How Google Search Works in 2025

If you’re relying on SEO to drive traffic, you'll want to get up to speed on the latest Google search algorithm changes. It’s not just about keywords and backlinks anymore. The algorithm is evolving faster than most agencies can keep up, and the rules that applied even six months ago might already be outdated.

In 2025, Google’s algorithm is guided by experience signals, multi-modal search behaviour, and verified authority, which is all driven by AI systems that understand your content the way a human expert would. That means NZ businesses need to be sharper, more strategic, and far more consistent.

If you want to get a head start with your SEO & google search rankings then click here to request a free site audit, seo strategy and estimate from our team.

The 2025 Google Search Landscape

As of April 2025, Google processes over 120,000 queries every second. And thanks to AI advances, most of those searches are now interpreted contextually — not just through keywords, but through tone, media format, and author reputation.

If you haven’t updated your content approach since 2023, you’ve probably already noticed a sharp decline in traffic. Here's what’s changed:

Major 2025 Updates You Need to Know

March 2025 Core Update

This was the biggest quality filter in how Google search works in 2025 since Helpful Content. Sites using bulk AI content without human review were pushed down hard. Pages demonstrating real-world product usage or first-hand insights performed significantly better.

Project Omega (Jan 2025)

Omega is Google’s new AI-powered engine that interprets text, image, and video in a single query. It now powers 85% of all searches, especially for visual questions and how-to guides.

EEAT 2.0 (Feb 2025)

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness are still critical, but now, contextual authority matters more than your domain name. For local searches, verified business status is a ranking factor for over 40% more queries compared to last year.

How Google Processes a Search Query in 2025

Let’s break down the path your website content takes inside Google’s ecosystem, and what actually determines who shows up where.

1. Crawling: The Smart Allocation Era

Googlebot has become ruthless in how it uses crawl resources. Sites with active updates and diverse sources get scanned more often. Stale pages that haven’t changed in over six months often get deprioritised, or skipped altogether.

Content is now quality-checked before full indexing. If your page lacks citations, depth or clarity, it may never be fully indexed in the first place.

2. Indexing: Tiered by Trust

Google’s new index is layered. First-hand experience ranks highest, followed by expert analysis, with aggregated summaries coming last.

Video and image content are now fully cross-referenced with your written content. A strong product video can lift your written guide, and vice versa. The more consistent and connected your media, the better your content performs.

3. Ranking: Welcome to Gemini AI

Gemini is Google’s real-time, AI-powered ranking brain. It favours sites that provide consistent value across multiple formats, and not just long blogs, but well-structured guides, media galleries, and verified author signals.

2025 Ranking Factors to Watch:

• Contextual Authority Score: How comprehensively your site covers a topic

• Multi-Modal Engagement: Pages that combine readable copy, visuals, and video now win more complex queries

• Verification Signals: Author credentials, business registrations, and consistent social proof are all used as trust signals

How Google Search Works in 2025: What Works — And What Doesn’t

Winning Strategies

• Content Hubs with 10 or more interlinked articles covering a core topic

• First-Hand Expertise presented in real, test-based content

• Dynamic Updates: Refreshing content monthly improves visibility more than ever

Dead Weight Tactics

• Generic roundups and outsourced blog spam

• Product pages that only repeat spec sheets

• Local listings without real engagement (think: no new reviews, no updates, no photos)

Preparing for What’s Next

Google is already testing two major changes for late 2025:

• Real-Time Indexing for some query types, where results update constantly as new information becomes available

• Personalised Authority Scoring, using your professional background, public bios, and third-party mentions to influence rankings

That means your brand, your team, and your business footprint online are now part of your SEO strategy.

Need to Rethink Your SEO?

At TopTalent, our 2025 SEO audits go far beyond keyword rankings and page speed. We assess your site against the same frameworks used by Google’s quality raters so you know where you stand and what needs to change.

Want to rank higher without chasing every trend? Let’s talk about future-proofing your SEO the smart way.

What is Web Design?

If you're investing in marketing but not seeing results, your website might be letting you down. Strong web design is often the missing piece. It shapes how people interact with your brand, how search engines interpret your content, and how likely someone is to trust and engage with your business.

When we talk about web design in 2025, we’re not talking about pretty colours and trendy fonts. We're talking about the user experience, interface logic, responsiveness, accessibility, and how well your website guides people through a digital journey. That’s what separates a brochure site from a real business asset.

Get a free web design estimate for your business right here.

What is Web Design?

Web design is the practice of planning and designing the structure, visuals, interface, and overall experience of a website. It blends graphic design, user interface (UI), user experience (UX), branding, layout strategy, and front-end performance to create a site that is not only visually compelling but also functional and intuitive.

In a business context, good web design helps build trust, remove friction, and convert interest into action. It allows your brand to show up credibly in an increasingly digital-first environment, across devices and platforms.

