June 2025 Google Update: SEO Enters the Era of AI Citations and Lived Experience

Google rolled out its June 2025 Core Update at the end of the month, and while it followed the usual pattern of “improving content quality and relevance,” it arrived alongside something much more significant: increasing visibility of brand names and information sources in AI-generated answers, known as AI Overviews.

When AI Overviews appear at the top of the results, users often get what they need immediately, without scrolling or clicking through to any website. Recent data shows that more than half of these AI-enhanced queries result in zero-click searches.

And now, for the first time, brand names began appearing directly inside AI Overviews. Instead of just summarizing anonymous sources, Google’s AI is now testing ways to show exactly where the answer comes from, naming the brand or site underneath the statement.

While Google still recommended brand names on queries that obviously demand it (eg, “Recommend me five best fitness apps”), it didn’t do so in any obvious manner for informational queries. That effectively rendered informational and top-of-the-funnel content useless for many creators.

This Google update might restore some interest in informational once again. It signals a fundamental shift in what SEO is actually optimizing for.

Until now, the entire goal of SEO was to climb the rankings and earn a click. But if users aren’t clicking anymore, and Google is starting to name the source right inside the answer, then being mentioned becomes more valuable than being clicked.

That means the ultimate goal of SEO is now to get cited by the AI

For brands, this creates a new playing field where trust, clarity, and presence are more important than technical tricks, and there are strong indications that the second E (Experience) of Google EEAT will be the star of the show for the June 2025 update

In this new era, visibility belongs to the brand the AI trusts enough to name. And that changes everything. If you’re not the source that AI selects to summarize, your content may never be seen, no matter how well it ranks.

Why Getting Cited in AI Results Is Becoming the New SEO Endgame?

In a traditional search environment, the user journey was linear: type a query, scan results, click a blue link, land on a page. SEO operated on that premise for decades. Rank high, get seen, get clicks. But AI Overviews have broken that flow.

Now, Google synthesizes answers from multiple sources and displays them directly on the results page. And with the addition of visible brand citations, the rules of the game are changing.

If users don’t need to click, and they most often won’t, then the only way your brand earns visibility is by being cited in the AI-generated response. That means the most valuable SEO asset is no longer your rank on the page, but your authority in the model’s training and retrieval system.

And that authority is built through:

• Being consistently recognized as a trusted source in your space
• Publishing content with a clear perspective and real-world credibility
• Having structured, factual, and easy-to-parse information that the AI can pull from confidently

In this new system, links and even traffic are secondary effects. The primary goal is to be the answer, or at least part of it.

For informational, TOFU (top-of-funnel), and educational content, this completely flips the value model. In the past, that kind of content was created to capture the click and lead users down a funnel. But in AI search, TOFU content can win brand awareness and reputation at scale, even without a visit, if the AI trusts your voice enough to cite it.

Citations become the proxy for authority. And authority becomes the new currency of SEO.

So, when Google’s AI Overview says, “According to [your brand]…,” that’s the new top position. It’s not about traffic anymore. It’s about presence in the answer.

Why ‘Experience’ Took Center Stage in This Update?

If getting cited by AI is the new SEO endgame, the obvious question becomes: what kind of content gets cited?

The answer lies in Google’s own guidelines and, more importantly, in what’s been rewarded in this update. Over the past few years, Google has leaned heavily on E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) as its framework for evaluating content quality. But with the June 2025 Core Update, it’s clear that the second E(Experience) is now taking the lead.

Here’s why that shift makes sense in the age of AI-generated answers:

• AI models don’t just need facts, they need trusted context to build answers users can believe.
• When multiple sources say the same thing, Google needs to decide who to cite. And increasingly, it favors sources that reflect firsthand knowledge, not just technical accuracy.
• Generic content, especially when written by someone with no direct knowledge, is far less likely to be seen as credible.
• On the other hand, content that reflects lived experience, clarity of intent, and a human point of view becomes a strong signal of trust.

This aligns perfectly with how AI Overviews are constructed: they pull from diverse, high-trust sources, often blending perspectives. Now, the goal is to stand out as a voice that truly matters.

