Google’s 2025 I/O announcements made one thing brutally clear: Search is no longer about discovery. It is about answers.

NB: This is an article from The Hotels Network, one of our Expert Partners

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Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode are designed to keep users inside the platform, serve up synthesized responses, and eliminate clicks to external sites entirely. This is the future of search and it is already here.

THE RISE OF AI MODE

AI Mode is a fully immersive research assistant, pulling data, summarizing, and answering questions directly inside the interface. No blue links. No referral traffic. And fewer paths that lead travelers to hotel websites.

Even when Google links out, the destination is often a Google Business Profile. Many times, there are no clickable links at all, only naked URLs or AI summaries. The goal is very clear: to reduce friction for users, keep them in Google’s ecosystem, and monetize the attention.

THE ORGANIC TRAFFIC CLIFF

SEO professionals see where this is headed. Organic click-through rates are declining. The shift is no longer theoretical. AI-generated responses answer user intent directly, and fewer travelers click out to hotel sites unless they already know the brand.

Google insists that AI Mode will still send traffic to the web. Sundar Pichai says these will be “higher-intent clicks” that convert better. But many in the industry remain skeptical. If most questions are answered inside AI Mode, organic discovery for hotels will contract.

FROM RANKING TO RECOGNITION

The playbook is changing. It is no longer about ranking in traditional search results. It is about recognition by AI.

AI systems do reward keyword optimization. They reward familiarity, authority, and trust signals from across the web. Only a fraction of what these systems cite comes from your own website. Much of the training data lives on third-party sites, podcasts, reviews, LinkedIn profiles, Reddit threads, and external media mentions.

AI search is about signals and most of those signals are off-site.

PAID TRAFFIC IS THE NEW FRONT DOOR

Google’s business model remains advertising. As organic real estate contracts, paid inventory expands. AI Overviews and AI Mode will introduce more embedded ad placements, AI-powered Performance Max options, and monetized recommendations.

Just as metasearch eroded organic hotel visibility a decade ago, AI-first search is replicating the pattern. Paid exposure will be the clearest path to visibility for many brands.

Read the full article at The Hotels Network