2025 Wrapped: How Search Changed and How Pi Built for What Comes Next

What’s new in Pi: 2025 product breakthroughs

As conversational and AI-driven search accelerated throughout the year, it became clear that tracking traditional rankings alone no longer provides a complete picture. Understanding performance now requires insight into where brands appear, how they are cited, and how they perform across both traditional search results and AI-powered experiences.

This shift guided Pi’s product direction in 2025 as we expanded the platform into a single, unified system for traditional and AI search intelligence.

AI and LLM visibility across the full search landscape

In 2025, Pi introduced AI and LLM visibility as a core capability of the platform. Rather than treating AI search as a separate workflow, we integrated it directly into the same market, brand, and domain intelligence used for SEO.

Teams can now understand how their brand and competitors appear in AI-powered answers, which domains influence those answers, and how conversational queries shape discovery across topics. Brand mentions and sentiment can be analyzed in context, providing a more complete view of visibility across AI and traditional environments.

This brings SEO, AEO, and GEO insights together in one platform so teams can identify opportunity without switching tools or losing context.

AI Mode for conversational search analysis

AI Mode, released in September, allows teams to analyze conversational search results directly within Pi for the US and UK. Using familiar workflows, users can see how AI-generated answers are structured, which sources are cited, and where their brand appears.

This makes conversational search analysis part of everyday reporting and decision-making rather than an experimental side channel.

Google AI Overviews tracking

As Google expanded AI Overviews across SERPs in 2025, Pi delivered dedicated tracking to help teams understand where these results appear and how they influence visibility.

Customers can monitor included SERP features, follow conversational query patterns, and measure AI-driven changes with the same rigor applied to traditional rankings.

A smarter Visibility Index for global and AI-influenced search

Our Visibility Index was upgraded to reflect the growing complexity of search. The updated model provides a unified view of performance across global markets and AI-influenced result types, allowing brands and categories to be benchmarked more accurately.

Simplified navigation for faster insight

To support these expanded capabilities, we streamlined Pi’s navigation into six clear sections. This makes it easier to find tools, analyze data, and report on insights as search workflows continue to evolve.

The five forces redefining search

With these foundations in place, we brought our perspective to the SEO community in our final webinar of the year. The session explored the forces shaping search today and why 2026 will reward teams that prepare now rather than react later.

1. FAST content and the rise of video-led discovery

Video has become one of the most consistent ways brands surface across search experiences. Not because it is polished, but because it demonstrates first-hand experience, authenticity, and trust.

FAST content brings these signals together through human presence, social distribution, and usefulness. The key takeaway is that video works best as part of a connected ecosystem, not as a standalone asset. Videos should answer specific questions, live within topical clusters, include transcripts and structured data, and be distributed socially.

2. SEO best practice still matters

Despite rapid change, the fundamentals of SEO remain critical. AI systems rely on the same principles that search engines always have.

Content must be crawlable, properly indexed, and structured clearly enough to be understood without ambiguity. Structured data plays a key role by making facts retrievable and easy to synthesize, while trust signals determine whether content is safe to use in AI-generated answers.

Optimizing for AI visibility starts with executing SEO best practice properly.

3. Multimodal search raises expectations

Search is becoming more visual and interactive, particularly in ecommerce. AI-powered experiences such as virtual try-on and 3D product views allow users to evaluate products directly within the SERP.

This shifts value away from raw traffic and toward intent satisfaction. Brands that support richer interaction can deliver more qualified traffic and stronger downstream performance, even as total clicks decline.

4. The post-traffic economy is already here

Throughout 2025, many teams saw declining clicks even when visibility remained strong. As AI increasingly resolves intent directly, traditional traffic metrics no longer tell the full story.

Measurement must evolve to include visibility, impressions, topic-level performance, brand mentions, and citation presence within AI-powered experiences. Success is no longer defined by a single visit, but by influence across the full conversation.

5. SEO at the center of a holistic strategy

As discovery becomes more fragmented, SEO moves closer to the center of brand strategy. Your website remains the source of truth that feeds AI systems, supports trust, and enables accurate synthesis.

Winning search strategies now unite traditional SEO, AI visibility, content, video, and technical foundations into one connected approach.

Looking ahead to 2026

The forces reshaping search are not slowing down. Conversational discovery, AI-assisted decision-making, and evolving metrics will continue to redefine how success is measured.

In 2026, the advantage will belong to teams that understand the full conversation, not just individual queries, and have the data to act before opportunity passes.

At Pi Datametrics, we will continue building for that future.

Watch the webinar on demand or book a demo to see how Pi helps teams track visibility across traditional and AI search in one platform.