October 2025 SEO Updates: Google and AI Changing Search Forever

The wave of search platform updates observed in October 2025 confirms a fundamental shift: Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) is now the primary interface for user discovery and transactions.

This period is an inflection point where digital visibility strategies must immediately shift from optimizing web content to optimizing core business data assets.

The Zero-Click Tsunami Hits Discovery

Google has officially launched AI summaries for trending topics within Discover in US. This move internalizes content consumption on high-volume mobile feeds, posing a direct threat to publisher referral traffic. Discover has traditionally been a source of high-volume clicks for news and lifestyle content.

By providing summarized answers directly on the platform, Google accelerates the zero-click phenomenon in a crucial channel, potentially mirroring the negative impacts on traffic volumes already documented for websites facing AI Overviews (AIOs) in traditional Search.

The Global Monetization Pivot

Google’s announcement that advertisements will expand within AI Overviews to select English-speaking markets by the end of 2025 officially scales the generative search monetization model globally, as confirmed during a Google Access event. This expansion involves integrating both Search and Shopping ads directly into the AI-generated summaries.

International Paid Per Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) teams in these markets must immediately adjust budgets and creative optimization workflows to compete for premium placement within these new generative responses.

Agentic Commerce is the New E-commerce

The strategic alliance between Walmart and OpenAI, leveraging ChatGPT’s Instant Checkout feature, defines the blueprint for Agentic Commerce. This model creates a high-conversion purchase funnel where transactions are completed entirely within the AI chat interface.

Success in this new channel, driven by the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), prioritizes the quality, accuracy, and completeness of structured product feeds, an SEO discipline now known as Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). The high conversion rate associated with this AI-driven traffic validates the need for immediate investment in product data synchronization.

Google’s Zero-Click Strategy Goes All-In

Google is ramping up its zero-click strategy by saturating mobile screens with its own AI content. This intercepts the user journey early, normalizing AI-first interaction and reducing reliance on external websites for common information.

The Zero-Click Threat in Google Discover

The official rollout of AI-generated trending topic previews in Google Discover is now live across the U.S., South Korea, and India, a feature that was tested earlier in the summer. These appear as quick AI summaries with publisher logos, offering the option to expand for more detail. This move is a major concern for publishers because Discover has historically been a key source of referral traffic.

By providing the core answer in a summary, Google reduces the incentive for users to click the original source, mirroring the zero-click behavior seen in traditional Search. We have already documented that the growth of AI Overviews correlates with substantial impact, sometimes by as much as 32%.

These AI summaries focus on trending lifestyle niches, like sports and entertainment, which are high-engagement, high-revenue categories for publishers.

The new reality is that visibility relies on a Generative Search Optimization (GSO) strategy focused on citation, not just clicks. To get featured, content needs to meet high (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) standards.

Brand signal is crucial, as research indicates that brand mentions, branded anchors, and brand search volume are the most influential factors for inclusion in AI summaries.

Publishers should prioritize brand mention share within the summary and focus on creating original research to earn unavoidable citation.

Google Pushes AI Mode Adoption via Push Notifications

Google is actively promoting its conversational AI Mode by sending native push notifications through the Google app on mobile devices. These notifications, often focused on timely news topics, link the user directly into the AI Mode interface.

This tactic is a dedicated effort to engineer high usage rates and accelerate user adoption of the conversational search format. By driving queries directly into the AI environment, Google is fostering a habit loop where users default to AI-powered responses, bypassing the traditional organic search listings entirely.

Experts like Glenn Gabe suggest these notification-prompted interactions are likely registered internally as "new queries," potentially inflating reported AI Mode engagement. Tracking this activity in traditional analytics is challenging, as all links cited in an AI Overview inherit the Rank 1 position, but only register an impression if the link is scrolled into view, similar to how featured snippets are tracked.

Consolidating News Consumption with the Sports Feed

Google continues to internalize information consumption with the rollout of a "What's new" Search feature specifically for sports news. Rolling out in the US over the coming weeks, this feature will present a dedicated feed of trending updates and articles when users look up players or teams on mobile.

