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Your weekly SEO & AI Search News to Stop the FOMO, read by +39.2K SEOs.
Today's sponsor is Profound. Want to advertise? Ask here.β |
π₯ This Weekβs Biggest Search Stories
Informational focused sites have been more heavily affected
βGoogle's August 2025 Spam Update Finished Rolling Out ββ
βAleyda Solisβ
βGoogle August 2025 Spam Update roll out was completed on September 22nd, taking almost a month, since its initial release on August 26.
I've been going through sites dropping in visibility during this time and in most cases these are sites that:
- Had already been previously affected by previous Google Spam and Core Updates, and had been dropping since Google's June Core Update, if not before... so their drops likely have to do with more than just the spam update effects.
- Many are informational focused sites in the lyrics, recipes and financial advice space, featuring ads and reviews.
- In quite a few cases, they're featuring pages created at scale, with non-unique, low quality content, including spammy comments.
This update has been certainly much harder to isolate to identify specific impact though.
If you haven't yet, you can assess your sites impact by using the free Latest Google Rankings Shifts Looker Studio Dashboard by SEOFOMO.β
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ChatGPT version of a more useful, task oriented Discover?
βChatGPT introduces ChatGPT Pulseβ
βOpenAI
βOpenAI is releasing a preview of ChatGPT Pulse to Pro users on mobile; a new experience where ChatGPT proactively does research to deliver personalized updates based on your chats, feedback, and connected apps like your calendar:
- You can curate what ChatGPT researches by letting it know whatβs useful and what isnβt.
- The research appears in Pulse as topical visual cards you can scan quickly or open for more detail, so each day starts with a new, focused set of updates.
- This is the first step toward a more useful ChatGPT that proactively brings you what you need.
I guess OpenAI OpenAI has come up with its version of a more useful, task oriented Discover.
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Related: OpenAI is staffing up to turn ChatGPT into an ad platform (coverage by Danny Goodwin).
This proposal looks actually promising
βCloudflare is launching The Content Signals Policy, a robots txt directive to establish your content access to AI platformsββ
βWill Allen / Cloudflare
βCloudflare is taking another initiative to control the access of AI tools to websites content due to how now "scraped content is sometimes used to economically compete against the original creator".
This policy can be configured via a robots txt and defines three content signals for:
- Search: Building a search index and providing search results (e.g., returning links and short excerpts from your website's contents). Search does not include providing AI-generated search summaries.
- Ai-input: Inputting content into one or more AI models (e.g., retrieval augmented generation, grounding, or other real-time taking of content for generative AI search answers).
- Ai-train: Training or fine-tuning AI models - and their relevance to crawlers.
Now it's a matter if this is actually adopted and followed by major search platforms and LLMs, besides started to be used by sites. Read the announcement here.β
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Related: Cloudflare is also announcing a private beta of AI Index for domains.
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ππ»ββοΈ This Week's Search Poll
| Have your sites been affected by the Google August Spam Update? |
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ποΈ More Updates from Search Engines
Unfortunately, not yet in Spain
βGoogleβs AI Mode is rolling out globally in Spanishβ
βGoogle
βAI Mode is now available globally in Spanish in those countries where it is already accessible as well. Not yet in Spain or the EU though.
Interactive voice conversation in AI Mode is here
βGoogle launches Search Live in the U.S.β
βLiza Ma / Google β
βGoogle has launched Search Live in English in the US, making it available to all users. This feature enables interactive voice conversations in AI Mode and lets users share their camera feed for contextual information and real-time answers with direct web links. To use it, open the Google app and tap the "Live" icon.
These itineraries wonβt just live in Google, they can be shared
βGoogle AI Mode Travel Planning Gains More Featuresβ
βBarry Schwartz / Search Engine Roundtable
βGoogle recently began rolling out more features to AI Mode travel planning: dynamic day-by-day trip plans, hotel add-ons, tickets, and dining stitched into a single AI conversation.
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βοΈ Check Our Awesome Sponsor
New In Profound: Persona Prompts
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With Personas, you donβt just see overall visibility scores, you see how Answer Engines respond across specific, customizable audience types.
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Each Persona shows you how often your brand appears in Answer Engine responses for that specific segment, giving you a deeper, more actionable view than ever before.
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π This week's Top SEO Guides
All with a clever doctor analogy
βHow to Analyze Behavioral Data for Search β Whiteboard Friday
βGiulia Panozzo / Mozβ
βLearn how to analyze behavioral data to improve your search performance. Discover the three levels of diagnostic tools: from basic GSC data to advanced neuromarketing metrics; and how to use them to optimize the entire search journey with Giulia.
