The SEOFOMO Newsletter​

October 12, 2025
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Your weekly SEO & AI Search News to Stop the FOMO, read by +39.4K SEOs.
Today's sponsor is Semrush and Weglot. Want to advertise? Ask here.​

Not in France yet though. Astérix would be proud.

​Google’s AI Mode was released to 40 new countries and 35 new languages, including most European countries, Australia and more​
​Hema Budaraju / Google
​Google has released AI Mode to more European countries (Spain, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Poland, Switzerland, Ireland but not France yet), Australia, and 40 new countries in 35 languages.

If you're an SEO in one of these new countries where AI Mode has become available, consider that a month ago Similarweb shared that in late August, it had still only 3% of daily usage in the US, and 3.5% in the UK, and the UK usage had actually slightly dropped compared to the one seen in launch week.

IMHO, AI Mode will become a game-changer when it’s pushed as the new default Google search experience. This will likely happen when Google “irons out” a seamless ads integration and revenue and finishes better integrating links to cite sources across scenarios where it’s also beneficial to them to keep sending them due to different contexts or requirements.

Visibility, not traffic, is the emerging currency.

​What Our AI Mode User Behavior Study Reveals About The Future Of Search​
​Kevin Indig, Amanda Johnson
​Learn what 250 sessions of user behavior in AI Mode tells us about the future of search from Kevin's usability study of 37 participants across 7 specific search tasks:

• AI Mode holds attention and keeps users inside.
• Clicks are rare and mostly transactional.
• People skim but still make decisions in AI Mode.

TL;DR: "People read AI Mode, rarely click out, and only leave when they are ready to transact."

Can Google pull off these shoes?

​Google try on tool adds shoes and will expand to new countries​​
​Google
​Google’s "try on" tech lets you see what billions of clothing items might look like on you. In the coming weeks it’s expanding to Australia, Canada and Japan, and has rolled out a new category: shoes.

A no fluff guide... worthy to be shown in AI answers!

​Optimizing Your Content for Inclusion in AI Search Answers​
​Krishna Madhavan / Microsoft
​Krishna Madhavan, Principal Product Manager at MS Bing has published comprehensive guidelines explaining how you should structure content for AI search visibility: From optimizing Title, Descriptions, and H1s, using Q&A Formats, lists and tables... also describing how Schema markup helps AI understand your content, as well as common mistakes that hurt AI search visibility, and much more. A must read resource.

Because we need more AI content in SERPs, of course

​Google testing AI-generated descriptions for search snippets​​
​Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Land
​Google is testing using AI to generate full search result descriptions and/or AI-summaries of your search result snippet, within the Google Search results.

Uh oh!

​Google Quietly Signals NotebookLM Ignores Robots.txt​​
​Roger Montti / Search Engine Journal
​Google quietly updates NotebookLM documentation to makes it clear that it ignores robot.txt. This is how to block it anyway.

If you are the manufacturer of the product

​Google Merchant Center Lets You Use Your Own Brand In the Short Title
​Barry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable​
​Google updated the wording in the title documentation for Merchant Center, now suggesting you can use your own brand or company name in the short title of your products. That is, if you manufacture your own products

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Secure Your Visibility in Google and AI search

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AI is changing how brands are found. Now they must be visible on Google, AI search platforms, and everywhere your customers look.

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Semrush Enterprise Site Intelligence ensures businesses stay visible with scalable website crawling for millions of pages, compliance and accessibility audits, and flexible monitoring. All powered by the market’s leading SEO data.

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Unite everything needed to keep your website at maximum performance across Google, AI platforms, and beyond.

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AI is changing metrics and measurement

​Forget the Great Decoupling – SEO’s Great Normalization has begun​
​Gaetano DiNardi / Search Engine Land
​Gaetano explains how the chase for empty traffic is over and SEO success now depends on intent-driven content, grounded visibility, and proof of business value.

Why Google favors reddit and what this means for marketers

​Reddit Is Winning the Battle for Transactional Keywords​
​Eli Schwartz, Ross Simmonds / The Future of SEO
​Budgets for many B2B brands continue to invest significantly in review sites as if it was still 2023. Unfortunately, the times have changed and BOFU traffic is dominated by Reddit.

"Google just needs to nuke the disavow tool already"

​Hidden Disavow Files in GSC – Yet another reason Google just needs to remove the Disavow Tool already​
​Glenn Gabe ​
​Glenn explains how disavow files in Google Search Console can easily be missed and how that can negatively impact the search performance of a site.

SEO essentials with the new steps that matter for AI search

​The Ultimate 82-Point Checklist for SEO & AI Visibility​​
​Despina Gavoyannis​
​You don’t need another debate about whether optimizing for AI counts as SEO. You need to know what to actually do. Despina is here to help with a comprehensive checklist.

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"I strongly believe publishing as a whole will end up in a healthier state"

​AI Survival Strategies for Publishers​
​Barry Adams / SEO for Google News
​AI is seen as an existential threat to publishers. There are strategies that allow for news to survive and even thrive in the AI-first world. But these may involve some tough challenges. Barry goes through them.

How much AI traffic are top ecommerce sites receiving?

​Winning Ecommerce Organic Search in an AI Era​
​Aleyda Solis​
​Learn about key AI search trends across major shopping verticals, what's actually attracting AI search traffic in ecommerce, advice to maximize your AI search visibility as an ecommerce site, along with resources, tools and more.

It's time to prioritize content updates in case you ha

​“I Found It in the Code, Science Proved It in the Lab: The Recency Bias That’s Reshaping AI Search”​
​Metehan Yesilyurt
​A team from Waseda University published a study testing seven major AI models by adding fake publication dates to search results and measured what happened. Every single model fell for it. Metehan goes through the study and what it means for marketers.

Answering is the new ranking

​How do we tackle AI Mode becoming the default Search experience?​​
​Dan Taylor
​Dan analyzes what’s really changing in Google Search with AI Mode, what are the strategic implications for brands, the possible scenarios for the next 12–18 months and more.

AI agents are poised to reshape how people buy online

​When AI agents do the shopping: Insights from 100 conversations with ChatGPT Agent mode​​
​Jes Scholz / Search Engine Land
​As ChatGPT agents book, buy, and convert for users, SEO must evolve. Jes explains how to make your site agent-readable, accessible, and built to convert.

• Related: Preparing C-Level For The Agentic Web by Dan Taylor​

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+327% More Citations: Why Translated Websites Are Winning at AI Search

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Weglot’s latest study reveals a powerful insight: AI favors multilingual websites.

Analyzing 1.3 million citations across Google’s AI Overviews and ChatGPT, the research asked a key question: does AI reward translated content?
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The answer: a resounding yes.
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Translated websites saw 327% more visibility in Google’s AI Overviews for searches in other languages, and 24% more citations per query overall, simply for offering content in multiple languages.If you want your site to be seen (and cited) by AI, it needs to speak more than one language.

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• ​SEO Content Contractor at Stride Learning ​
• ​SEO/GEO Specialist at Perrill​
• ​Senior SEO at uSERP​
• ​Director of Organic Growth at iRank LLC​
• ​Search Engine Optimization Lead at Allianz​
• ​SEO Content Strategist at Forbes ​
• ​SEO & AI Content Strategist at HiCareer​
• ​Search Engine Optimization Manager at Choice Hotels​