Another year in search has come and gone, and Google called it year three of a 10-year platform shift. In 2025, that shift became impossible to ignore. AI moved from experiments and previews into the core of how search actually works.
Below are the biggest SEO news stories of 2025 on Search Engine Land.
Note: This article doesn’t include any stories related to Google algorithm updates. Barry Schwartz wrote a separate recap on that, which will also publish today.
10. Perplexity ranking factors and systems
Independent researcher Metehan Yesilyurt analyzed browser-level interactions to reveal how Perplexity scores, reranks, and sometimes drops content. He uncovered a three-layer machine-learning reranker for entity searches, manual authority whitelists, and dozens of engagement and relevance signals.
Yesilyurt’s research also found boosts for authoritative domains, strong early performance, and topics centered on tech and AI. Rankings further reflected time decay, interconnected content clusters, and synchronized YouTube trends that increased visibility across platforms.
9. Google Search Console Query groups
Google added Query groups to the Search Console Insights report. The feature uses AI to cluster similar search queries into clear audience topics and does not affect rankings. It rolled out gradually to high-volume sites and replaced long query lists with topic-level groupings that make performance shifts easier to spot.
8. HubSpot’s SEO collapse
HubSpot’s organic traffic appeared to fall from 13.5 million to 8.6 million in a month, with most of the losses coming from its blog. The drop followed several Google updates, and SEOs publicly pointed to thin, off-topic, traffic-at-all-costs content that drifted beyond HubSpot’s core expertise.
7. SEO vs. GEO
The SEO identity crisis continued as Google dismissed new acronyms like GEO (generative engine optimization) and AEO (answer engine optimization), arguing that good SEO is good GEO, and that the same fundamentals drive AI Overview rankings.
That stance collided with Google’s own admission that search traffic decline is inevitable as AI answers replace clicks, even while traditional search still dominates discovery at a massive scale.
Yet, search behavior is fracturing: users turn to AI for quick answers and to Google for deeper research, pushing brands to optimize for visibility, not just traffic.
6. Google AI Mode
Google rapidly expanded AI Mode from an opt-in experiment into a widely available, and possibly soon default, search experience. It added deeper research, agentic actions, personalization, and Gemini 2.5, signaling longer and more complex search behavior.
At the same time, AI Mode exposed major transparency gaps. It initially broke referral tracking and still blends performance data into standard Search Console reports, raising new concerns about visibility, attribution, and what SEO becomes as AI…
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