The August 2025 Spam Update has finally wrapped up, but the dust is far from settled. After weeks of turbulence, SEOs are reporting mixed outcomes: some sites hit hard by thin content or spammy tactics continue to struggle, while others are seeing signs of recovery. At the same time, reporting tools remain shaky, with impression dips and position shifts still surfacing in Search Console. This week, we dive into what the completed update means in practice, alongside a slate of other major developments—from Google’s launch of Search Live, to Cloudflare’s challenge to AI Overviews, fresh research on why AI citations don’t deliver clicks, and the opening of Google’s ad tech remedies trial.
Google has officially confirmed that the August 2025 Spam Update’s rollout is now complete, according to its Search Status Dashboard. The update kicked off on August 26 and wrapped up on September 22—a full 27 days of global deployment.
This iteration was less about reshuffling broad rankings and more about stamping out spammy practices—sites running thin content, scaled AI generation, or manipulative linking suffered the most. Early visibility analysis, such as from SISTRIX, characterizes the update as “penalty-only,” meaning the shift was driven mostly by demotions and removals, rather than huge gains for new winners.
How Sites Are Doing So Far
In the days following the completion announcement, volatility hasn’t fully subsided. Many SEOs report continued ranking swings, indexing delays, or unexpected traffic dips—even on sites that weathered the update relatively well. Some have even seen recovery or gains, suggesting that this update may have “cleaned house” and allowed compliant sites to emerge stronger.
Still, tools and reporting systems are under strain. The previous disruptions to SERP visibility (e.g. disabling the 100-results-per-page setting) complicate interpretations of Search Console data and third-party rank tracking. Forums and SEO communities continue to buzz with mixed reports: some site owners claim traffic recovery, others report continued losses or indexing issues.
What This Means Going Forward
Now that the spam update is “officially done,” the landscape is shifting from reactive cleanup to long-term resilience. Domain owners hit by this update should audit their sites with fresh rigor—review spam policies, remove or improve low-value content, strengthen trust signals (E-E-A-T), and avoid shortcuts. Because spam updates are about enforcement, not reward, recovery will depend on improvement and time as Google’s systems re-evaluate.
And while the update might be “complete,” we shouldn’t expect calm. Past patterns suggest residual shifts can linger for weeks or even months, especially as Google continues refining SpamBrain and other detection systems. The takeaway: adaptability is now an essential SEO asset.
Google’s new Search Live feature brings real-time voice and camera interactions to Search. Now available in English across the U.S., Search Live no longer requires enrollment in Labs—it’s fully live. Users tap the Live icon in the Google app or Lens, then ask questions verbally and optionally share what their camera sees, letting Google respond in real-time with spoken replies and relevant links.
Integrated into AI Mode, Search Live enables a free-flowing, conversational search experience. Instead of typing queries, users can speak naturally and get responses that combine both voice and visual context. Examples include pointing the camera at a device and asking, “Where does this cable go?” or asking about items in a store window and having Google identify them.
Where It Came From & Why the Shift
Search Live evolved from Google’s earlier “Talk & Listen” version of Search Live available in Labs, which allowed voice-only interaction. The new version extends that by fully integrating visual input—camera context becomes part of queries. The goal: make Search more conversational, context-aware, and helpful in real-world scenarios.
By combining voice, visual context, and AI, Google is pushing toward a more assistive search model—less about entering keywords and more about interacting fluidly with your surroundings. This aligns with trends in multimodal AI and bridges the gap between search and conversational assistants.
Implications for SEOs & Content Owners
Bottom Line
With Search Live, Google is pushing Search beyond keywords and typed queries into a more natural, conversational, and multimodal experience. By blending voice, camera input, and AI, the feature opens new ways for users to interact with information in real time—whether identifying objects, asking quick questions, or getting contextual help on the spot. For SEOs and content creators, this means optimizing for clarity, visuals, and structured context is more critical than ever, as discovery can now happen through spoken words and images as much as text. Search is no longer just something you type—it’s something you live.
Cloudflare is stepping into the ring, announcing a new Content Signals Policy designed to give publishers more control over how AI systems use their content. It adds three new, machine-readable directives to robots.txt—search, ai-input, and ai-train—which let site owners explicitly permit or deny usage for search indexing, AI answer generation, and model training.