Why UI and UX matter more than ever

User interface (UI) is how your site looks and feels. It's the layout, typography, colour palette, and design system that gives your site its personality. User experience (UX), on the other hand, is how it works — how easily someone can find what they’re looking for, navigate between pages, and complete key actions like submitting a form or making a purchase.

Modern customers make decisions quickly. If your interface is unintuitive or your layout is confusing, users will bounce — and you’ll never even know they were interested. Exceptional UX removes that guesswork. It gives your visitors exactly what they want, in as few steps as possible, in a way that feels seamless and professional.

What are the different types of web design?

There are several approaches to web design, each serving a different type of business or objective:

Static Design: Fixed-layout websites with minimal interactivity, often used for simple brochure sites.

Dynamic Design: Websites with interactive features, content management systems (like WordPress), and elements that change based on user input or behaviour.

Responsive Web Design: The gold standard in 2025. Responsive design ensures your website looks and functions properly across all screen sizes — mobile, tablet, desktop and even large-format displays.

Mobile-First Design: An approach that starts with the smallest screen and scales up. It’s essential for businesses targeting younger audiences or mobile-heavy industries like hospitality, retail, and events.

Custom Web Design: Tailored from the ground up for your business objectives. This type of design focuses on UI/UX performance, strategic content placement, and long-term scalability.

A serious business typically needs a responsive, custom-built site that’s designed around the user’s journey. That’s where real ROI comes from.

Web design and SEO: Built to perform

Search engines prioritise sites that offer users a fast, valuable, and well-structured experience. That means mobile responsiveness, clean code, crawlable content, and logical navigation.

When we rebuild websites at TopTalent, we always start with SEO architecture. We focus on clean internal linking, minimal load times, semantic HTML, and design systems that support your content hierarchy. Google can’t rank what it can’t understand — and design plays a central role in that.

Good web design doesn't compete with SEO. It amplifies it.

Do I need a custom-designed website?

Template-based websites are fine if you're testing an idea or launching a personal project. But when you're operating a real business, you need your site to work as hard as you do.

A custom site gives you control over performance, branding, conversion flow, and scalability. You’re not locked into a rigid structure or weighed down by bloated third-party plugins. You can design every interaction around how your customers think, act, and decide.

We design websites that reflect the logic of your business and the expectations of your customers. That’s where design becomes strategy.

Can web design impact trust?

Completely. In fact, most users will judge your credibility based on your website alone. A cluttered, slow, or unresponsive site suggests the business behind it is outdated or unprofessional.

This is especially true for high-consideration purchases, in industries like health, legal, education, and finance, and even hospitality, events, and ecommerce businesses are judged instantly by how smooth their mobile experience is.

Trust isn’t something you can demand. You have to design for it.

Case Study: Chatty Chums

Chatty Chums is a lifestyle media brand that needed a site capable of scaling content while keeping the reading experience smooth across devices. We developed their website based on a beautiful design and delivered a high-performance responsive design for mobile and tablet.

The result? A seamless experience on iPad and mobile that now serves as the primary reading platform for their audience. Because of their UX and consistent SEO strategy, Google now treats them as a trusted publisher. When Chatty Chums writes about a brand, like Besos Margarita — that article can dominate rich snippets and local search results. This goes to show that not only do their users trust their website but so does Google.

That’s the power of responsive, mobile-first design when it’s built on a solid SEO foundation.

Case Study: Industry DJ School

Industry DJ School came to us with a vision to become Auckland’s go-to destination for aspiring DJs. Their old site was visually dated and lacked clear structure. We rebuilt it with a sleek new design, simplified navigation, and strategic CTAs aligned with their course funnel.

We focused heavily on UX, ensuring that users could find courses, view upcoming dates, and book without unnecessary steps. The mobile version was completely rebuilt for performance and clarity.

Within 12 months of launch, their sales increased by 200%. That’s what happens when the design finally matches the ambition of the business.

What does web design cost in NZ?

For a business site that’s designed to perform, you’re typically looking at $5,000 to $25,000 depending on complexity, custom features, and integration needs. A truly strategic website that’s fast, intuitive, and scalable, is not a sunk cost. It’s an active asset that brings measurable returns in brand perception, lead generation, and long-term SEO visibility.

We work with businesses across that entire spectrum, always with a focus on future growth, not just launch day.

Ready to build a website that performs?

If your website feels dated, slow or misaligned with your business, it might be time for a serious design rethink. We’ll help you build something that works the way your customers think, and converts the way your business needs it to.

If you want to know more about how we design websites, click here.

Let’s talk. No fluff. Just good design that works.

SEO vs Google Ads: Which is Better for NZ Businesses?

Most New Zealand business owners have asked it at some point: Should we do SEO or just run Google Ads?

It’s a fair question, but the answer isn’t one-size-fits-all. Both SEO and Google Ads are powerful tools for growth. They just serve different roles. SEO is about long-term visibility and trust. Google Ads is about instant clicks and fast results.

When used together with the right strategy, they build momentum that compounds. This guide examines SEO vs Google Ads for NZ businesses, from pricing and timelines to real-world examples.