This move targets content with rapid obsolescence, high user interest, and continuous updates. By integrating a curated "Answer Feed" directly into the Search Results Page (SERP), Google consolidates the acquisition of perishable content. If the platform efficiently satisfies the user's need for fast, high-volume updates directly within the SERP interface, the motivation for the user to click through to specialized news portals is significantly diminished.

Monetization, PAA, and the Search Interface Remodel

Google’s goal to monetize its generative features is now entering a global phase. At the same time, the structural integration of AI Overviews into legacy SERP features, specifically People Also Ask (PAA), signals a dramatic convergence of SEO and GSO requirements.

Global Expansion of AI Overview Advertising

A critical update for digital marketing executives is the confirmed expansion of ads within AI Overviews beyond the U.S. to select English-speaking markets by the end of 2025.

This rollout includes the integration of both Search (text-based) and shopping ad formats directly within the generative summaries.

This expansion is both an opportunity and a critical challenge for advertisers. Ads are now woven seamlessly into the informational tapestry presented by the AI Overview, as Google Marketing Live previously unveiled. Advertising efficacy will increasingly rely on optimizing creative assets, especially product images and concise messaging, for this conversational search environment.

International PPC teams must immediately model the budgetary and operational impact of this shift, as the prime advertising real estate is redefined from the top text ad slot to contextual inclusion within the generative response itself.

PAA and AIO

New market data strongly confirms the accelerating integration of AI Overviews into the People Also Ask (PAA) feature. Data from AlsoAsked indicated a doubling of AI Overviews appearing within PAA results, escalating from 18% to 38% in three months between July and September 2025. This rapid growth rate confirms that PAA is transitioning from a query expansion feature into a primary vehicle for distributing Google’s AI-generated content.

This convergence changes the calculus for SEO professionals. PAA optimization is now a mandatory Generative Engine Optimization requirement. By fusing AIOs into PAA, Google is utilizing AI to dynamically answer increasingly conversational and long-tail queries directly within the SERP. This accelerates zero-click behavior in the informational content space, further correlating with the substantial impact.

To succeed on this strategic battlefield, content strategy must evolve. Content must deliver complete, well-structured, and concise answers, often using short paragraphs and clear headings, which the AI systems favor for quick parsing and extraction. The effective application of structured data is vital, as structured data helps Google’s AI comprehend content rapidly and accurately.

Content tone should be conversational to mirror how users ask questions in natural language, directly answering queries frequently observed in PAA results.

Metric	Pre-AIO Baseline (Late 2024)	Current State (Q4 2025)	Strategic Implication
Organic CTR (General)	High/Stable	Substantial Decline (Up to 32% drop)	User needs are met on SERP; focus must shift from click volume to citation dominance (GSO).
AI Overviews Appearance in PAA	~18% (July 2025)	~38% (Sept 2025)	PAA is now a primary AI content feature; requires mandatory optimization for conversational flow and structured answers.
AI Overview Trigger Rate (All Queries)	~6.49% (Jan 2025)	~13.14% (March 2025)	Rapid acceleration of AI exposure; requires continuous monitoring and agile content adaptation.

Agentic Commerce and E-commerce Pivot

The most profound structural update for the retail sector is the launch of Agentic Commerce via the Walmart and OpenAI partnership. This model fundamentally disrupts traditional e-commerce SEO, replacing page authority with data integrity and speed.

Walmart, OpenAI, and Instant Checkout

Walmart’s collaboration with OpenAI integrates its massive retail catalog into ChatGPT, leveraging the Instant Checkout feature to allow customers to shop directly within the AI conversation. Shoppers can make conversational queries, such as asking for a "gift for an avid reader" or to "plan meals," and complete the purchase without ever leaving the ChatGPT environment.