If two articles say the same thing, but one is written by someone who’s done it, lived it, or studied it deeply, that article is more likely to be used in the AI summary and possibly mentioned by name.

And that’s the deeper logic of this update. Once citations, not clicks, become the prize… then the kind of content that earns citations must feel real, grounded, and human.

That’s why we’re seeing this clear movement away from:

• Faceless blogs
• SEO fluff
• Thin listicles
• Outsourced filler

…toward content that carries intentionality, lived perspective, and voice. In a way, Google is using AI to push the web toward more human content, not less.

This shift toward Experience isn’t a side effect of AI searching, but a requirement of it. AI can only be as trustworthy as the sources it pulls from. And trust is built through real experience.

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What This Shift Means for SEO Agencies and Content Creators

The rise of AI Overviews and the emphasis on experience-rich content aren’t just changes to how content performs, but a call to rethink what SEO services actually are.

For years, SEO agencies have delivered value by optimizing for rankings: keyword research, backlink strategies, on-page SEO, technical fixes, and content scaling. But in a world where rankings don’t guarantee clicks, and citations in AI summaries drive the most visibility, these tactics, while still useful, are no longer enough on their own.

Agencies and content strategy teams now need to shift their focus toward making their clients "citable." That means:

• Helping clients develop a recognizable brand voice that stands out in AI summaries.
• Producing content that reflects firsthand experience or subject-matter expertise, not generic summaries.
• Structuring that content in a way that’s easy for AI to understand and quote, with schema markup, bullet points, concise explanations, and factual clarity.
• Auditing content not just for keywords and technical health, but for credibility and originality.
• Guiding clients to become actual contributors to their niche, not just content publishers.

This also changes the kinds of conversations agencies need to have with their clients. Instead of “Let’s rank for this keyword,” the new approach sounds more like:

“Let’s position your brand as a trustworthy voice worth citing when AI generates an answer.”

And that might require deeper collaboration, like interviewing internal experts, capturing customer stories, co-creating meaningful narratives, and building content from the inside out.

In other words, SEO becomes less about gaming search systems and more about helping clients become respected sources of insight and optimization for LLMs.

For content creators, it also means higher expectations. Those who can help brands tell real stories, translate expertise into accessible articles, and preserve authenticity will be more in demand than ever. This isn't the end of SEO. It’s the end of generic SEO.

How Do You Actually Create Content That Reflects Experience?

If AI is only going to cite content that demonstrates real insight and lived experience, then most SEO content, especially outsourced, templated, or keyword-stuffed copy, is already obsolete.

So, how do you avoid creating empty content? You stop treating content like a deliverable and start treating it like a process of discovery.

That means collaborating deeply with the client, not just asking for a list of target keywords or products to write about. The real value lives inside the business, in the founder’s story, in the way the team solves problems, in how customers use the product, in what they’ve learned through real-world iterations.

To unlock that, SEO writers and strategists need to start acting like investigators and translators, not just typists. Ask:

• What does your customer misunderstand that you wish they didn’t?
• What have you seen in the field that nobody talks about?
• What did you learn the hard way when you built this product or service?
• What do you do differently and why?

These aren’t just good storytelling prompts. They are the raw material for real, unique content that:

• Demonstrates first-hand insight
• Carries a distinct point of view
• Teaches or clarifies something meaningful
• Helps Google’s AI (and users) understand who you are and what you know

Instead of competing to publish yet another “10 benefits of [topic]” post, compete to contribute to the actual understanding of your niche. Position the brand not just as a vendor, but as a thinking entity that knows its field, cares about it, and has something real to say.

You don’t get that from spinning up 500 words through ChatGPT or hiring the cheapest freelancer to fill your blog.
You get that through dialogue, collaboration, synthesis, talking to the people inside the company, and turning their lived knowledge into clear, structured, accessible writing.

Because in this new landscape, it’s not about who publishes the most content. The so-called generative engine optimization will be about who says something worth remembering and worth citing.

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