If you want to skip all this and request a free custom SEO audit, strategy and estimate then click here.

What’s the difference between SEO and Google Ads?

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the process of improving your website’s content, structure, and authority so that you appear higher in organic search results without paying per click. It’s long-term, trust-based, and focused on building digital authority over time.

Google Ads (formerly AdWords) lets you bid on keywords and appear at the top of search results instantly. You only pay when someone clicks. Great for fast leads or high-intent searches, but you stop showing up the moment you stop spending.

So it really comes down to your goals, budget, and appetite for patience. One earns visibility. The other buys it.

SEO vs Google Ads: Core differences explained

Cost and investment

SEO requires ongoing investment in content, backlinks, technical work, and optimisation. It’s not cheap, but once the engine starts running, the traffic comes without paying per click.

Google Ads is paid media. You pay for every visitor. Depending on your industry, you could pay $0.50 or $25 per click. If you’re not careful, your budget can disappear fast with no conversions to show for. Google ads can be a great short-term play but can get expensive fast, especially in competitive industries like law, finance, or e-commerce.

If want to know your return on investment, click here to try our Google Ads ROI Calculator.

Timeline for results

SEO takes time. In most cases, you’ll start seeing momentum around the three to six-month mark. But it's scalable so when it hits, it lasts.

Google Ads gets you to the top of Google in a day. As soon as your campaign is live, you’re visible. But once your budget runs out, the visibility disappears.

• A local gym in Mount Eden might take 3–6 months to rank for “group fitness Auckland” via SEO.

• That same gym can appear in Google Ads tomorrow — but needs to pay for every visit.

Audience behaviour

SEO attracts people who are doing research, comparing options, or reading reviews. These users might take longer to convert, but they often become loyal customers.

Google Ads captures people who are ready to take action. If someone searches "emergency plumber Auckland," and you’re at the top, you’ve got a shot at that lead immediately.

Are Google Ads better than SEO?

They’re faster — but not necessarily better.

Google Ads work well when you need instant results. For example, if you’re launching a new service or running a limited-time offer, ads get you immediate traffic.

But if your site doesn’t convert well or your targeting is off, you can burn through your budget without results.

SEO takes longer to kick in, but once you’re ranking, you can receive consistent traffic without paying per click. This is especially valuable for NZ businesses in competitive industries like law, hospitality, or finance, where Google Ads costs can run into the hundreds per click.

We’ve seen this in action with Chatty Chums. They built authority through content, backlinks, and technical SEO. Now when they publish an article like “Best Margarita in NZ,” it not only ranks high, it shows up as a rich snippet and sends backlinks to the bars and brands mentioned.

That’s long-term ROI.

SEO or Google Ads? Examples from NZ Businesses

Let’s say you’re a:

• Hair salon in Ponsonby

  SEO can bring you consistent bookings for terms like “balayage Auckland” and “blonde specialists Ponsonby”. Google Ads is great for quick wins around Mother’s Day, Christmas, or new stylist promotions.

  
  

• Accountant in Wellington

  Google Ads helps during tax season when urgency is high. But SEO builds long-term trust with service pages like “Small Business Accounting Wellington” or blogs explaining NZX filing deadlines.

  
  

• Ecommerce store selling activewear

  SEO content about “best gym leggings NZ” can drive evergreen traffic. But Google Ads gets your product in front of shoppers instantly during peak sale periods.

  
  

The point is: SEO and Google Ads solve different parts of the funnel. Together, they give you coverage from cold search to conversion.

What does SEO cost vs Google Ads?

Here’s a simplified look at what you might pay:

Marketing Channel	Cost	Time to Results	Long-Term ROI
SEO	$1,200–$4,000/month	3–6 months+	High
Google Ads	$500–$10,000+/month	Immediate	Medium–High (if managed well)

But don’t forget: the real cost comes down to how well it’s executed. We’ve seen people spend thousands per month on Google Ads with zero conversions because they didn’t have a landing page strategy or a good UX. We’ve also seen clients sit on brilliant SEO content for months, never ranking, because the technical SEO was broken.

Should you do both?

In most cases, yes.

Use Google Ads to drive traffic quickly while your SEO builds in the background. Once your organic visibility picks up, scale back your ad budget and reinvest in more SEO content or backlink outreach.

Here’s how the right blend works:

• Google Ads captures demand immediately

• SEO builds long-term authority

• Data from Google Ads helps refine your SEO strategy

• SEO content improves the quality and performance of your ads

That’s exactly how we helped Chatty Chums become an authority publication.

We used tools like Google Keyword Planner, Google Trends, and AnswerThePublic to map out a content strategy designed to win. When we paired that with backlinks and technical SEO, the whole platform became a powerful reference point that brands now want to be featured on.

Want a tailored SEO strategy?

We’ll audit your site, check your competition, and give you a custom roadmap showing how SEO and Google Ads could work together for your business.

Click here to request a free seo audit and estimate, and we'll get back to you with a custom SEO strategy.