The move is directly aimed at Google’s AI Overviews feature. Cloudflare claims that although Google indexes content for search, its AI features may pull and repurpose content in ways publishers don’t want—and the company is trying to draw a line in the sand.
Under this policy, for example, a site could allow Google to index and show snippets (search = yes) while telling it not to use the same content for AI Overviews (ai-input = no) or disallow it entirely from being used in AI training (ai-train = no).
However, a big question looms: will AI systems—especially Google—honor these signals? One reason to doubt: robots.txt rules are voluntary conventions, not legal obligations, and Cloudflare itself acknowledges that some crawlers may ignore them.
Because Google uses a single crawler for both search and AI Overviews, adjusting behavior based on these new signals would require internal changes. Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has argued that this combined crawler approach gives Google a competitive advantage—one that should be tempered.
Cloudflare is also encouraging a broader conversation about responsible AI bot principles. They’ve proposed a set of guidelines (public disclosure, self-identification, respecting site preferences) that put the onus on AI firms to behave transparently and ethically.
Implications for SEOs & Publishers
Bottom Line
Cloudflare’s Content Signals Policy is one of the first large-scale efforts to separate permission for search from permission for AI usage of website content. Whether Google and AI firms will honor it remains the unknown variable—but at least publishers now have a clearer way to ask. For SEOs and content creators, this development underscores the evolving tension between discoverability and control in the age of generative AI.
In his analysis of over 20,000 ranking queries, Adam Gnuse from Search Engine Land found a surprising disconnect: AI Overview citations often show up as high-visibility elements on SERPs, but they rarely generate the clicks we expect from top-ranking blue links. Even in favorable positions, AI Overviews underperform—many citations deliver click volumes equivalent to a lower-tier organic listing.
Gnuse noted that AI Overviews tend to cluster with pages that rank around position 6 in organic search, but their click-through rates (CTRs) drop off steeply after the first few positions. That means simply being cited in an AI Overview doesn’t equate to dominating traffic. To make matters more complex, brand recognition and visibility get some benefit from citation appearances, but those gains are intangible and usually slower to translate into measurable traffic.
So what should SEOs and publishers do? First, don’t rely on AI Overview placement as your primary traffic driver—it’s visibility, not a traffic guarantee. Gnuse suggests continuing to compete for top blue link positions, focusing on traditional ranking factors like authority, content depth, and clear structure. Also, treat AI Overview citations as “upper-funnel” brand moments—elements that build awareness or credibility even if they don’t immediately convert. For reporting, consider tracking assisted conversions and make sure stakeholders understand that a citation is not the same as a click.
Read the full article/study here.
The DOJ first filed its antitrust case against Google’s advertising technology (ad tech) stack in January 2023, accusing the company of illegally dominating ad server and ad exchange markets and tying them together in unfair ways. In April 2025, Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled that Google did, in fact, maintain monopolistic control over both publisher ad servers and open-web ad exchanges, and that its product tying practices harmed publishers, competition, and ultimately consumers.
Following that ruling, Google and the DOJ now meet in the remedies phase, where the court must decide how to fix the harm. Remedies being proposed range from structural changes (selling parts of its ad tech business) to behavioral safeguards (forcing changes in how Google interacts with competitors).
What’s Happening Now in the Trial
Key Issues & Stakes
What to Watch (and Why It Matters)
Bottom Line
The remedies phase of Google’s ad tech monopoly case may prove just as consequential as the original ruling. Whether the court opts for structural remedies, such as divesting AdX or DFP, or chooses behavioral safeguards, the outcome will shape the balance of power between Google, publishers, advertisers, and competitors for years to come. With pressure mounting both in the U.S. and abroad, this trial could redefine the rules of digital advertising—and SEOs, marketers, and publishers should be ready for a future where the open web looks very different.
The close of the spam update serves as a reminder of just how fast the search landscape can shift. Between Google limiting search results per page, the volatility of AI Overviews, and the high-stakes ad tech trial now underway, the industry is balancing on a moving floor. For SEOs and publishers, the priority remains the same: adapt quickly, reset your baselines, and lean into fundamentals like trust, clarity, and resilient strategies. More changes are coming—our task is to stay ready and turn each shift into an opportunity.
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