2025 SEO News Roundup
In 2025, SEO news stories mostly surrounded the growth of AI. The hype was unavoidable. However, there were many other important developments impacting the SEO industry this year.
We’ve been keeping our fingers on the pulse of the headlines that mattered most for digital marketers. So, read on for our summary of top SEO news: 2025 edition.
The rise of Google AI Overviews
Google AI Overviews were introduced in 2024, but 2025 is when they began to dominate the search experience. They featured in 25% of Google searches in July, up from 6.5% in January, according to SEMrush.
This trend has led to huge drops in organic search CTRs, as Google users increasingly find answers to their queries on the results page without having to click through to any website.
Google’s “AI Mode”, powered by Gemini, was added in March 2025. This feature provides a chatbot-like search experience, and senior figures at Google have hinted that this will become more prominent in 2026 and beyond.
As we get feedback, we’ll graduate many features and capabilities from AI Mode right into the core Search experience. – Elizabeth Reid, Google VP of Search
Yes we are, Google. Yes we are. Although, we don’t offer “jargon-free” as a service. That’s complimentary!
GEO: increasingly important or overrated?
Many more people were using AI assistants to complete basic search queries in 2025. In September, ChatGPT processed roughly 66 million “search-like” queries per day.
While that’s still 210 times less than Google, SEO thought leaders are increasingly championing the importance of showing up in AI responses.
It has been dubbed Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), but Google has downplayed the necessity of doing anything specific to increase visibility on AI platforms.
Good SEO is good GEO. What you’ve been doing for search engines generally, and you may have thought of as SEO, is still perfectly fine and is still the things that you should be doing. – Danny Sullivan, Google Public Search Liaison
We’re sure there’s much more AI to come in 2026…
The key 2025 Google algorithm updates
There were three core Google algorithm updates in 2025, made to help provide more relevant and useful search results.
- The first core update in March was described as “the most volatile” in over a year. User-generated content platforms like Reddit and Quora were among those to see a huge spike in search visibility here.
- The second of the 2025 major algorithm updates began in June. This enabled several recoveries for websites hit by the notorious Helpful Content Update (HCU), among other changes.
- The final update rolled out in December. Affiliate review websites and pages with mass-produced AI content were among those worst affected.
In April, Google dropped a “diversity update” affecting local SEO. The change helped to prevent local businesses from appearing on page 1 in both Maps results and organic listings.
Google also moved to punish pages with unoriginal AI-generated copy in April, instructing its quality raters to label these with the lowest quality score.
Google disables “&num=100″
In September, Google canned the search parameter “&num=100″, disrupting keyword tracking across the world.
This was arguably the most frustrating of the 2025 SEO news updates, at least for those working in the industry. Rankings data became slower and more expensive to gather.
A minor tweak by Google that made life significantly harder for everyone involved? Just another day in the life of an SEO practitioner…
We’re bracing ourselves (as always) for similar updates in 2026.
The Sharp Opinion
Reflecting on the year of 2025, the head of B# had the following comments:
2025 has been a real challenge for the SEO industry with both the frequency and scale of major algorithm updates. The direction of the SEO winds is however very clear. AI content has no place is the future of SEO. Elsewhere, the &num feature removal was a strange choice by Google and one without any obvious reasoning, but no less frustrating for digital marketing agencies. – Jonny Crossley, Founder & CEO of Be Sharp Digital Marketing
