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​Google tests new types of customised search including 'Preferred sources'. Similar to the Discover feed, personalised search can show you more Top Stories from sites you regularly visit.

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​Google launches Offerwall, a new monetisation option for publishers. Available via Google Ad Manager, Offerwall allows publishers to monetise engaged users and give readers the option to support their favourite publishers.

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​Visitors from AI search visit fewer pages and but spend more time on site. On average, AI traffic visits 4 pages compared to traditional searches 5.2. In contrast, the average time on site increased from 78 to 86 seconds.

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​Google launches MUVERA, to improve search speed and results for complex queries. The multi-vector retrieval algorithm (we'll stick with MUVERA) allows Google to better understand similarities between search vectors

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​Microsoft is retiring the Bing Search & Custom Search APIs in August 2025. These APIs are being replaced by Grounding with Bing Search so make sure you've got the correct API connected before 11 August 2025.

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​AI search currently drives less than 1% of traffic to most sites. There have been many over-estimations about how much traffic AI search actually sends to sites. It's certainly growing but remember to keep things in perspective!

🐛

​DuckDuckGo and Common Crawl release their crawler IP addresses. DuckDuckGo processes 3 billion searches/month and Common Crawl is a widely-used source for training data. So check that you're not blocking them!

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​Google tests site names next to citations in AI Overviews. This could potentially increase click-through rate as users currently don't see the source of the citation until they click on the link icon.

🛍️

​Google Discover now shows a price tracking widget. This carousel appears at the top of the feed and includes price drops and price comparison across different sites.

Fast-loading, accessible, conversion-friendly builds backed by research, real strategy, and a bit of healthy scepticism.

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We’re here to design and build websites that impress your users—and quietly get results.

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No ego. No fluff. No gold statuettes.

Just clear, confident design and build—done properly.

That's an SEO tactic I've not heard in a long time

I am seeing this EVERYWHERE at the moment: “Optimising for AI Search is about SEMANTIC SIMILARITY, it’s no longer about KEYWORD research!” 🤠

Google has taken been building sophisticated semantic understanding for over a DECADE. 👴

They took baby steps with their announcement of “Things not strings” back in 2012 in reference to the knowledge graph. We’ve seen Hummingbird, helping context and intent, Google literally invented the transformer architecture all of your LLMs are built from. RankBrain, BERT, MUM, all innovations that have helped push their semantic understanding.

You’re now just saying SEO isn’t “about keywords?”. You’ve been asleep at the wheel.

A little more knowledge about GenAI lights our way

While everyone madly chomps at the AI bit, saying "ChatGPT now has [x] users, therefore search engines are dead!", it is worth taking a breath and actually looking at what people are actually using them for. 💡
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​Wil Reynolds (personal hero of mine), posted this data from Harvard Business Review which compares what people are using GenAI for in 2025 compared to 2024.
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While there are definitely some surprises there, what stood out to me was "specific search" had come crashing out from the number 3 use, to number 13. Maybe signalling that some people are becoming aware of the sharp edges and inaccuracies posed by GenAI (one can hope). 🤞
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Either way, the mosaic we are being presented is far wider and more nuanced than "search is [dead/not dead]", some of the top usages currently for GenAI rightly or wrongly, represent entire apps, businesses, and industries.

This is the ChatGPT metadata you’re looking for

There is now a free, open source Chrome extension for ChatGPT from Ayima that displays meta data about your conversations, including:
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🔍 The real-time “grounded” search queries it runs
🧠 It’s internal thought process
💻 All of the RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) sources it pulls from

​Here's the video by Rob Kerry from Ayima demonstrating how it works.​

Never underestimate a site quality score

The primary driver for if you show in an AIO is still how Google scores your website as a whole (such as site quality score). ✨
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To quote from the Jan 2025 version of Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines "The website itself can be viewed as the primary content creator." (thanks for highlighting that Shaun Anderson)
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Worry less about "semantic triples" 🙃

So this is how you build a brand...with numerous PAAs

SEOs are telling you to 'build a brand' but a lot of people are sleeping on using AlsoAsked PAA data with the brands they are working with ⤵️
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People Also Ask data gives you an internet "echo" of brand sentiment and tells you want needs to be front and centre. Let's take Revolut for example; if you don't know, Revolut is one of the challenger banks - it offers faster, quicker, and easier management of your cash because they don't operate the same as traditional banks.
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The PAA tree for Revolut is a gold mine for product or brand managers, these questions are hugely valuable for me. We can see that customers:
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⭐ Consider Monzo to be a main competitor
⭐ Have concerns about the safety of their money using Revolut
⭐ Have concerns about the country Revolut is operated from
⭐ Want to know which bank backs Revolut
⭐ Want to know how Revolut reports to HMRC (the UK tax authority)
⭐ Want to know if known experts, such as Martin Lewis, recommend Revolut
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What does this tell us? 💭
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When it comes to putting money somewhere, customers have concerns around safety. The PAA data gives us the specifics, so rather than just saying “Revolut is safe,” we know how to qualify this in consumers’ minds with information on HMRC, transparency on country of operation, as well details on which banks work with Revolut.
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Outside of this, we know it would be a good idea to make some content comparing Revolut to Monzo and likely reaching out to some independent third parties, like the Martin Lewis Money Saving Expert website, to be reviewed there.
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This is how you satisfy intent 💙
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You can give it a go for free: https://alsoasked.com​

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