Aug 13, 2025

This issue of the newsletter is sponsored by my AI and SEO Audit path that is almost closed ❌

Hey friends 👋

How’s your week going? Did Google drop any surprises on you yet, or is it too quiet out there? 😏

I’ve been deep in AI Overviews land again, and I just dropped a brand-new video showing exactly how I track AI Overviews for myself and my clients (using SE Ranking) — including whether you’re linked, just mentioned, or completely left out (ouch).

🎥 Watch here:

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It’s nerdy, practical, and I promise you’ll walk away with ideas to measure your visibility in this new “position zero” world.

Oh, and because you’re one of my awesome newsletter subscribers, you can grab an exclusive deal: get SE Ranking free for a whole month (no credit card) so you can track AI Overviews, monitor your visibility in AI chatbots like ChatGPT, and spy on your AI competitors.

I’ve got a LOT of SEO and AI search news to share with you in this issue. From fresh Google experiments to AI-powered SERP changes, plus some very actionable tactics you can try right away.

Also… my AI SEO Expert course presale is coming very soon 🚀. If you’ve been wanting to master AI search optimization before everyone else catches up, keep an eye on your inbox. My current SEO Audit Mastery students ❤️- you will get a special deal!

Alright, let’s dive in…

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Weekly SEO & AI News Digest

The last two weeks have been… a ride. 😅

Google: AI Overviews drive more queries and higher-quality clicks

Google blog: Liz Reid writes that organic click volume on Google is relatively stable year-over-year and that AI Overviews lead to deeper searches and higher-quality clicks (blog.google). She notes people increasingly click on cited sources within AI answers and that Google sends billions of daily visits to publishers.

Mysterious “Google” user agent crawls sites

Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable: SEO experts spotted a crawler identifying itself only as Google, not matching any documented Googlebot. Some IPs resolve to Google ranges but others do not, fueling speculation about spoofed bots or new internal crawlers (seroundtable.com).

SEO impact: Administrators should monitor server logs and verify unknown crawlers to prevent scraping or misconfiguration.
​Question: Should SEOs adjust firewall rules to block unidentified Google-like bots, or could that risk missing legitimate crawlers?

AI traffic surges 527 % year‑over‑year

Nicole Farley, Search Engine Land: Previsible analyzed 19 GA4 properties and found AI‑referred sessions jumped from 17,076 to 107,100 from January to May 2025—a 527 % increase. Industries like legal, finance and health accounted for 55 % of this traffic (searchengineland.com​searchengineland.com).

SEO impact: AI assistants are sending significant traffic; sites should optimize content for clear, structured answers.

AI search referrals surge 1,300 % for retailers

Jay Peters, The Verge: Adobe analytics showed AI‑generated search referrals to U.S. retail sites increased 1,300 % year‑over‑year during the 2024 holiday season. AI‑referred visitors spent 8 % longer and viewed 12 % more pages, with bounce rates 23 % lower than traditional search (theverge.com).

SEO impact: AI search may deliver more engaged shoppers; merchants should optimize product data for AI surfaces.
​Question: What product attributes will AI assistants highlight in retail queries?

AI Overviews reduce total clicks by 34.5 %

Kevin Indig, Conversion Media: An analysis reported that AI Overviews cut combined organic and paid clicks by 34.5 %, dropping organic CTR from ~3.97 % to 0.64 % on AI Overview‑heavy SERPs (conversionmedia.com).

SEO impact: Marketers must diversify acquisition channels and optimize merchant feeds to compensate for declining click volumes.
​Question: Are you tracking CTR changes on AI‑dominated search results?

AI Mode adoption spikes then drops

Aleyda Solís, LinkedIn: Aleyda shared that AI Mode usage by UK desktop users surged from 0.1 % on July 28 to 9.2 % on Aug 1, then fell to 6.3 % by Aug 3 (linkedin.com). The spike likely reflected curiosity rather than sustained use.

SEO impact: AI features may see rapid but short‑lived adoption; traffic patterns could be volatile.

OpenAI launches GPT‑5 with bigger context window and new variants

Wired: Sam Altman announced GPT‑5 with a 256k‑token context window, improved reasoning and lower hallucination rates. New variants, GPT‑5‑mini and GPT‑5‑nano, offer cheaper API options; pricing starts at $1.25 per million input tokens (wired.com​wired.com).

SEO impact: Developers can build AI‑powered tools at lower cost, potentially increasing AI‑generated content.
​Question: Will cheaper large language models flood the web with low‑quality AI content?

“Ten blue links” fade amid generative search lawsuits

Jay Peters, The Verge: The Verge reports that AI search results are eroding the traditional list of ten blue links, and generative AI answers have sparked copyright lawsuits and regulator scrutiny (theverge.com).

SEO impact: SEO strategies must consider AI‑generated answers and citation policies.
​Question: Should publishers negotiate licensing deals with AI providers to protect content?

Google AI Mode adds file uploads, Canvas planner and search while browsing

Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable: Google is testing features allowing AI Mode users to upload images and (soon) PDFs, plan tasks on a Canvas side panel and use Google Lens while browsing (seroundtable.com). These tools may roll out to Search Labs participants.

SEO impact: Content creators need to consider visual and document uploads as part of search workflows.
​Question:Could AI-driven planners shift user journeys away from standard SERPs?

Bing Webmaster Tools now retains 24 months of data and adds filters

Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable: Microsoft’s Bing Webmaster Tools increased its search-performance history from 16 to 24 months, added filters by country and device, and introduced quick keyword trendlines (seroundtable.com).

