal whether your content answers user queries – and, in turn, whether you’ve shown an understanding of audience intent. If your bounce rate is high or time on site is short, you may need to refine on-page elements to match user expectations.
Bottom-Funnel Activity: Tracking which content or queries contribute to final conversions helps prove ROI for SEO efforts.
Revenue Impact: While awareness and consideration matter, actual sales or sign-ups confirm that your search strategy effectively guides users through the full journey.
Tracking these new metrics isn’t as straightforward as more established SERP-focused metrics. Among the tools and techniques, I recommend:
Multi-Touch Attribution: Use a tool or a method (like GA4’s path analysis) to see how different channels and pages assist conversion. This means you won’t settle for giving all credit to the “last click”; instead, you’ll see how top/middle-funnel activities contribute.
CRM Integration: If you have a longer sales cycle, integrating your CRM with analytics tools can tie SERP-driven leads to final deals. This allows you to track the entire funnel more accurately.
Unique Landing Page Tracking: For specific campaigns, using dedicated landing pages (with unique URLs) allows you to cleanly measure how well those pages convert.
Old, familiar tools like GSC, Ahrefs/SEMrush, and GA can be useful for measuring performance in today’s buyer’s journey as well.
Use Google Search Console to measure SERP presence and performance
Brand Engagement: This can include social follows, content shares, or brand searches increasing over time
Impression Share over Time: Track trends and see if your impression share is increasing (especially for new content topics)
Coverage of Keyword Variants: Track not just your main keywords but also related, long-tail, or question-based searches where Featured Snippets often appear
Use Ahrefs/SEMRush for zero- or low-click keyword research
Keyword Segmentation: Group queries into top-of-funnel vs. middle-of-funnel categories to identify which topics drive engagement
Zero-/Low-Click Keywords: Identify which queries frequently yield zero-click searches
SERP Feature Reporting: Identify which SERP features you’re already ranking for and discover new snippet opportunities (like “People Also Ask,” “Local Pack,” etc.)
Use Google Analytics for engagement and conversion tracking
Event Tracking: Track events that measure lead-gen success. Monitor bounce rate, average session duration, and pages per session as proxies for engagement
Funnel Analysis: Set up conversion goals to see which search queries or pages drive the most engaged sessions, and use funnel visualization to see where drop-offs occur
The upshot: back in the day, reporting on rankings, impressions, and clicks was often good enough. Rankings mean something very different now, sometimes eventual customers don’t register a single click, and users are engaging with brands across a far greater range of platforms – so your reporting has to evolve as well.
Closing thoughts
As if all of this evolution weren’t enough, the rate of change in today’s user behavior is only accelerating (I haven’t even talked about the migration of users from Google-based search to LLM search). Search is more personalized and complex than it’s ever been, so a huge part of an SEO’s mandate must be staying on top of trends and updating strategies and KPIs to keep pace.
Article by
Kelly Ayres
Kelly Ayres is a rare marketer with an MBA, a master's in clinical psychology, and over 15 years of experience driving growth and awareness for a range of brands. Her SEO approach is rooted in a rich analysis of user intent that no GPT tool can replicate. Along with producing and executing growth-friendly SEO strategies, she contributes frequently to industry podcasts and webinars from her home in New Jersey.
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