That means that the Gemini app is going to gain more functionalities in a bid to make it more ubiquitous as the interface between potential website visitors and Google Search, a significant departure from interfacing with the search box.
This is something that publishers and SEOs need to think really hard about as we enter 2025. Google is focusing on increasing user adoption of the Gemini app. If that happens then that will mean more people interfacing with that instead of the Google Search box.
Universal Assistant (Project Astra)
Another thing that the SEO industry seriously needs to consider is Google’s universal assistant that’s code-named Project Astra. The Deep Mind co-founder is reported to have discussed their Universal Assistant, which what Project Astra is referred as.
He’s quoted as saying that it can:
“…seamlessly operate over any domain, any modality or any device.”
What that word “domain” means is that it can function across any subject, like answering questions about healthcare, directions, entertainment, over any topic. The part about modality is a reference to text, voice, images, and video.
This is a serious situation for SEO. Google’s new Deep Research agentic search is an example of a disruptive technology that may have a negative impact on the web ecosystem.
One of the Google Deep Mind researchers cited as working on Project Astra is also listed as a co-inventor on a patent about controlling interactive AI agents through multi-modal inputs.
The patent is titled, Controlling Interactive Agents Using Multi-Modal Inputs. The description of the invention is:
“Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for controlling agents. In particular, an interactive agent can be controlled based on multi-modal inputs that include both an observation image and a natural language text sequence.”
That’s just one of dozens of researchers cited as having worked on Project Astra. Astra is another one of the projects that Google is working on that replaces the traditional search box as people’s point of contact for interacting with web data.
Takeaway About Google’s Plans For 2025
The takeaway from all this is that publishers and SEOs need to take a break from focusing solely on the search box and give some time to considering what’s going on in multimodal AI. In 2025, AI is not just AI Overviews. AI is Gemini, it’s new features coming to Gemini and possibly the release of features developed from Project Astra, a multimodal universal agent. Agentic Search is already here in the form of Gemini Deep Research. All of these are a departure from the traditional search box as the point of contact between users, Google and websites.
Read the report on CNBC
Google CEO Pichai tells employees to gear up for big 2025: ‘The stakes are high’
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