SEO impact: SEOs get deeper historical data and granular filters for trend analysis.
​Question: What insights can be uncovered from two years of Bing data that weren’t visible before?

Cloudflare accuses Perplexity of stealth crawling

Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Land: Cloudflare alleges that Perplexity AI uses IP rotation and browser mimicking to ignore robots.txt directives, sending millions of stealth requests. Perplexity responded that the claims are misunderstandings. Cloudflare set up honey‑trap sites to verify the behaviour (searchengineland.com).

SEO impact: Ensure your bot management distinguishes verified AI crawlers from stealth scrapers.
​Question: How might stealth crawling by AI tools affect your server resources and data privacy?

140K Ranking Factors. Zero Guesswork. Meet Cora.

Actionable SEO Tips & Tactics

Use sitemaps and lastmod to optimize for AI search

Bing Webmaster Blog suggests adding up to 50k URLs per sitemap and keeping lastmod updated in ISO 8601 format (blogs.bing.com).
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Quick Win: Audit your sitemaps and automate lastmod updates to reflect actual content changes.
​Question: How quickly do your sitemaps reflect new or updated pages?

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Give each important image its own landing page

John Mueller (Google) advises that unique URLs and descriptive text around images improve indexing and visibility compared to gallery pages (searchenginejournal.com).
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​Quick Win: Create dedicated pages for high‑value images with descriptive alt text and captions.
​Question: Which images on your site could drive image search traffic if given their own pages?

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Avoid generic keyword domains; build a brand name

John Mueller warns that small businesses using generic keyword domains compete with directories and aren’t memorable (searchenginejournal.com).
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​Quick Win: Choose a distinctive brand name and reinforce it in content and structured data.
​Question: Does your domain name help or hinder brand recall?

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Ground your AI tool’s answers with Brave’s API

Search Engine Journal reports that Brave’s AI Grounding API can supply real search results to LLMs, reducing hallucinations (searchenginejournal.com).
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​Quick Win: If you build AI chat tools, integrate the API to provide accurate citations.
​Question: Could grounding AI answers in a privacy‑focused search index improve user trust?

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Use Bing Image Creator’s GPT‑4o for visual assets

Bing Blog says the new GPT‑4o model produces photorealistic images with better text rendering (blogs.bing.com).

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​Quick Win: Generate bespoke images for blog posts and social media, then compress and add alt text.
​Question: Could higher‑quality AI images boost engagement on your channels?

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Plan for Deep Search by boosting authority and citations

Google blog notes that Deep Search crafts multi‑source reports from hundreds of queries (blog.google).

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​Quick Win: Increase your site’s authority by earning links from reputable sources and adding comprehensive references.
​Question: Are your pages cited by authoritative sites that AI might reference in research reports?

As my subscriber you can also download my AI SEO checklist (100+ steps for free).

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Stellar Articles from Other SEOs

Freelance vs. in-house SEO salary: Insights from the 2025 survey

SE Ranking conducted a global survey of SEO professionals that asked them how much they make, how often they get raises, and how satisfied they feel at work (seranking.com).

The results show that in-house SEOs (those employed by companies, agencies, etc.) tend to earn less than freelancers overall. But not everywhere, and not always. Their income still varies based on where they live, how much they work, and what kind of SEO they do.

GPT-5 just dropped: Here’s what it means for your visibility in AI answers

No, GPT-5 isn’t AGI. Yesterday’s playbook still matters. Traditional SEO still works. Backlinks didn’t vanish. Organic SERP traffic is alive and well (seranking.com).

But AI search isn’t some fringe experiment anymore. So what did OpenAI actually unleash?

A single, unified ChatGPT that blends agentic capabilities, o3’s advanced reasoning, 4.5’s gift of gab, 4o’s multimodality, and pretty much every other trick the old models had. Only now it’s faster, sharper, and a lot harder to stump.

Only 12% of AI Cited URLs Rank in Google’s Top 10 for the Original Prompt

In a dataset of 15,000 prompts, we found that—on average—only 12% of links cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot appear in Google’s top 10 results for the same prompt (ahrefs.com).

AI Search Struggles With JavaScript Rendering — Big Visibility Risks for Client-Side Sites

Glenn Gabe shows how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and other AI search platforms often fail to render client-side JavaScript — meaning fully client-rendered pages can appear blank to them.

Google’s AI Overviews/AI Mode and Bing’s Copilot aren’t affected because they can render JS (gsqi.com).

Why this matters: If your key content is loaded with client-side JavaScript, AI platforms might not “see” it, hurting rankings and visibility in AI search results.

Your turn: Have you checked how your pages render with JavaScript off — and how AI chatbots read them?
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That's all I have for you today!

See you in the next episode!

Best,

P.S. Do you want me to share a specific article or resource in the newsletter? Interested in sponsoring this newsletter? Let me know by replying to this e-mail!

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About Me

I’m Olga Zarr — an SEO consultant, trainer, and total search nerd. Over the years, I’ve helped hundreds of people (and plenty of businesses) untangle their SEO headaches, grow their traffic, and actually enjoy the process.

I offer SEO consultations where we can dig into your site, your strategy, and your biggest search challenges — and leave you with a clear action plan.

I’ve been featured in top industry publications, spoken at SEO conferences, and hold multiple SEO certifications — so you’re in good hands.

I’m also the creator of the AI & SEO Path, a program designed to help you master both traditional SEO and the new AI-powered search landscape.

📅 Want my eyes on your SEO? Book a consultation with me here and let’s make your search results shine.