This model is the practical realization of "agentic commerce," where the AI anticipates customer needs, proactively guides discovery, and automates components of the shopping process. The underlying infrastructure is the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), an open standard co-developed by OpenAI and Stripe. By making ACP open, OpenAI ensures the functionality can be adopted by any assistant (Gemini, Claude), establishing ACP as a new, neutral transaction layer between user intent and merchant inventory.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) for Products

The Agentic Commerce model dictates a dramatic re-evaluation of e-commerce product discovery. Traditional e-commerce SEO elements like link profile and page speed are secondary. Instead, visibility is driven by the technical quality and completeness of product data, structured markup, and verified external trust signals. If a product fails to appear in the AI’s initial, concise shortlist, it is functionally invisible to the user.

The central authority in this new model is the merchant’s product feed. OpenAI’s Product Feed Specification requires merchants to supply structured product data via formats like TSV, CSV, XML, or JSON, with mandated frequent refreshes. For Agentic Commerce, this feed is the primary source of truth for indexing, matching, and ranking. Ranking within the conversational environment depends on how accurately the supplied data matches the user’s conversational query context.

A critical operational challenge lies in Product Data Management (PDM) efficiency. Early analysis of AI shopping features indicates significant volatility and latency issues: product pricing sometimes misses recent promotions, and stock levels are often outdated.

Success in GEO relies fundamentally on ensuring real-time synchronization of price, stock, and detailed product attributes within the ACP-compliant feed. While traffic volume from AI sources is currently low, the conversion rates are exceptionally high, with studies showing AI-referred sessions converting at ~15.9% compared to ~1.8% for traditional Google Organic traffic.

Content Control, Local Efficiency, and International Scaling

Beyond the actions of Google and OpenAI, auxiliary platforms and competitors are addressing critical issues related to content sovereignty, operational efficiency for multi-location businesses, and international scalability of community knowledge.

Bing Adopts Granular Content Governance

In a significant update for publishers, Bing has introduced support for the data- nosnippet HTML attribute. This adoption aligns Bing with Google’s existing support, giving webmasters fine-grained control over which specific sections of a webpage are excluded from both standard search snippets and, critically, AI-generated answers in Copilot.

This capability is an important development for content monetization and brand reputation management. For subscription-based publishers, the attribute allows them to protect paywalled or premium content from appearing in generative previews while ensuring the page remains fully indexed and eligible to rank.

This also provides a technical means to manage brand messaging by excluding sensitive content, such as uncensored user comments, legal boilerplate, or expired promotional notices, from appearing in neutral AI summaries.

Time Savings in Local SEO

For organizations managing a significant number of physical locations, Google has introduced a major operational efficiency improvement within Google Business Profile (GBP). Managers can now share updates (posts) across multiple managed GBPs simultaneously.

This feature was confirmed by local SEO analysts after they documented a new prompt asking managers if they wish to "Copy the update to other profiles you manage" after posting an initial update. This is a powerful time-saving measure for agencies, franchises, and multi-location enterprises.

It guarantees brand consistency across all locations and ensures that critical, timely updates are disseminated without manual, location-by-location repetition.

Reddit Takes Its AI Search Multilingual

Reddit has expanded its AI-powered search experience, Reddit Answers, to five new languages: French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. This rollout broadens the feature’s international reach.

Reddit's entry into the multilingual AI search landscape is strategic. Unlike generalized large language models (LLMs) that synthesize broad web knowledge, Reddit’s AI search leverages discussions, opinions, and advice sourced from its vast network of community forums.

This provides an inherent "authenticity advantage," delivering culturally nuanced, community-driven answers that resonate locally. Multinational organizations must now integrate monitoring of community-driven AI search results into their multilingual SEO and brand reputation strategies.

Our Thoughts

Google seems to be consolidating control over the entire user journey, from passive discovery (Discover) and rapid news consumption (Sports Feed) to complex informational query resolution (PAA/AIO).

Agentic Commerce, catalyzed by the Walmart/OpenAI partnership, presents a new paradigm for e-commerce, where the speed and accuracy of structured product data overshadow the relevance of web page ranking.

The mandate for executive teams is clear: traditional SEO strategies centered on link building and keyword density are yielding diminishing returns. Organizational strategy must pivot toward a holistic Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) framework, user experience and technical optimization.