SEO News Roundup – October 2025
As we head towards the end of the year and plant ourselves firmly in the autumnal months, we’ve seen some interesting highlights in the SEO world. Here are the most noteworthy stories from this past month regarding all things search, Google, and digital marketing.
Google’s Latest Spam Update Completes its Rollout
Google announced that its latest major algorithm update finished its near month-long rollout on 21st September 2025. This update, officially named the August Spam Update (despite mostly running in September), follows a trend of Google algorithm updates almost solely targeting websites that attempt to abuse SEO techniques to gain false rankings and organic traffic.
While Google’s automated systems to detect search spam are constantly operating, we occasionally make notable improvements to how they work. When we do, we refer to this as a spam update and share when they happen on our list of Google Search ranking updates. – Google Search Central
In recent years, these dark art SEO techniques and subsequent algorithm updates have largely targeted AI content that is produced either quickly, poorly, or en-masse in attempt to gain traffic for the purpose of either ad revenue or affiliate marketing revenue.
Neither of these types of websites are considered to add value for search users as opposed to genuine sellers and businesses, therefore it isn’t surprising to see the search engine giant take continuing steps to fight against the scourge of AI in the world of organic search. We’ll have more to say on the subject of AI content soon, but that’s for another time… maybe later in the month…
Instant checkouts with ChatGPT: in-chat shopping
OpenAI is introducing a new feature to its US users – instant checkout. Despite being in its early stages, the concept is clear and easy to follow for its users. To use this feature, customers can type ordinary (natural) queries, e.g. ‘presents for my husband who loves grilling.’ From this, ChatGPT displays the most relevant products from across the web.
“This launch is just the beginning. As AI becomes a key interface for how people discover, decide, and buy, the Agentic Commerce Protocol provides a foundation that connects people and businesses for the next era of commerce.” – OpenAI
U.S. ChatGPT users (plus, pro and free users) can buy directly from U.S. Etsy sellers right in chat. Over a million Shopify merchants are coming soon, including Glossier, SKIMS, Spanx and Vuori.
AI continues to be pushed by businesses across the globe, but will it ever truly gain momentum? We have our doubts…
Google forced to share data – privacy concerns
Back in early September, Judge Amit Mehta (U.S District) decreed that Google is required to share a portion of its search data with competitors. This ruling came after finding that Google has abused its power and dominance within the search market. The court has ordered Google to provide rivals with a one-time snapshot of its search index, as well as access to click-and-query data on a minimum of two occasions.
This decision has been made to give smaller companies a chance to compete with Google’s position in the market. However, the ruling has also sparked concerns with privacy experts.
“Google already shares your data. That’s part of the contract that you make when you sign up for a Google product. So that should come as no surprise to us. The surprise now is that Google is going to share that data with other companies that are then going to be able to use that data for purposes we never imagined” – Betsy Cooper, Cybersecurity expert at the Aspen Institute’s Policy Academy.
Google continues to live a busy life in the court room
Even with anonymised data, when location data and sensitive/personal matters are combined, it can reveal the identity of a user.
In overseeing the process, Mehta has set up a five-person technical committee. This team will decide which firms will be authorised access, as well as how the data will be shared and the necessary safeguards to put in place.
The committee is in place for six years and includes specialists in the related fields of data security and AI. The experts are in, but doubts linger over the committee’s ability to both protect privacy and encourage fair competition.
Google versus ChatGPT – Google remains 210x bigger
Despite the increase in AI-users, Google is firmly planted in its #1 position in search, with an average of 16.4 billion searches per day. ChatGPT now receives approximately 66 million search-link prompts, daily.
To further highlight this, the search engine DuckDuckGo, a considerably smaller search tool, is generating more referral traffic than ChatGPT. Interestingly, AI tools can actually increase the use of search engines. We can infer from this data that AI technologies aren’t providing genuine disruption at this stage – they’re more of a complementary tool to the major search engines.
So for now, it’s important for businesses to focus on developing their understanding of where their customers are searching, rather than hurriedly implementing AI into their strategies.
The Sharp Opinion
Reacting to this month’s news, the B# boss had the following comments:
Whilst AI continues to advance, adapt, and generally improve in both its effectiveness and reliability, SEO continues to be dominated by traditional Google organic search. This is a trend we don’t expect to change as the pattern of AI search follows the same faltering trend that voice-led search led in previous years. Traditional SEO, and the importance of businesses to focus budget and resources on this discipline, will continue to dominate search engine traffic sources for the foreseeable future. – Jonny Crossley, Founder & CEO of Be Sharp Digital Marketing