Learn how to get results from personas
βMaking SEO Personas Actionable Across Teamsβ
βKevin Indig, Amanda Johnson / Growth Memo
βKevin and Amanda explain how to make search persona insights actionable, not only across your SEO processes and production, but also across broader teams that SEO work touches.
Authorize SEO crawlers with Web Bot Auth
βHow to fix Shopify crawl issues in Screaming Frog and Sitebulb using Web Bot Authβ
βChris Lever
βChris explains how to avoid the 429 Too Many Requests errors when trying to crawl a Shopify site at scale by using Shopifyβs Web Bot Auth feature with a step by step to configure it in Screaming Frog and Sitebulb.
A comprehensive comparison
βNaver vs. Google: Key differences between the two search enginesβ
βRaquel GonzΓ‘lez / Seoulful Connect
βRaquel explains the key differences between Naver and Google: from the SERPs, Ranking Factors to ecosystem, to learn the fundamentals before stepping into the Korean search market with this guide.
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π€ Latest AI Search Insights
Sessions per user dipped, then recovered. No habit loop yet.
βSignals in the Clickstream: Early Referral Data on Googleβs AI Modeβ
βGarett Sussman β
βKey Referral Data Insights from the first three months of AI Mode usage (May to August 2025) shows that external clicks from AI Mode stay under ~3%. Traditional Google Search sends far more traffic. Post-click depth from AI Mode is thinner: fewer pageviews and shorter sessions on average than visits from Google Search.
Worthy to prioritize in case you don't have these yet
βIdeas for Successful Content in AI Searchββ
βTomek Rudzki
βTomek has researched the type of content winning in AI search, identifying Feature and Benefit Pages, Competitor Comparisons, FAQ Sections, and more.
A comprehensive webinar to watch
βHow to Win Visibility in AI Search: The AI Search Manual Walkthroughββ
βMike King
βMike breaks down the AI Search Manual and shows what actually drives visibility today. Youβll see how clicks drop with AI Overviews, and what to build to win across Google and ChatGPT.
Because search engines are not the only crawlers to care about anymore
βTechnical SEO for AI Searchββ
βDan Taylor
βTechnical SEO had focused on making websites understandable to search engine crawlers. The landscape has shifted with LLMs. Learn the fundamentals of technical optimization for AI search in this guide from Dan.
Letβs put AI Search Testing into Practice
βGenerative Engine Optimization: Stop Guessing and Start Testingββ
βWill Critchlow
βLearn how GEO testing evolves from SEO testing, what can we influence, and how to start testing in AI search.
Search isnβt dead for publishers
βHow people REALLY use LLMs and what that means for Publisherβ
βHarry Clarkson-Bennett β
βHarry explains why publishers need to build linkable assets that add value. It canβt just be about chasing traffic from articles anymore.
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πΈ SEO Jobs
π Free(mium) SEO Tools
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βQforia
βiPullrankβ
βQuery Fan-Out Simulator for AI Surfaces. |
ποΈ Upcoming SEO Events
βAhrefs Madrid Meetupβ
βAhrefs / Madrid, Spain / β¬20 / October 2, 2025β
βJoin Aleyda Solis, Erik Sarissky, Ismael GarcΓa and more to learn about AI search and internationalization in SEO and more with presentations, roundtables, Q&As, and a networking with drinks and snacks at the end. |
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βSearch Central Live Dubai 2025
βGoogle Search Central / Dubai, UAE / Free / October 21, 2025β
ββGoogle Search Central Live is going to Dubai for the first time. Registration will be open until October 5, and confirmations will be sent on October 10. |
πͺ SEOFOMOer Of The Week
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Nik Ranger
Nik is an award-winning senior technical SEO Consultant at Dejan Marketing, Google WTM Ambassador, and organizer of the SEO Collective Australia.
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With +10 years of experience, as a Senior Technical SEO at Dejan Marketing, she oversees Brand Strategy for enterprise global brands, conducts technical audits and analysis, forecasting and opportunity detection, content strategy and technical marketing and developer guidance and support.
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βFollow Nik Ranger in LinkedIn now.β
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π Read More Digital Marketing News
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I hope you've liked today's edition of SEOFOMO. Do you have any comments or feedback? Don't hesitate to let me know over here!β
Until the next edition,
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