Google Search Central Live at Zurich’s HQ.
Practical SEO insights for 2025 … and into 2026.
What Google reinforced
The foundations of SEO haven’t changed.
And in an AI-driven world, they matter more than ever.
Last week, I had the opportunity to visit Google’s European HQ in Zurich for Search Central Live which is an in-person event focused on how search is evolving and what website owners need to understand as AI becomes more visible in Google results.
There were around 250 people in the room, including SEOs and technical specialists from across Europe. I came away with several takeaways that are especially relevant for small business owners who rely on their website which I wanted to share here.
Good SEO is still GEO
One thing that came through strongly throughout the day was a focus on fundamentals, not trends, shortcuts, or panic-driven reactions to AI.
Despite all the new terminology floating around (AI SEO, GEO, AEO), Google’s message was pretty clear and practical:
AI doesn’t replace SEO foundations. It builds on them.
Search systems still rely on understanding pages clearly, i.e. what they’re about, who they’re for, and how useful they are. That applies across traditional search results, AI Overviews and Discover.
Several themes kept reappearing across different talks and the Q&A sessions:
- Page-level clarity matters more than ever
- Site-level signals take time to build, but are worth investing in
- Technical fixes alone don’t compensate for weak or unclear content
- Building a recognisable, trustworthy brand is always a strong long-term move
One slide summed this up well: both page-level and site-level signals matter but page-level improvements are often the easiest place to start.
For small businesses, that’s important. You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. Focus on making your key pages clearer, more useful, and easier to understand by both people and Google.
👉 https://spotlightlane.co.uk/seo-foundations-for-your-website/
Done is better than perfect (even for SEO)
This one hit close to home. As someone who is a perfectionist when I’m designing and writing content, I know how easy it is to stall while waiting for the “perfect” version of your website or the “final” version of your content.
But Google can only evaluate what exists today, not what’s sitting in your drafts.
Practical advice shared during the sessions included:
- Start by crawling what you already have
- Fix obvious issues before chasing advanced tactics
- Improve clarity before adding complexity
- Focus on usefulness, not hype
If content is created purely to chase an algorithm, it usually needs rewriting after the next update anyway. So, in a nutshell write for your audience.
And while Google updates often cause panic in SEO circles, sites that follow the guidelines and focus on users usually don’t need to react dramatically.
Why AI doesn’t replace SEO, but it does change how we approach it
AI-generated answers are now a normal part of search behaviour, and that understandably makes people nervous.
What Google reinforced is that helpful, well-structured website content is still one of the most valuable assets a business can invest in. AI Overviews and other search features tend to draw from pages that are clear, well organised, trustworthy, and focused on answering real questions.
If your site structure makes it hard for Google to understand what you offer, or your content never quite gets to the point, you’re less likely to appear, whether in AI features or traditional results.
You don’t need to rewrite everything.
Strengthen what you already have.
Google Search Console update
One announcement from the day was the rollout of a Time Granularity Selector in Google Search Console.
You can now switch between ‘Daily’, ‘Weekly’ and ‘Monthy’ performance views, rather than being locked into daily data.
For business owners, this makes it much easier to understand what’s really going on. Daily data can be noisy, especially around weekends or during one-off events, and it’s easy to read too much into short-term dips or spikes.
Zooming out helps you spot genuine trends, so you can make calmer, more confident decisions about what to focus on next.
Shopping and product updates
Part of the event covered developments in shopping and product search.
While this isn’t central to most of my clients, it’s worth noting if you sell physical products. Google is prioritising complete, well-structured product information, supported by clear imagery and accurate Merchant data.
Structured data came up in this context, but it wasn’t positioned as a shortcut, more to support clarity where products are involved.
What Search Central Live reinforced for my clients
Spending the day at Google’s Zurich HQ for Search Central Live was a great opportunity to hear directly from the Search team about how things are evolving (and to see a little of Zurich, which was beautiful).
The event reinforced that the advice I give clients – which is to focus on clarity, strong foundations and be consistent – remains the right approach, even as AI becomes more visible in search results.
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