AI search isn’t directly *replacing* SEO in Australia as of December 2025, but it’s fundamentally changing how search engines like Google deliver results, shifting the focus from keyword-based ranking to direct answer provision. This means optimising for featured snippets and conversational queries is becoming increasingly important alongside traditional SEO.
Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), now widely available to Australian users, utilises large language models to create AI Overviews – summaries generated from multiple sources. These overviews appear at the top of many search results, answering the user’s query directly. The system identifies relevant web pages based on their content’s semantic relevance to the query, not solely on keyword matches. Google’s ranking systems still consider traditional SEO signals, but the AI overview prioritises information it deems most helpful, often drawing from sites with structured data (Schema markup) and clear, concise content. Currently, Google is testing attribution models for sources used in AI Overviews, with a focus on providing more visibility to original content creators. In 2026, Google is expected to further refine its AI ranking signals, potentially incorporating user interaction data (e.g., whether users find the AI Overview helpful) as a ranking factor. Australian privacy laws, such as the Privacy Act 1988, influence how Google handles user data used to personalise AI search results.
Essentially, AI search functions by synthesising information from across the web to provide direct answers, while still leveraging underlying SEO principles to discover and assess content.
