Microsoft and Google both issued new guidance in 2025 stating that traditional SEO principles remain essential for visibility in AI search results. The companies say that even with rapid adoption of AI search tools, content quality, structure and metadata determine whether pages appear inside AI summaries, chat-based answers or classic search listings.
Google said that AI Overviews do not replace ranking systems. Instead they rely on the same signals used in organic search. These include clarity, relevance, structured data and page quality.
AI Overviews now reach more than 2 billion monthly users worldwide. This scale means content that lacks structure or freshness is less likely to be cited or surfaced.
Google also reminded publishers that outdated content performs poorly when AI models retrieve and summarize information.
Microsoft reported that 58 percent of Copilot answers rely on web results that follow strong SEO fundamentals. Pages with clear headings, accurate metadata and updated information appear more often in AI-driven summaries.
The company said AI systems struggle with old content. Low-quality or outdated pages are less likely to be ranked or summarized.
This reinforces a key message. AI search has changed consumption. But the foundation for visibility has not changed.
As AI usage rises, the cost of stale content becomes higher. Outdated pages lose ranking in both Google and LLM systems. They also fail to appear in AI summaries, answer panels or group-chat retrievals.
This is why publishers and businesses now invest in improving ChatGPT ranking by rewriting old articles.
Updated content performs better because AI models can interpret it more reliably. Clean structure, fresh data, and updated metadata improve chances of being retrieved, cited and clicked.
A strong rewriting strategy protects against ranking loss and improves performance across both search and AI ecosystems.
Expert View from Anatolii Ulitovskyi, CEO at UNmiss
“Both Google and Microsoft are telling the same story. AI search depends on clean structure and updated content. In our audits we saw rewritten pages gain 20 to 40 percent more visibility in AI summaries compared with unchanged pages. Rewriting and refreshing older content is the most effective way to stay competitive in the AI-first search era.”
