SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know 🛡️ The Google August 2025 spam update begins rollout. The update launched on 26 August 2025, and there have been some early reports of further impact on sites affected by the previous update in June. 📊 Traditional search isn't declining, despite the growth of AI search. A Sparktoro study found that 95% of Americans continue to use traditional search each month. AI tool...
11 days ago • 6 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know 🌐 AI Mode expands to over 180 countries. With this expansion come new agentic features for restaurant reservations and the ability to share search results. Users can then pick up the shared search with follow up questions. 📉 Google’s Knowledge Graph saw its largest contraction in a decade in June: a two-stage, one-week drop of 6.26% – over 3 billion entities deleted,...
18 days ago • 4 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know 📰 Google launches a new Preferred Sources feature. This feature lets users choose which publishers appear the top of search results. Google also recommends adding 'Add as a preferred source' button to your site. ✈️ Google launches Flight Deals, a new AI-powered featured in Google Flights. This new tool uses a conversational chat interface to save travellers money on their...
25 days ago • 6 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know 💸 Google confirms ads coming to AI Mode. A leaked document explains that ads will be based on the wider context of the conversation, not just the current query. So far, ad formats eligible for AI Mode include Text & Shopping ads. 💹 Google tests a new AI-powered version of Google Finance. This new page provides visualisations and an AI chatbot to access real-time data and...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know 🔍 Google AI Mode launches in the UK. After launching in the US and India, AI Mode launched in the UK on 28 July 2025. Users have reported a slow rollout but at the time of writing, it appears to be widely rolled out to most users. 🛍️ Google recommends that your ecommerce site be compatible with AI agents. With the potential of an agentic web just around the corner, John...
about 1 month ago • 7 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know 📈 Google launches the Google Trends API. This API is available for early testers and allows users to compare & merge different trends with consistently scaled 'search interest' data, rather than individual scales on the Trends website. 📊 Google launches an MCP for Google Analytics 4. A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server enables users to "chat with their data" by directly...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know ✅ The June 2025 Core Update completed its rollout on 17 July 2025. This appears to have been a relatively quiet core update compared to some of the more volatile recent changes. 🕵️ OpenAI launches ChatGPT agent. This is one of the first major demonstrations of the "agentic web" future that many experts are predicting. ChatGPT was able to browse, compare and order a roast...
about 2 months ago • 6 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know 📸 Content on professional Instagram accounts is now indexable by Google by default. This reinforces the importance of being consistent across both social media and organic search. 🌐 Both OpenAI and Perplexity announce their own web browsers. This is hugely important, as it is likely that user data mined from browsers will play a vital role in the future of managing the...
2 months ago • 6 min read
SEO tips and updates from Mark Williams-CookSearch with Candour hosted by Jack Chambers-Ward SEO updates you need to know 🚨 Google begins rolling out the June 2025 core update. Many were predicting that we were overdue for a core update so lo and behold, a new core update began on 30 June 2025. Rollout may take up to 3 weeks to complete. 🧱 Cloudflare now blocks all AI crawlers for new websites by default. This impactful update includes verification requirements for crawlers, one-click crawler...
2 months ago • 7 min read