SEO & AI Trends to Watch: April 2025 Updates, SEMrush Enterprise, and CTR Insights

Search is evolving again. With new AI-powered platforms entering the chat (hello, Microsoft Copilot Search), ongoing shifts in Google’s click-through landscape, and game-changing tools like SEMrush Enterprise rolling out to teams, April 2025 is already shaping up to be a pivotal month for SEO professionals.

Here’s what you need to know.

AI-Powered Search: New Engines, Features, and Format Shifts

Microsoft Enters the Chat with Copilot Search

Microsoft has officially launched Copilot Search, positioning Bing as an “AI-powered search and answer engine.” While ChatGPT Search has been dominating headlines, Microsoft’s new product aims to provide guided search journeys that blend AI insights with traditional results.

They’ve also begun testing shopping results directly within Copilot Answers, hinting at a future where transactional queries are just as AI-driven as informational ones.

Google Adds AI Summaries to Business Profiles

Google is now automatically generating summaries of businesses within Knowledge Panels using AI. Unlike review summaries, these are overviews of the business itself—often pulled from a mix of web content and Google’s own machine learning models. These summaries are appearing more frequently and may affect how brands are perceived in search.

CTR Drops as AI Overviews Expand

Contributor: Justin Klanica

Search Engine Journal’s latest data confirms a trend we’ve all been sensing. AI Overviews (AIOs) are growing, and they’re reshaping how users interact with SERPs.

Key Data Points:

• 42.5% of Google searches now include an AI Overview.
• CTR for top-ranking results on informational queries has dropped 7.31 percentage points on desktop.
• The impact varies by industry:
  • Law & Politics saw an increase in CTR (+7.39 pts).
  • Science and Careers saw significant CTR drops despite a surge in demand.
• Mobile CTR trends are reversing: while desktop sees decline, mobile CTR has increased by 1.81 points.

What This Means for Brands:

1. High rankings don’t guarantee high traffic anymore. Visibility within AI Overviews and pixel depth on page now play a much larger role.
2. Mobile-first strategy is essential. With CTR improving on mobile, optimizing for mobile experience and engagement is more critical than ever.
3. Your industry matters. We’re tailoring SEO strategies based on sector-specific CTR and demand changes.
4. Think beyond rankings. We’re tracking not just if you rank, but how your results appear, how far users scroll, and how your content performs inside the evolving SERP layout.

SEMrush Enterprise Is Coming: What You Can Expect

Contributor: Travis Matt

The SEO team at 829 is getting access to SEMrush Enterprise—a major upgrade from the standard version we’ve used in the past. Here’s a quick breakdown of what it brings:

Key New Features:

Data Hub

All site data—search, competitive, content, and technical—integrated into one dashboard. Plus:

• Share of voice tracking
• Hierarchical keyword data
• Third-party data integrations (GSC, GA4, etc.)

AI-Powered Workflows

Automation meets strategy with new features that include:

• “What Has Happened” (market/algorithm impact analysis)
• Competitor performance insights
• Content brief generation, optimization, A/B testing, and more

Business-Focused Reporting

Custom metrics and visualizations to bring more clarity and flexibility to client-facing reporting.

Collaboration Toolkit

An in-platform communication and project management tool (yes, like Asana or ClickUp) that also allows collaboration with Semrush’s vetted network of SEO professionals.

This expanded toolkit will allow our team to move faster, reduce manual work, and offer even deeper strategic insights for our clients.

Stay tuned for more training and team-specific documentation as we begin integrating these new capabilities.

829 Tips and Reminders

• Check the team training calendar for your next internal presentation.
• Writing for Search Engine Scoop? View the Scoops schedule to see your week.
• Continue collaborating on the Content Development Project from Q4 2024—we’ll revisit this at the next QPD.