The SEOFOMO Newsletter​

January 4, 2026
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Your weekly SEO & AI Search News to Stop the FOMO, read by +40,000 SEOs.
Today's sponsor is Semrush Enterprise. Want to advertise? Ask here.​

Today’s edition of SEOFOMO is dedicated to the memory of Andy Drinkwater, an experienced SEO specialist, valued contributor, and a much-respected, friendly presence within the UK SEO community. Rest in peace, Andy.
​You can learn more about Andy here.​

It's a déjà vu

​Google December 2025 Core Update Finished Rolling Out: Here are the Key Shifts Across Major Verticals​

Aleyda Solis

Google's December core update started on December 11, 2025, and ended on December 29. This was yet another update rewarding specialization, expertise and showcasing more commercially oriented content from brands or specialized retailers, rather than generic ecommerce platforms or publications. I go through a few examples.

• Related: Some News Publishers Saw Big Declines With The Google Core Update by Barry Schwartz​

Recipe sites deserve recognition as sources

​Google's AI Frankenstein Recipes Are A Horror​

Barry Schwartz

Adam and Joanne Gallagher from the food recipe blog, Inspired Taste, have been documenting a lot of really painful and shameful tactics Google is using for its AI responses to some recipes.

One of the largest AI acquisitions to date

​Meta buys Manus for $2 billion to power high-stakes AI agent race​

Eric Hal Schwartz / TechRadar

Manus builds autonomous AI agents that perform complex tasks like coding and data analysis.

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The Search Platform for Ambitious Brands

Semrush Enterprise empowers teams to dominate both search engines and AI.

Get performance tracking, live content scoring, and real-time optimization guidance for both SEO and AI search visibility in one place.

The new AI vs SEO Comparison even puts this performance into a comprehensive dashboard.

The best part? Manual tasks like link building can be swapped for strategy that moves the needle. Let advanced automations take care of it for you.

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Winners build durable foundations amid fragmentation

​2026 SEO Roadmap: 14 Experts on Technical, Content, and Brand for the AI Era​

Gerry White / Take It Offline

Learn from 14 experienced specialists their key SEO expectations and insights to win search in 2026: From AI Overviews to brand authority, and the future of search in an answer-first reality.

AI was the top topic among them

​Top 10 SEO news stories of 2025​

Danny Goodwin / Search Engine Land

SEO vs. GEO. AI Mode expands. AI Overviews kill clicks. Goodbye, num=100. These were among the most popular and biggest SEO stories of 2025. See the top 10 here!

Build topic clusters around entity relationships

​Entity-based SEO: An explainer for SEOs and content marketers​

Jennifer Clark / HubSpot

Jennifer explains what entities are in SEO, how they differ from keywords, where to find the ones that matter, how to structure content around entity relationships, and how to measure whether the strategy works.

You want to charge fairly, but you don't want to scare clients away

​SEO Pricing for Independents, Freelancers, Consultants​

Preeti Gupta / The SEO Community

Preeti goes through the different pricing models you'll see more often in SEO consulting: hourly, project, and value-based along, explaining how to calculate them, their pro's and con's and more.

Why spam traffic matters more in the GA4 and AI era

​Spam traffic in GA4: How to detect, filter & prevent it​

Ana Gotter / Search Engine Land

Ana explains how to identify, filter, and prevent spam traffic in GA4: Fix corrupted analytics, protect data quality, and make better SEO and marketing decisions using this guide.

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Decision pages are 4-9x more relevant to users

​2025 State of AI Discovery Report: What 1.96 Million LLM Sessions Tell Us About the Future of Search​

David Bell / Previsible

David analyzed 1,963,544 LLM-driven sessions during 12 months from sites across SaaS, e-commerce, finance, and more revealing clear patterns: AI traffic is small in aggregate (0.13% of total sessions) but concentrated on high-intent pages, growing fastest in complex categories, and behaving fundamentally different from traditional referral sources.

What decomposition really means

​Understanding & Explaining Query Fan-Out​

Dan Taylor / SALT Agency

Query Fan-Out is how AI takes a single question and expands it into a network of related sub-questions. Some LLMs give you greater access to this information than others. Learn all what you need to know in this guide from Dan.

AI’s value is removing grunt work, not replacing the humans

​AI Marketing Examples: 13 Times AI Actually Delivered​

Mateusz Makosiewicz / Ahrefs

Fake influencers, robotic copy, obvious AI disasters, most brands get it wrong. Mateusz goes through how 13 brands have used AI successfully for marketing without the cringe.

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• ​SEO/GEO Manager at Ooma​
• ​SEO Manager at Sporty Group​
• ​Local SEO Specialist at Venveo​
• ​SEO & AI Search Strategist at Terra​
• ​Senior SEO Specialist at Mexa Solutions​
• ​Partnerships Specialist (SEO) at Inspira Education​
• ​Junior/Middle SEO Specialist (SERM) at SE Ranking​
• ​Search Optimization Specialist at Allied Global Marketing​