October 21, 2025 Smashing Newsletter: Issue #530
This newsletter issue was sent out to 183,516 subscribers on Tuesday, October 21, 2025.
Editorial
As AI Mode and AI Overviews take over web search, publishers find themselves in a zero-click world — search impressions increase, but clicks rapidly decrease. Around 30–40% of all Google searches globally now return an AI Overview, and many websites see alligator graphs in Google Search Console.
It has an impact on publishing, but also on the search experience and search behavior of users. And in this newsletter, we dive deep into the state of search in 2025 — from zero-click world to AI search crawlers to good old-fashioned autocomplete UX.
Later this month, we will also start 🔮 Design Patterns For AI Interfaces, a shiny new online workshop (and video course) on how to design AI experiences that people actually use — in terms of AI capabilities, trust, reliability, and how to build confidence and trust in AI features. Get your ticket.
Also, coming up near you soon (all online workshops):
- UX Strategy in Action (Nov 6–20)
- Free: Why You Will Not Be Replaced by AI (Nov 19)
- How To Measure UX and Design Impact (Dec 1–12)
- Theming Design Systems (Dec 1–15)
- SmashingConf Amsterdam 2026 🇳🇱
Happy designing, everyone!
— Vitaly
1. Traffic In A Zero-Click World
Increasing traffic is still the top goal for the majority of marketers and their primary KPI. However, with the Internet sending less traffic than ever before and AI taking your opportunity to get search traffic, we need to shift our focus into another direction, as Rand Fishkin argues.
In his blog post “In a Zero-Click World, Traffic is a Terrible Goal,” Rand dives deeper into why increasing traffic is not only much more challenging than it used to be but also much less likely to produce the kinds of bottom-line results you want.
To get brand attention, he recommends a different approach: try to be a helpful, useful resource in the places where people are going to look for advice — Reddit, Linkedin, and YouTube, for example — and put your focus on what your business really wants to accomplish instead of putting all your efforts into trying to generate traffic. (cm)
2. Better Search Autocomplete UX
As the Baymard Institute found out, 80% of e-commerce sites provide their users with search autocomplete suggestions. However, only 19% get all the implementation details right. So, what’s to consider to design better search autocomplete experiences?
Based on Baymard Institute’s research findings, Edward Scott explores nine UX best practices for autocomplete suggestions, across both desktop and mobile platforms. From keeping the autocomplete list manageable to providing adequate spacing for autocomplete suggestions, the tips help you fine-tune your search autocomplete to remove usability issues and ensure users can use the feature to its full potential.
For more best practices, also be sure to check out Vitaly’s post in which he shares five simple steps to make autocomplete even more efficient and relevant by showing suggestions on focus, using tap-ahead suggestions, and exposing users to relevant details from the search box. (cm)
3. Designing Search UX
Search is a critical part of many products, yet too often it is forgotten or overlooked. Many users rely heavily on it, and investing time and effort into good search is usually a very good investment. So, how do people search and what do they expect from a first-class search experience? And what can designers do to design better experiences for them?
Last year, Vitaly gave a free 3.5-hour-long online workshop in which he explored just that. And, no worries in case you missed it, the recording is available on YouTube, along with the slides. With plenty of real-life examples and do’s and don’ts on how to design better autocomplete, deal with complex filters, improve sorting, design better search results pages, and enhance the experience for power users, this is a deep dive for sure. (cm)
4. How AI Is Changing Search Behaviors
It’s beyond doubt that generative AI is changing search behavior. But what is the current state of things? How do people these days do research? Where do they look for information when planning travel, researching historical events, or before making a bigger purchase?
To find out, Kate Moran, Maria Rosala, and Josh Brown from the Nielsen Norman Group conducted a qualitative study for which they asked people to bring their own research tasks into the virtual lab to explore how their information-seeking behaviors are shifting in response to AI-powered search tools and chatbots.
As the study shows, long-standing habits persist: many users still default to Google or use traditional search and AI in tandem, often for fact-checking each other. (cm)
5. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences
That’s right! We run online workshops on frontend and design, be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well.
As always, here’s a quick overview:
- Design Patterns For AI Interfaces UX UX
with Vitaly Friedman. Oct 30 – Nov 13 - UX Strategy In Action UX
with Susan and Guthrie Weinschenk. Nov 6–20 - Why You Will Not Be Replaced by AI Free
with Vitaly Friedman. Nov 19 - Theming Design Systems Design
with Samantha Gordashko. Dec 1–15 - How To Measure UX And Design Impact UX
with Vitaly Friedman. Dec 1–12 - The New CSS Toolkit Dev
with Kevin Powell. Dec 3–17 - Figma Workflow Masterclass Design
with Christina Vallaure. Dec 10–16 - Jump to all workshops →
6. Content Signals Policy
Companies scrape massive amounts of data from the Internet every day, using it as input for generative AI search answers or for training or fine-tuning AI models. This puts website operators in front of an almost impossible choice: Should they lock down access to their content behind logins to keep scrapers away? Or accept the reality of fewer referrals and minimal attribution? Cloudflare’s new Content Signals Policy attempts to address these concerns.
The policy is an addition to the robots.txt file and allows website operators to express their preferences for how their content can be used after it has been accessed. Released under a CC00 License, anyone can implement and use the policy freely. When doing so, keep one thing in mind, though: content signals express preferences; they are no technical countermeasures against scraping. (cm)
7. The State Of AI Search
With AI search gaining widespread adoption, optimizing for Google isn’t enough anymore. Brands today need to think about how AI systems interpret, summarize, and source content to show up in the results.
The team at Otterly AI conducted an AI search study to uncover what exactly marketing and SEO professionals need to consider to get their brand fit for the new challenges. They analyzed 100,000 websites across three major AI search platforms to find out how brands are being mentioned, cited, and surfaced in AI-powered results.
Another great resource that grants insights into the current state of search comes from the folks at Datos. Their State of Search Q2 2025 report draws from clickstream data collected from tens of millions of desktop users across the US, UK, and EU and delivers actionable insights into where people are spending time, how search habits are shifting, and what those changes mean for traffic, visibility, and engagement. Two must-reads to help you broaden your strategy beyond Google rankings. (cm)
8. AI Search Optimization Tools
Otterly AI offers two free tools to get your site fit for AI search. One of them is the AI Search Crawler Simulation. Just enter a website URL, and the tool simulates requests from major AI web crawlers to test if a website blocks them. To find out, it sends actual HTTP requests using specific user-agent strings of each crawler.
The other tool is GEO Content Check, designed to help improve your content for better visibility in AI search results. Same story here: You enter a URL or paste your content, and the tool works through a GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) framework with multiple steps to analyze your content. Two handy tools you might want to keep close. (cm)
9. Meet Accessible UX Research, A Brand-New Smashing Book 📚
In the past few years, we were very lucky to have worked together with some talented, caring people from the web community to publish their wealth of experience as printed books. For our newest book, we have teamed up with Dr. Michele A. Williams: Meet “Accessible UX Research.”
“Accessible UX Research” is your practical guide to making UX research more inclusive of participants with different needs — from planning and recruiting to facilitation, asking better questions, avoiding bias, and building trust. Print edition shipping Fall 2025. eBook also available for download in Fall 2025. Pre-order the book, and save off the full price.
That’s All, Folks!
Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time!
This newsletter issue was written and edited by Geoff Graham (gg), Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf), and Iris Lješnjanin (il).
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